I’m 27. I live in Tbilisi but I am from the Earth - that’s how I have been percieving myself recently. I have started an online magazine for women (Pink.ge) a few years ago and it became a business last year. I lead a group of 20+ people while doing it.
I also do freelance work in social media, teach web marketing at the university and study for my masters degree - all at the same time. My day is a busy day but I always have time for a new exciting project.
Welcome!
Great to have you here on the platform Mariam! It seems you do a lat of interesting different things! Could you tell us a little bit more about Pink.ge? What exactly is it, how does it work, what is the idea behind it, as in, why did you decide to start it, and is it a sustainable project? Thanks!
Pink.ge as a project
I started Pink.ge as a small side-project blog, while working at a bank, doing social media management. I wanted to get young women together around the idea of women friendship and empowerment. We started as a lifestyle blog, writing about beauty, relationships, career and health. It grew dramatically. The website is visited by 15000-19000 unique visitors everyday. We sell advertisments on our website too. It is self-sufficient enough to have a year long plans about content and marekting strategy.
At this time we cover Beauty, Style, Relationships, Success, Self-Development, DIY, Entertainment and Women Rights. We have a community of almost 90 thousand Georgian women on Facebook.(Pink.ge)
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I can talk about this project days and days and I won’t get tired :))
Wow!
That’s great! I love it that it became so succesfull! Though, as a feminist, I do have some questions ;). In gender equality discussions, one of the main things which is being discussed is cultural institutionalism, meaning, perhaps the majortiy of girls do love to play with toys and the majority of boys do love to play with guns, society is also (unconsciously) framing these things in such a way that as a girl/woman, boy/man you feel that you have to like certain things. For example, chocolate as a girl. Up till i was 22 I sorta pretended I liked chocolate, because I am a girl, and girls like chocolate, right? And at one point I realized, this is ridiculous. So now when people offer me chocolate, I say no. However, people often think I am on a diet, and then say: “WHAT? You don’t like chocolate?! But you’re a girl!”. Keeping this in mind, in what way do you believe pink.ge could iniatiate a change? How could a blog like yours still be very popular, but also slowly change gender perceptions?
About feminism
I believe we are trying to achieve exactly that. There are many problems regarding women rights and gender perceptions in Georgia. It is historically patriarchal country and women face many issues in modern society, not to mention economy. We try to empower and encouarge young women to do what they want and live how they want, not how the society wants them to live.The problem is that if we pressure such topics too often (like every day), we lose money that we make from advertising (somehow these two things are correlated). For example, if we write about women reproductive health and cancer, then we try to sugarcoat those topics with ‘commercial’ articles such as sex and relationship tips. We were looking for some ways to get funding for covering more serious topics and we are open for any suggestions and opportunities, as far as they fit our mission of encourageing women to live a free and independent lifestyle.
Whoa
Mariam, this is great. pink.ge just plain rocks. From this page it seems it relies on user-generated content, your readers themselves do the writing. Is this correct?
Also, let me applaud you for the frankness: “If we push the issue of female independence too much, we lose advertising revenue.” It’s not a pretty picture, it’s not fair, but if that’s what you see you do well to speak it out. Edgeryders believe in facing the facts. Wishful thinking is not a plan.
Do you think this issue will go away? That is, that the constant erosion of traditional values by progressive media like pink.ge will in time help reduce or eliminate female discrimination?
Impressive
That’s quite an achievement, Mariam, congratulations!
I am curious: in Western Europe, there is much talk about it being difficult to get women active in digital culture. They are often underrepresented in tech, at hackathons etc. As a result, the digital scene suffers from lack of diversity. What’s the situation in Georgia? Any female hackers? I tried browsing pink.ge, but I don’t read Georgian and for some reason I could not get automated translation on the site…
Sorry for this. The google translation is terrible but at least you will get the idea. I added a link in the header for English language. I also added an automated translation snippet which should prompt to translate the website as soon as you refresh it in your browser.
or just use this link
As for another question - it is true for Georgia as well. We have female hackers but not as many as male. I was lucky to find girls from different fields (we even have a microbiologist in our team) who loved writing and believed in the idea. So we get by somehow…
hello Mariam
welcome … I really like that u said u live in Tbilisi but u r from earth , I am sure u will find alot of like minded people here that don’t believe in borders .
looking forward to know more about u , sure u have alot of interesting stuff to do like most of the people her on this platform :D:D … can u tell me more about what do u study for example
Communication
Hi there, I study Strategic Communications. It’s brings together public relations, marketing and media communications…
I have months left till I get my Master degree of Social Sciences. I have graduated Business school earlier.
We missed you at the workshop!
Hi Mariam, I was looking forward to meet you in person, hopefully next time?
I’m sure Inge is probably in touch with you, but wanted to invite you to stick around anyway and join the local action group that came out of the workshop - with meetups scheduled every other week in Tbilisi. Today’s the first one, and here is where we’re building on this: edgeryders.eu/georgias-futurespotters