Women too post sexist comments on Twitter, reveals study

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: A new research has found that women too post sexist comments on social networking sites as men do.

Half of abusive words women face on micro blogging site Twitter come from fellow women.

After analysing British Twitter users over a three-week period, the team from British think tank Demos witnessed the scale of misogynistic abuse on Twitter perpetuated by both men and women.

The team monitored the use of the words "slut" and "whore" which they used as indicators of misogyny, express.co.uk reported.

The researchers found over 200,000 tweets using the same terms which were sent to 80,000 people in the same period.

“The findings provide a bird’s-eye snapshot of what is ultimately a very personal and often traumatic experience for women,” researcher Alex Krasodomski-Jones was quoted as saying.

“While we have focused on Twitter, who are considerably more generous in sharing their data with researchers like us, it's important to note that misogyny is prevalent across all social media,” Krasodomski-Jones added.

The findings showed that 6,500 unique Twitter users were targeted by 10,000 sexist tweets.

(With IANS inputs)