Female Readership: Why It's So Low, and How Can We Change That?
by Derek Wilson on September 2, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Dell
You know what? We are severely lacking in female perspective here at AnandTech.
Yes we do have some female readers. But we don't have as many as we would like, and no we do not believe the stuff we talk about here is inherently gender biased. While we do provide information that we believe is as accurate and informative as we can, perhaps there is a reason we don't have as many women who are regulars here.
Women are a big part of computing from the ground up. And we aren't just talking about today: look all the way back to the beginning of computational logic and the invention of the transistor and you will find women integral in evolution of all the technology we talk about here. There is no fundamental reason women shouldn't be interested in our articles as both women and men are interested in: getting the most value out of their purchases, living a full and fulfilled life by taking advantage of technology, and understanding why they should care about technology and the issues surrounding it in today's world.
So why is it that our readership is so hugely male?
I utterly reject the idea that women can't understand the material we cover. I happen to know women who are much more intelligent than myself and could either design hardware or code circles around me. While my pride and ego could still probably use a little adjustment, I'm not so diluted as to believe that gender, race or any other broad genetic stoke makes it so that people just can't understand technology or computing.
Again, if it isn't a question of applicability or capability, then why don't more women read our articles?
I think there are a few factors at work: our reliance on a broad knowledge base as a prerequisite to understanding our articles, societal pressures and preconditioning, and the presentation of the material.
Despite the fact that there is no inherent difference that makes women less able to know the math and science behind the hardware we talk about, it is a fact that fewer women currently have the background required to gain any useful information from some of our more technical articles. I'm going to go ahead and point a finger at our failing effort at education in this country and put a good amount of burden there. Partly because I think it's absolutely true and partly because I'm human and tend toward shifting some of the blame away from myself where possible :-)
While we do try to use analogies, metaphors and other tools to relate complicated subject matter in an understandable way, we just can't go back to the beginning for every article and explain everything from the ground up. That would make every article like 2000% longer and would be incredibly boring to our core audience of people who already know many of the basics.
I am looking into trying to write a series of introductions to topics like 3D graphics, CPU architecture, etc. so that we have references we can point people back to and to provide more people with easy access to the information that will help keep their eyes from glazing over when they read our latest GPU architecture article. I'm not sure how much interest there is in this right now, so let me know if you think this is a good or bad idea. It takes a lot of work to put together primers like this, especially if I want to do them well and in as accessible a manner as possible.
Beyond education, we have to look at our culture and society. I'm not a big fan of group identity in any form, but whether we like it or not our culture does play a role in who we are. I'd say that culture has a much larger impact than many genetic properties because it is our society that takes these properties and starts turning them into things they are not.
That doesn't mean that we aren't different and that genetics don't play a role in how we think, how we behave, and who we are. Genetics and environment both have parts to play, but misunderstanding things and then amplifying those misunderstandings causes huge problems.
Some of the reason more women may not be involved in our field is cultural. Like it or not, some places in our country still push men and women in to different roles regardless of the individual's talents and desires. But it goes beyond that. It is a self feeding cycle. Fewer women than men are in technology, and because of this fewer women than might other wise try aren't interested in exploring the field.
Additionally, when we combine this issue with education, it gets even worse. While there is no difference in the potential mental capability of men and women, genetics does seem to play a role in the way people best learn things (even if we don't completely understand that role). Our educational system does not do a good job at all of offering different teaching styles to people who learn in different ways. For whatever reason, math and sciences tend to be taught in ways that are more accessible to men than women. When this causes women to perform less well in general or be less interested in pursuing certain subjects, it tends to be taken out of context in our culture to mean that women aren't as able as men in this area. Which is ridiculous.
It all comes down to our last point: presentation. We need to do a better job of reaching women by refining our approach to presenting the material. Just like in schools, we need to recognize that our audience should not be people who already sort of get what we are talking about but everyone who could potentially want to understand the point of what we are saying. We need to start exploring alternate structures for our articles and alternate types of tests and demonstrations to show the things that we already know both men and women want.
We need to do a better job of showing where the value is in technology and not just that something is a better value than something else, but whether that increase in value is worth the money. We must demonstrate the impact technology can have on people of all interests (rather than just a highly framerate sensitive gamer audience). We have got to help everyone understand why they should care about technology and all the societal and political issues that surround it, because cultivating a desire for knowledge by showing a personal impact is a huge part of what motivates people to learn more about any given subject.
That last bit is key: we need to reach out and show people how much better their lives can be when computers and technology are properly used in order to get them interested in better understanding the current and future capabilities of hardware and technology.
Luckily this is also a sort of differential equation: the more people we get interested in technology, the more people will want to understand it. The more people understand technology, the more they'll be able to gain from reading our articles. And this will hopefully be good for everyone.
But ... I'm not a woman, and we don't have any on staff. Of course, we all know women. We need to start reaching out more and trying to figure out what they want to know about and how we can relate technology and hardware architecture back to that. How do they desire technology to impact their lives. How do we integrate that into what we write about at AnandTech.
So we've identified a problem. Sometimes this is the hardest part (and some times it is not). We know that we need to reach out in different ways to present our articles as relevant not only to women, but to all people with varied interest. But we need to know how.
And we would love your feedback. We need input. We need input from everyone, not just women (though I would love to see a lot of women respond). While it is easy to see the statistics with women, we really want to reach everyone. We need to show everyone why computers and technology are more important than just as ego boosters for people who build the biggest baddest and fastest machine.
The current state and the future of technology will have a huge impact on every life on this planet. The lifestyle and activities the hardware we write about enable are universally engaging. Getting people excited about that and making the science behind the technology interesting and accessible to everyone is where we want to go.
And the best place to go for understanding is to the source. Let us know what helps you learn. Should we add more visuals, audio or other media? Do we need to approach things in ways that aren't just top-down? What kinds of analogies and metaphors really help understanding? What does interest you about technology? What needs to be made easier in your life?
Answers to these questions will go a long way to helping us address the issues we know we have in reaching out to people who could and would be interested in computer hardware but haven't yet had the interest or the tools to start learning about it. We're listening, let us know what you think.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
122 Comments
View All Comments
DanD85 - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
Come on! I have to say that most gender-related debate sucks and this one doesn't look any better.About the pinky thingy. I don't think it's a joke at all. Why so serious? Why don't you go look at those women's things to see what is the main color scheme? What's wrong with pink? As most women I know like pink and I see no problem with that. You made it like pink degrade your intelligent and that really pissed me off.
As I've said you have to take the majority into consideration. There's always exceptions but that doesn't represent the big picture. Of course there're smart, blonde, long-legged, tech-savvy women out there. But it's pretty rare to find one. So can you please put this stupid argument to rest and start making AT a better place for tech-savvy or geeks to educate themselves. That should be a better thing to do rather than wasting time for this.
Good day to you all,
Choppedliver - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
I had to chime in here... this is the dumbest article ever written on Anandtech.If a site on women's shoes wanted to get me to read it, they would have to write computer geek stuff. Focus on your target material, and don't worry about whether the people reading it have a f'in penis or vagina. Jesus Man is this April Fools day?
Some stuff is naturally more appealing to a certain gender. You aren't going to change that, and you shouldn't be trying. Nor should you be putting the blame on anyone or anything. It's just the way it is.
God this made my stomach turn. The death of Anandtech is near. I have been a reader for as long as I can remember and now I think it's time to look somewhere else.
Choppedliver - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
I had to chime in here... this is the dumbest article ever written on Anandtech.If a site on women's shoes wanted to get me to read it, they would have to write computer geek stuff. Focus on your target material, and don't worry about whether the people reading it have a f'in penis or vagina. Jesus Man is this April Fools day?
Some stuff is naturally more appealing to a certain gender. You aren't going to change that, and you shouldn't be trying. Nor should you be putting the blame on anyone or anything. It's just the way it is.
God this made my stomach turn. The death of Anandtech is near. I have been a reader for as long as I can remember and now I think it's time to look somewhere else.
Justin Case - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Fire the guy doing camera reviews, hire the first woman you come across. You'll instantly inject a feminine POV into the site and the articles can't possibly be any worse.contra26 - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
1) I am a girl. I think computers and hardware are really cool. I want an X58 mobo soon. Software and chat rooms are boring.2) I work as a LAN admin for a civil engineering firm. It is very competitive and mostly male. They are always trying to bash each other with numbers and lame stats. That same thing happens on tech boards all the time. I find it pointless and stop paying attention to them.
3) Every time a guy realizes I can put together a computer, they are VERY surprised. I am a blonde haired, blue-eyed skinny woman in her 20's, (and married to a fantastic programmer.) Guys rule out automatically that I can build anything hands-on, based on my appearance only. It happens ALL THE TIME.
4) Some men feel threatened by my knowledge (I have fixed PCs for at least 5 years pro, many more before then) and then they try to throw cpu die sizes at me and fsb speeds or whatever, even though it is useless info. If I don't counter right away, they puff up. Girls, try buying a motherboard at a computer show.
5) I am told too many times how my predecessors were these male jerks who just showed off all the time and had a napoleon complex over their users. So now I have come to free them. :) And my users can ask me anything they want about how to use their computers. If I don't know an answer, it's OK. I will find it. And I WONT be embarrased that I don't know. And they won't be embarassed either. Ask all 2000+ newbie users I have served (I can't spell right now.)
LAY OFF THE PINK JOKES. PINK ISN'T THAT GREAT.
MOD YOUR FORUMS FROM THE FLAMERS. OVER-COMPETITION SCARES AWAY NEWBIES OF BOTH GENDERS.
STAY HIGHLY TECHNICAL. THE REST WILL WORK OUT.
0roo0roo - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
sounds like someone has a chip on their shoulder and falls back on stereotypes.Holly - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
I don't know your situation, but from my experiences, IT crowd around acts different way you interpret it.Mostly, IT people are all more or less geeks and they don't care about gender slightest bit. They don't try to spam you with informations they hope you don't know... They just acknowledge you as one of their own kind and speak with you using their language.
I can understand you consider informations like cpu die size or FSB speed useless. Back in the days I was newbie in IT, I didn't care about such informations as well... But inevitably it came with time, just because these data are pretty important even if they don't look like that.
No doubt you can find idiots just trying to blow you off (mostly because you are young and blonde), but I sincerely doubt it would be majority of the crowd.
Anyway keep up the good work you (prolly) do. World of IT isn't male restricted territory, it's just male-friendly territory.
kleinwl - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
If you really want to make your site a little more valuable, you could start guides about all the cool stuff that is possible due to technology and/or troubleshooting and/or upgrades.For example, I just started using Acronis True Image. I swapped out a 160GB HDD for a 500GB after making a new image. No reinstallation of programs, no driver conflicts, no hastle. 17 min and it's done. pop in the new drive and it's like my old computer (everything in the same place/same settings) except I have an additional 340GB of space.
Another example, recording music. I hooked up a turntable output to my X-Fi sound card and started recording my old records. Download a hiss/pop cleaner and washed the files. Now I have MP3s of all my vinyl records.
A third example. Want to transfer all those old VHS tapes (that no one watches) to DVD or even HDD copies? Hook up an ATI VIVO card to your pc, connect the VHS output to the VIVO input and use NERO to record. RIP it to DVD and you're done.
Fourth example. Host your own website. Use DynDNS to translate your dynamic IP address to a static. Register a domain and use APACHE to host the website... all in the comfort of your own home. Want a few nanny cams? Hook those up as well, and watch your nanny from your work computer.
So on and so forth. There is so many things that a PC can do, very few people using their full capability. Put out a few how to guides and this site will be even more interesting.
justniz - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
As the stereotype goes, women for whatever reason generally choose not to be interested in engineering as much as men are. Thats their choice so I dont see that anyone need to do anything to 'address' that.To argue from the opposite direction, I don't see any websites for interests that are usually considered to be primarily feminine attempting to change in order to attract more males.
I also think its patronising and doesn't help anyone to modify an already good website in order to to fit-in with whatever stereotypical idea of what all women are interested in actually is.
More pink cellphone reviews?...I think not...
Gannon - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
One part of the problem is that the language itself comes from a male perspective. It is also an issue as well as not having any female editors with insights into what women like/dont like, if I were you I would put out a job position for a female editor/reviewers, etc that understand women, not just the geeky ones but the illiterate ones as well.The subject itself (and even the aesthetics of the site, kind fo grey, dry and technical) though is part of the reason women avoid sites like anand. It screams technology is boring and a lot of women don't like it particularly unless it adds value (cell phone, myspace, facebook, etc)
They use tech as tools, it's not an interest in and of itself. Most people who come here have a natural interest in technology and keeping up to date for business or other reasons.
--
Another problem is the language that is used, sekaing in terms of what guys want to hear i.e. anand is all about the "dry" (to mayn women) details, the enthusiasm about hardware, engineering, etc.
But it doesn't cover things like:
-Usability
-Simplicity (does this make my life simpler, give me more time, or is it another time synch?)
-Aesthetics (is it sexy, will it go with xx, yy in my house, etc?)
-Music (yes women like music)
-Cooking /cleaning (yes women do a lot of cleaning, therefore, how can tech be used to help this problem!?)
-Time management (kids, school, etc)
-Reviewing software and websites related to women's interests (i.e. software with 3D models that allow you to view clothing/fashion, etc)
And that's just a start! If I were you I would be looking at successful sites that draw women in, one thing I've noticed about women sites is that the women themselves put 'themselves' out there, many of them don't hide behind screen names and put their videos online for all to see.
See http://www.hotforwords.com/">http://www.hotforwords.com/ for example