One more patronising headline and I'll scream

The latest in a seemingly relentless parade of condescending 'women and technology' reports tells us that women spend more on technology than shoes. Fancy that!

"According to research commissioned by Sony Ericsson, women fork out an average of £478 on technology a year, compared to just £74 on shoes. 1,923 ladies were quizzed about their spending habits. 13% of them spend more than £1000 on gadgets a year, while 35% said they’d rather do without their swanky shoes, lipstick or diary than have to live life without their mobile phone.

"The average girl owns £1605 worth of gear, although they admit to choosing looks over features. However, only 23% get men to help them work their gadgets, with 63% making the effort to actually read the user manual."

(Via one of my favourite reads, shiny shiny.)

Reading this immediately called to mind Net games lure 'bored housewives, Gadget Gals and Women turned off by technology's 'geeky' image (aka Women Want Computers To Be Less ‘Nerdy’ and More Fun).

Sigh.

This is mostly a problem of cheap and easy reporting. In the case of the BBC's 'gaming housewives', the real story is that every major casual games provider reported that growth was being fuelled by middle-aged and female gamers. Screen Digest report author, Nick Gibson, "jokingly termed this the bored housewife". The BBC reporter was obviously tickled enough by this marketing speak to unthinkingly make it the focus of the story, rather than exploring why these pick-up-and-put-down games might be popular with women. Perhaps it has something to do with women being time-pressured rather than bored... I'm not sure this is the case - it's just a hunch - but if I was a professional reporter it's an angle I'd want to explore.

At least in this case it was just lazy reporting rather than a gross misrepresentation. The 'women want less geeky computers' story is, almost unbelievably, a report on the Information Society's Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Society, which is a serious study of 48 initiatives to include women in ICT:

By comparative analysis across 48 case-studies of public, voluntary and private inclusion efforts it identifies and analyses four main categories of inclusion strategies: Women-centred spaces, Symbolic redefinition, Relative numbers of women, and Resources for learning. The report points to the importance of creating a positive climate for women, and of providing knowledge and confidence building as well as technical resources. Initiatives need to be targeted towards particular groups; whilst knowledge exchange and networking could help to improve policy learning.

I despair.

(Picture pilfered from Scrapbooks from the Cultural Archive)