misbehaving.net

pew internet report on gender differences in internet use

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a new report entitled How Women and Men Use the Internet. The short description: "Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. Men like the internet for the experiences it offers, while women like it for the human connections it promotes."

Their findings didn't surprise me much, but it was nice to see some solid research backing beliefs I've had there were primary based on anecdotal evidence.

Pew is careful to put a caveat in the summary to those who might be too quick to focus on the differences, saying "our data show that men and women are more similar than different in their online lives, starting with their common appreciation of the internet’s strongest suit: efficiency."

It definitely looks to me like it's worth reading the whole thing--I'm printing out the 55-page PDF now to carry home for the weekend.

How to interest more girls in tech careers

Jacquelynne Eccles, a University of Michigan psychologist, says that girls steer away from careers in math, science and engineering because they view them as solitary pursuits: "In order to increase the number of women in science, we also need to make young women more interested in these fields, and that means making them aware that science is a social endeavor that involves working with and helping people."

See: Why Women Shy Away from Careers in Science and Math (via Mind Hacks)

Women to rule the world in 2020

The BBC has produced a series of hour-long drama-documentary films, which uses scenarios to analyse the biggest issues to face us in the years ahead. One of the episodes, produced and directed by Ursula Macfarlane, considers the future prospects for women: If... women ruled the world.

In 2020, Macfarlane has women outperforming men academically, socially, technologically and even biologically.

Scenario planning is an act of speculation, rather than prediction, and this series 'war games' the future, "working out what - based on current trends, technological developments and the decisions of today's politicians - our world might be like in five, 10 or 20 years time."

Some thoughts from the experts quoted in the transcript, which the BBC has made available in advance of the broadcast (emphasis mine):

Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London claims: "It’s clear that the 19th century was the world of men. The 20th century I think began to get its doubts, and I’m fairly confident that in the West, the 21st century will be the century of women.

Dr Susan Greenfield, leading brain researcher at Oxford University: "People like already to talk about the feminisation of the workplace, and I think that they mean more than just taking down the girlie calendars. As well as all the lofty ideas we have about human nature, there’s a more immediate and pragmatic issue, of the nature of work and what it will mean for women if we’re living in a world where technology has so radically changed our lives, and I think the most obvious change is the reduction in emphasis on physical labour. If you now sit at a keyboard you don’t have to be physically strong any more and that will mean a whole change for the rise of women in the workplace."

"I think the biggest difference between now and our traditional working day is that traditional barriers will have broken down. There won’t be the clear-cut beginning and end to the day. One might argue that women could deal better with that because women have always had complex lives, they’ve always, much more than men, had to be able to juggle the challenges of home and community and themselves and their work place and different times of their careers."

Lisa Harker, Chair of the Daycare Trust: "Women have entered the labour market in droves in the last thirty years, but the workplace has changed very little in that time and the growth in childcare... has not nearly caught up with increasing levels of women working in the labour market. There is now one childcare place for every five children under the age of eight, and childcare is very much a lottery."

Dr Susan Greenfield: "I think what we’re going to see in 2020, in the next few decades, is a great dismantling of what it means to be a parent, what it means to have children. What it means to have that life narrative of watching a child grow, because I think we’ll be able to compartmentalise much more the different factors that at the moment we call motherhood, or childhood and so on."

Mike McClure, Consultant Psychiatrist: "I think the increase in the men’s movements and the plea that they’re making and the way in which they’re doing it indicates that there is some underlying resentment that society has forgotten them, that society undervalues them, and I think we’re going to see an increasing demonstration from them..."

"I think that there’s a minority of men who just don’t fit into society in one way or another, possibly they don’t fit into the new feminised labour market, they can’t adapt sufficiently, so they’re really misfits in this modern society... The more men you have who find it hard to fit into this society, the more likely it is that there will be an increase in violence, and in large measure, that violence will be directed against women."

RAPUNSEL - learning programming as a first language

I'm at ISEA in Helsinki, where Mary Flanagan and Ken Perlin are presenting RAPUNSEL, a project where they're getting 11-13 year old girls keen on computers by - in collaboration with girls in the age group - designing a system where the kids program animated characters to choreograph a dance. It looks like a great project, and the manifesto has some excellent points:

If you're a kid, showing and telling things to the smart pets that you share with your friends is very different from writing Java, Python or Logo. It is much more powerful, because it builds on innate social and perceptual skills.

It is programming as a first language.

During the talk, Mary Flanagan pointed out that while middle school girls are as interested in and as good at technology as their male peers, only 7% of programmers in the US are women. That's why this project is targeting girls at this age. She's optimistic that games are a way to engage girls in programming, and she quoted statistics that apparently show that women account for 43% of all computer gamers in 2004 (39% in 2003), that half of all game purchases are by women and that 1/3 of Everquest players are women.

So far, they've been developing believable, animated characters that the girls actually like (the girls they're working with have very clear ideas of what they like and don't like) and they're setting up a system where kids actually program the behaviours of the characters. It looks a little like the Sims, but you can control the characters. Sounds like a great idea, and something that many kids would find interesting and empowering.

They've found a vast variety in taste among the girls, but generally, they want to fight. All of the kids in this study say Grandtheftauto is their favourite game. They don't always do what you'd expect them to do with the game - one girl just likes driving in Grandtheftauto, for instance. But still, girls liking violent games and killer robots (these girls don't like cute robots) is not what Brenda Laurel found in her work with girls and games. It changed a lot, though, from time to time, and also the girls' answers depend on whether they're alone, whether there are boys present, who's interviewing them... There's also a difference between the two groups of girls - I don't know areas of Manhattan so can't remember where, but in one group half the girls are living in shelters, in the other they're better off.

Mary also said that they're working to encourage social program. She said many studies have shown that peer programming is popular with girls but this is not being used in instruction - schools privilege individual work. I wasn't aware of that, and I'd love to know whether readers here have that impression too - do women prefer peer programming? Are you aware of work on this?

Gender use of blogs: more alike than different

From David Huffaker's M.A. thesis, Gender Similarities and Differences in Online Identity and Language Use among Teenage Bloggers:

Contrary to prediction, the results indicate that there are more gender similarities than differences in blog use.

Women less competitive?

From a paper entitled Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences, published in the August 2003 MIT Quarterly Journal of Economics:

...women may be less effective than men in competitive environments, even if they are able to perform similarly in noncompetitive environments. In a laboratory experiment we observe, as we increase the competitiveness of the environment, a significant increase in performance for men, but not for women. This results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments, while there is no gap when participants are paid accornding to piece rate. This effect is strong when women have to compete against men than in single-sex competitive environments.

Marginal Revolution posts about the paper, in Politically Incorrect Paper of the Month, v.2:

What do we make of all this? First, we have an additional explanation for wage differences between men and women, especially at the highest levels where competition for promotion is a tournament. Second, we have added support for single-sex education and perhaps even single-sex firms (Astute readers will recall what happened to the women on The Apprentice before and after the groups were mixed).

be an expert!

Did you know an individual can sign up as a potential expert advisor to the EU's research programs? You register your field, what you'd be willing to do (review proposals, monitor existing programs, etc) and if they need someone in your area they might contact you. The workload would be up to 10 days a year with pay and expenses and trips to Brussels. I imagine it'd be a useful way of beginning to understand how the Byzantine funding of EU research works, and, since they're trying to have an even gender balance in their committees, they're especially encouraging women to apply. Although they'll mostly want people within the EU, they're also potentially interested in people from outside the region, and a lot of their research programs have to do with technology. I signed up. Can't hurt. And they even assure you that if you're asked to do it but don't have time when it comes down to it, you can politely refuse.

I was quite surprised, actually, that this is how expert advisors are selected. I had imagined an old boys' club where you had to network your way in through numerous back doors. And so it turns out that no, you just sign up. That's all. You just have to apply.

Are there other places we should be signing up so we become visible?

Gender in the Blogosphere

Clancy Ratliff has posted an online version of her recent presentation "Whose Voices Get Heard? Gender Politics in the Blogosphere."

Her key research question was "What do women bloggers experience in the blogging community as they define it, and how well are they represented in the most widely-read and linked-to weblogs?"

I wanted to wait to blog it until I had a chance to read it more thoroughly and comment on it, but I'm too sick to do that right now, and I wanted to get it out there. (I did skim it, and noted that while she provides pseudonyms for her respondents (drawn from BlogSisters), it doesn't take a master Googler to match up the pseudonyms with the real-world posts they've written...)

Defining and Categorizing Weblogs

For a while, i've been trying to put my head around categorizing blogs and journals. My coarse attempt to encourage debate on the identity of bloggers resulted in a heated discussion over the validity of my assumption that blogs and journals are different. Of course, while folks here didn't buy the difference between bloggers and journalers, i read as a journaler objected to being labeled a blogger.

Plotting with Liz, we realized that a larger conversation must emerge about the categorization of blogs - why categorize? How?

Plot 1: Bring the interested Etech folks together to have an interesting conversation. Although i realize that this will be dominated by a particular kind of blogger, hopefully we can get folks thinking outside of the box for a bit.

Plot 2: Hold a workshop at a conference where we can attract a more diverse segment of bloggers/journalers.

Plot 3: Do a bit of ethnography as necessary

Plot 4: Publish our findings.

Since folks here are obviously interested in this discussion, we'd like to encourage you to engage with us on this venture. Join us at Etech if this is feasible for you!

Gadgets or communication tools?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project issued a report on the Consumption of Information Goods and Services in the United States yesterday. The report concludes that "There is a trendsetting technology elite in the U.S. who chart the course for the use of information goods and services." Within this elite group of techies, "wired women like tools to communicate, not gadgets to show off."

Techie women are more likely than techie men to say that it would be very hard to give up email, by a 52% to 44% margin. By contrast, when asked whether it would be very hard to do without the Internet, 49% of techie women say this, while 60% of their male counterparts do. For phone calling, cell or wireline, there are some cross currents. Fully 70% of tech women said it would be very hard to do without a telephone compared with 56% of tech men. For cell phones, half of tech men say it would be very hard to do without one while 46% of tech women said this. Techie men and techie women are about as likely to have cells phones (82% and 81%, respectively). Techie women are less likely to have the hardware gadgets that one might clip to the belt (excepting cell phones), than techie men. One-quarter of techie men have pagers, versus 16% of techie women, and about one-third (31%) of techie men have PDAs compared to 15% of their female counterparts.