106: When the Algorithm Doesn’t Hear You: Why Women’s Content Struggles to Be Seen

In this reflective final episode of the Social Media Is Optional series, Jules explores why women’s voices - especially in the beauty, health, and wellness industries - are so often overlooked online.

She shares insights from recent research showing how posts about women’s bodies and wellbeing are frequently flagged, hidden, or deprioritised by social media algorithms, and why even Google and YouTube aren’t always as fair as they seem.

This episode unpacks what that bias means for small business owners and why relying solely on social media isn’t the only route to visibility. Jules also shares her own shift away from using social media as a marketing channel, choosing instead to build visibility through the spaces she owns - her website, podcast, and community.

Key Takeaways:

• How the bias within algorithms limits women’s visibility online
• Why posts about women’s health and wellbeing are often censored or deprioritised
• What this means for small businesses in beauty, health, and wellness
• Why owning your platforms (website, email, podcast) gives you lasting control and reach
• How to start making the shift away from social media - one calm, practical step at a time

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Conversation with Rebecca McKay-Miller (Block & Rose) - on thought leadership and visibility
• CensHERship white paper — survey on content restrictions affecting women’s health and wellbeing
• LinkedIn experiment by Cindy Gallop, Jane Evans, Matt Lawson, and Steven McGinnis - comparing post reach
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez - book on data gaps and gender bias

Next steps:

• Explore The Website Growth Club - for sustainable, practical visibility strategies that build what you own
• Book one-to-one support to map your website or SEO plan together

Your voice and your business matter. You don’t have to fight the system to be heard - and social media is optional.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Social Media is Optional Series
• 1:23 Personal Realization About Social Media
• 2:07 How Social Media Limits Women's Voices
• 3:10 Owning Your Digital Presence
• 6:45 Research on Social Media Censorship
• 11:18 Gender Bias in Social Media
• 15:10 Impact on Women-Focused Businesses
• 18:46 Alternative Ways to Thrive Without Social Media
• 20:07 Call to Action and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction to Social Media is Optional Series

Hello. This is the final episode of my Social Media is Optional series. This episode in particular, I think, has been one of the ones that's made me think the most.

So, like this whole series, this whole Social Media is Optional series, started out as a conversation about marketing your business without burning out and that social media is actually optional. But it has definitely been very thought-provoking for me.

It's something that has sort of become something a bit deeper for me, a lot deeper actually, if I'm honest. It's kind of changed how I see things.

I came into this and I started this thinking about helping people understand how social media is optional and how we focus on what we own first, and that's definitely still a big part of this. That is the fundamental message of this.

But from doing the research and from talking this through, I've been thinking about this topic a lot over the last few weeks and even like a couple of months really.

Personal Realisation About Social Media

And it's actually made me feel, like for me, it's made me realise that social media isn't an option that I particularly want to be taking in my business. I don't want that to be the primary way that I gather business.

And I've never wanted that, realistically.

I've always sort of focused more on SEO and on relationship building in particular. But this has just reinforced that to me; just going through this has made that stronger in my mind.

It's not really an option I want to be taking in my business. And it's not about boycotting social media or making a political statement or anything like that, really.

It's all about choice. It's about having that choice.

And for so long we've been told that these platforms are the only way to be seen in our business.

How Social Media Limits Women's Voices

But actually, something we're going to explore today is the fact that the system itself often limits and distorts women's voices.

So it's optional; we can choose whether we use social media in our business. And that doesn't mean to say that if you don't, you entirely disappear and end up with, you know, a business that doesn't grow.

Absolutely, there are other options really. So, yeah.

So I'm just saying to sort of use them consciously, rather than using the platforms compulsively.

We talked last week about the fact that the platforms themselves are designed to be addictive and are designed to keep us there and keep us sort of hooked on scrolling. But if we use them as a tool rather than as the home of our business, we use them as a tool that helps us to grow, if we choose to.

Certainly, we don't want those to be the primary way that we are getting business and the primary way that we are actually connecting with people as well. Just purely because of the vulnerability of it not being what we own, I think really.

Owning Your Digital Presence

We do own our website. We own our email list, we own podcasts if we have a podcast.

And I think that's where the real power can come from, for us rather. I think that's really where the power comes, is where we can build spaces that we do actually own and make sure that we are in control of our content.

We are in control of the message that goes out about our business and everything is as we want it to be. Really, as I say, it's all about that conscious choice, really.

Our voices are being muted, our voices as women are being muted by the algorithms, and we want people to actually find us when they're looking for our solution to their problem. And that doesn't always happen for women, unfortunately, when they're using social media.

So this whole series came from a conversation with Rebecca McKay Miller from Block and Rose, and we were talking about leadership. Her business is helping people explore thought leadership and explore the ways that they want to be known; the things that they want to be known for.

It was a really interesting conversation and so helpful for me, really. I have been dancing around social media being optional for two years now, but I had never, until I had this conversation, really mapped out the exact way that that could be weaved into my business more.

And why it was so important to me; why that is something that I really want to be fundamental to the message of my business, really.

And it's definitely been challenging; like recording these videos has been very different. It's very different to coming on and talking to you about how to grow your Google Business Profile or how to make changes to your website or how to increase conversions.

All of those are the sort of things that I feel like I could come on and talk about until the cows come home, really, without having to think too much, without having to really do too much prep or anything. It's something that I feel like I can just come on and chat about.

Whereas this has felt like I've needed to do more prep for this. This has felt like I've needed to just gather my thoughts a lot more on this process.

So it's been, as I say, interesting to do. I feel like I have enjoyed doing it and it's something that I've had to remind myself, as I've been recording these episodes, that this is the first time I've spoken about a lot of this stuff.

So even if it feels like it's not, I don't feel like, 'Oh yeah, that's a fantastic piece of content. That's a fantastic podcast episode.' Just talking about these things, actually, the sooner I start talking about them, the sooner I can become confident to talk further about them and can help to spread the word, hopefully.

Even just one person who had never thought about the fact that social media could be optional in a business, which is... there are conversations that I have regularly, every time I go networking. When I talk to people about what I do and how people can find your business without you having to rely on social media, I can see that lightbulb moment.

I can see that people haven't heard this message before. When I have been talking about this, certainly in the UK space, people have said there aren't many people who are talking about this.

So, this is why I have to just get over myself and just get out there and start talking about this. Because the sooner we start having these conversations, the sooner people can actually embrace this and just really, hopefully, find that alternative way.

Find the ways to grow your business without actually using social media if you choose not to, really.

Research on Social Media Censorship

So I've been doing some research for today's topic in particular. It was something that I felt like I didn't want to sort of base on hearsay; I didn't want to base it on that feeling that women's voices are being silenced by the algorithm and by social media.

So I've been doing some research. I've been reading through some white papers and they've been really interesting, and I think it has helped to reinforce to me why this is more important than ever.

And especially for businesses in beauty, health, and wellness. I feel like, certainly from reading through some of these white papers, that businesses particularly focused on women's topics are often limited online.

So, around health, wellbeing, women's medical health, women's bodies, topics like those are often limited when people are talking about those things.

So whether it is through social media or, this is also a problem on Google, YouTube, and Pinterest, it does seem to be universal. But particularly on social media, this is where I'm sort of focusing.

Posts about periods or menopause will get flagged as inappropriate, and ads that mention fertility or breastfeeding get rejected.

Even words like 'vagina' or 'pelvic floor' can trigger those moderation features in the platforms. And you're using anatomically correct terms here.

They're getting censored or completely removed, while male-focused content that uses anatomically correct terms is often approved.

So there are even cases of hashtags and keywords that are used in a medical context. So there was the hashtag #vaginalcancer or #vaginacancer that got banned from, I think this was, Instagram.

Obviously, it's such an important topic if these kinds of things are actually getting banned. These medical things are getting banned, or even shadowbanning is another thing I was reading about.

The fact that the content is then made less of a priority in our feeds or made unsearchable, both in paid ads and organically, is a real problem. Because these businesses that are using these kinds of words, that are using these keywords, are helping people to understand, helping women in particular, to understand more about their bodies and get help.

Get help for medical problems that they need; they need to get the word out there about this, really.

So the company CensHERship did a survey, and this was the white paper that I was reading, and they found that over 90% of the people who responded had had issues with censorship. And it does vary from platform to platform.

Instagram seemed to be the one that was really a problem for this; over 90% of the people who responded said that they'd had problems on Instagram. I think it was about 54% or something like that on Facebook, and lower on TikTok as well.

But yeah, I mean, that could be because the people that were responding might have been using Instagram more, but I think it's really important to understand this. That actually, this is a real problem.

This is not just hearsay. This is something that is actually happening, and it's about those serious topics that really do need to be out there.

When it's a company that is verified and professional, and this is what they do, we need that content to get out there. They're actually medical companies that help people with this.

Or even if it's not medical, if they are companies that are helping women with women's issues, then we need that content to be able to get out there and in front of the right people.

Gender Bias in Social Media Engagement

And there's also an issue with bias between men's and women's posts. When men and women post similar content, studies show that men's posts often reach far more people.

Jeremy Stockdale talked about this on LinkedIn; how women's voices and comments often get much, much less engagement and reach than men's when talking about the same topics.

There was something, I'm just going to read you a little bit from this post that they did. This is a post from Matt Lawson, who said that the same content was published by all of us.

There were four people in this experiment: Cindy Gallup, Jane Evans, Matt Lawson, and Steven McGinnis.

Cindy's post reached 801 people, which was 0.6% of her followers. Jane's reached 1,327 people, which is 8.3% of her followers.

Steve's reached 328 people, which was 51% of his followers, and Matt's reached 10,408 people, which was 143% of his followers.

So those are pretty incredible stats. That was for the same content.

When I was reading through this and reading through Jeremy Stockdale's post about this as well, there were so many comments on there from people, from women in particular, showing or saying how they'd experienced this themselves. How they experience where they comment on posts and they get a much lower reach than men.

Than men who are actually doing that, or their own posts. They post on there and their voice just feels like it is not being heard.

Coming back to the censorship part of this as well, what a lot of people in the survey actually said was they started censoring themselves. So they started changing the language that they use in their posts.

I saw some where people were, like, changing the spelling of 'vagina', so it had a four in the middle of it instead of one of the 'a's or something like that. It is ridiculous that people have to do that; that they have to actually make those kinds of moderations to their post and censor themselves in order to try to post in front of the people that they're trying to reach.

And with a lot of this as well, people were saying that they actually don't even appeal it a lot of the time because they're then worried about further repercussions. They're then worried about further posts being banned and their content then being devalued and delisted even more.

That's not good because, again, women's voices are being silenced; women's voices are actually not getting out as they need to, really.

And the platforms themselves say that it's the algorithm that's causing this, but that's the fundamental problem: the algorithm. It has so much bias in it, and that bias just keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.

So unfortunately, yes, it's the algorithm, but it's an algorithm problem. Basically, the algorithm and what the algorithm is written on, and unfortunately, a lot of the internet is created on content that's written by men, for men.

There are so many instances of this. There's a really good book, and I can't remember the name of the author, but it's called 'Invisible Women', and that talks about the stats and the data around gender bias against women that is repeated across all sorts of industries.

Even things like crash dummies and those kinds of things. Cars are still built around crash test dummies that are anatomically set up for men's bodies.

So women are much more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a road traffic accident because of the way cars are designed, because they're not designed for women's bodies. So, that's a little bit of today's tangent; that's a little bit of a side arm there to what I was actually talking about.

Impact on Women-Focused Businesses

But why this matters, why this is important for you when you are trying to get your business out there and you're trying to connect with people, is that you can spend hours creating something valuable that is really helpful for your audience, but you are still going to feel invisible. And it's not because your content isn't good, but because the system wasn't built with you in mind, basically.

And part of the problem with this, part of the problem with the algorithm being wrong, is that there are not enough women in tech. And there are not enough women in tech leadership as well, so there are not enough people who are actually going through and teaching the algorithm what to do.

And we're kind of at a point now where, because AI is doing that, the algorithm is almost teaching itself.

But there are still people there looking at these posts, looking at whether they should or shouldn't have been flagged or banned or, you know, not approved.

And if they don't have enough women sitting there looking at these posts who have an understanding of women's bodies, and how women need to hear about things that may not be sexually related but are actually being flagged as that kind of inappropriate content. So we need more women in those kinds of industries that can actually do that.

And that involves the platforms themselves trying to actually recruit more women into those jobs, really.

This is something that happened when Apple first launched its Health Tracker app. Because they didn't have any women working on the design of this, they didn't include a period tracker in the health tracker app.

And it was only once that was actually pointed out that they even realised that women would want to do that. Or at Google, where they never had parking spaces close to the building for pregnant women because they didn't have any women in leadership roles there that would actually point out that that might be helpful for women, really.

So we're already at a disadvantage. I think using platforms that contribute to that aren't actually helping us to really market our business.

The system is already stacked against you. So let's focus on the stuff where we have more control over it and we can actually connect with people when they're searching for what we sell.

So when I was doing this research, I read that to reach women under 35, you have to be on TikTok or Facebook. It was actually a woman who had said this; I didn't make a note of her name.

But that then put a little gremlin in my brain, like, 'Oh, maybe I have got this wrong. Maybe, you know, this is like back in the early internet days where I talk about when some businesses embraced the internet, got a website, went on the internet and did really well.'

And then there were some businesses that didn't, and they generally weren't the businesses that did well.

But I had to have a little word with myself, really, and have a little think about this. Back in the early internet days, if a business didn't have a website, they were basically invisible.

You still had the Yellow Pages for a while and those kinds of things, but the world was moving that way. And I was thinking, are we moving to that point where you have to have social media to get found?

And actually, I don't believe you do. I honestly believe that if you're not relying on social media, it doesn't make you invisible; it just means that you are choosing how you stand out.

You're choosing smarter, calmer ways; ways that align with your business. So through your website, through Google Maps, through your podcasts, or through your email list or other ways people can search for content.

So whether that is Pinterest or YouTube, these are ways that you actually invest in your own content first.

Alternative Ways to Thrive Without Social Media

And it is actually the truth that plenty of businesses out there are thriving without relying on social media.

I think assuming that capturing women's attention is only something you can do if it's on a platform that's owned by somebody else is just not true; it really isn't.

So if you followed this series from the start, this 'Social Media is Optional' series, you know that we began in episode 102, where we were exploring how to build a calmer business without that constant posting.

Then in episode 103, we talked about why your website should be the hub of your content. In episode 104, we talked about how we've been sold a lie.

Last week in episode 105, we talked about how the platforms are deliberately designed to be addictive. And now in this final part, we've looked at something deeper: how women's voices are often limited by the very systems that we are told to depend on and to rely on, really.

So if any of these episodes spoke to you, go back and listen again with fresh ears. You might hear something different now that you've seen the full picture.

So maybe this week, instead of focusing on another post or spending hours scrolling, take one small step towards reclaiming your space. Update your website, your newsletter, or refresh your Google Business Profile.

Call to Action and Closing Thoughts

And if this series has sparked something new and you feel that there has to be a better way, I would love to help you build it inside the Website Growth Club. We turn these ideas into real visibility strategies that feel calm, clear, and genuinely yours.

If you're craving deeper support, we can map it out together with a one-to-one or you can join the Website Growth Club. Go to thewebsitesuccesshub.com to find out more.

But however you choose to do it, I hope this series has reminded you that your voice and your business matter and you don't have to fight the system to be heard. And above all, social media is optional.