Are Women better Community Managers

Connie Benson recently blogged on the topic of whether women make better community managers.

Whilst I agree with a number of points; women are good at multi-tasking, detail-orientated, relationship-focused, experts at compromise/mediation, I feel it comes down to the type of community you are managing.

As I manage a large parenting community that is 99.9% women, I feel I can bring something to the role that a male may not be able to. Whoah I never thought I'd say something that sounds so sexist! But alas until the responsibilities of raising children are equally shared this may still apply.. I don't think enough men yet face the conundrum of how to balance their career and children.

Although I rarely engage with the community on a personal level, there are definitely times where my personal experience as a mother and woman, have helped resolve or soften the issue I am trying to deal with. And revealing that information reminds the members that yes I am human not an evil rule-enforcer!

There are so many ideologically-opposing beliefs when it comes to parenting, and most revolve around the woman. Including breast vs. bottle, stay-at-home vs work, caesar vs vaginal, controlled crying, co-sleeping and so on. Not to diminish the father's/man's role in raising babies but many of these are exclusively the domain of the woman... (although support from the male often assists the outcome).

So for me personally I feel my gender in this instance really assists my ability to do my job. Not to mention the sheer level of empathy and understanding that helps when dealing with forums that include everything from loss of a child, pregnancy complications, children with special needs, traumatic births, long-term trying to conceive,etc. Our community provides an incredible level of support - and I feel quite honoured as a women - to be able to help facilitate that support.

Is your community skewed to one gender? Are you a female community manager in a male-dominated world? Or a male in a female-one?