The States Where Women Talk About Pot More Than Men
Do women talk about weed more than men? Traditionally, society has viewed men as the prominent gender in the cannabis space. In the media, the stereotypical stoner is often male. The image is pervasive, even though women are certainly staking their claim in the legal cannabis industry.
Although the percentage of female executives in the cannabis industry has dropped from 36 percent to 27 percent over the course of a year, women in business cannot be deterred. The legal cannabis industry is still relatively new, and therefore, is still malleable enough to encourage gender equality from the start. It’s not old enough that women are fighting against longstanding business practices and cultures.
Non-Professional Pot Lovers
So how does this apply to women who aren’t working in the cannabis industry?
Not every weed-savvy woman wants to make a career out of it. Some just want to be able to incorporate the plant into their lives without catching sexist flack about “stoner chicks.” So, we love it when women openly talk about their love of cannabis. It doesn’t matter if they’re writing blog posts about the plant, dedicating social media accounts to it or even just tweeting about it. By publicly proclaiming a proclivity for pot, women are claiming their space in the weed world.
Recently, the researchers over at Dank Geek put together an infographic about the states where people post about cannabis more than alcohol on social media. The social media platform they used was Twitter. According to Ryan Taylor, a publicist involved in the project, the infographic is based on over a million tweets over a one-month period. All of the tweets used in the graphic had been geotagged and contained common terms associated with alcohol and cannabis.
Of the states that tweeted about cannabis more than alcohol, there were five states that stand out. Here are the states where women talk about weed more than men:
Hawaii
- Legal Status: Medical Use
- The ratio of female vs. male tweeters
- 52 percent female
- 48 percent male
Arkansas
- Legal Status: Medical Use
- The ratio of female vs. male tweeters
- 54 percent female
- 46 percent male
Missouri
- Legal Status: Not Legal
- The ratio of female vs. male tweeters
- 64 percent female
- 36 percent male
West Virginia
- Legal Status: Not Legal
- The ratio of female vs. male tweeters
- 53 percent female
- 47 percent male
Wyoming
- Legal Status: Not Legal
- The ratio of female vs. male tweeters
- 51 percent female
- 49 percent male
What Does It Mean?
We caught up with Taylor for some more insight into this surprising statistic. He found the gender disparity of weed-related tweets interesting too. He explained that the primary objective of the project was to examine the ratio of weed-related tweets to alcohol-related tweets. They only happened to notice the gender breakdown when they were reviewing the stats.
“[It] leads to the obvious question,” Taylor said. “Why do men tweet so much more about marijuana than women?”
Taylor compared the data gathered by Dank Geek with another statistic that shows that women use Twitter at similar rates as men. He also brought up the fact that current data indicates that men may be consuming cannabis more than women.
“That is slowly changing,” he continued. “There is also an obvious ‘societal factor’ at play, where men are more willing to talk about usage. I’m willing to bet it is the same for other substances. Is our society currently more accepting of male use? A gut reaction would probably be yes. But I certainly don’t want to play armchair sociologist without some data to back that up.”
Final Hit: The States Where Women Talk About Weed More Than Men
Despite spreading legalization of cannabis, there is still an undeniable lingering stigma about consumption.
For women, who often bear the brunt of societal scrutiny, this stigma can be particularly stifling. And although women are absolutely holding their own and making their mark in the cannabis space, gender inequality is still a problem. A possible way to combat this is to encourage women to be more open about their interest in cannabis, whenever and if ever possible. We’re not saying that weed-related sexism will be solved by having women talk about weed more than men do. But it can absolutely make a difference.