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.
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deruberhanyok - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
My point, in case anyone misses it, is this:Keep doing what was done to make Anandtech a great tech website. The more you say "we have this great article that will be very informative and useful to readers" and don't ever post that article, the less interested ANYONE will be in reading AT.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
what articles have we mentioned that haven't come out yet -- let me know and i'll look into it. we do try and avoid promising things ... though sometimes i know i get excited about what i'm working on and want to share it.i do apologize if i've slipped an article i talked about and didn't update everyone ... i'll try and be better about that in the future. but definitely tell me what you are waiting for and i'll try and give you guys an update.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
There was the microATX roundup from hell that we got 1 or 2 segments of and no more. Someone (might have been you) did an article on upgrading a couple of home computers and said more was coming later, but I never saw that. There was the Ubuntu article from earlier this year that I have not seen.deruberhanyok - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Derek,1) P45 roundup (last said to be mid-july)
2) The integrated video chipset roundup (780G, GF8200, etc, last said to be early July)
My source for the above two is a post from AT here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...
3) 790GX review/roundup
The latest post in the comments to the preview says it is still coming, though that's the first word we've had of it since the article was posted nearly a month ago. Given the above two articles' limbo status and the P35 roundup / integrated video article from 2007 that never appeared I'm not holding my breath.
Laura Wilson - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
i'm a chick. *hoists vagina over head to prove it* and there are two obvious reasons for people to overlook my comment post: 1. i'm the wife of the blog poster, and 2. i've written a couple of articles for anandtech in the past. having gotten that out of the way...my mind is in shock from some of the responses this blog posting has received. you've got to be kidding me, some of you honestly think that "pinking" up the design of the site will draw in the ladies? i'd have to guess the people saying that haven't found that lucky someone to share their lives with yet. impressive, though, how you can reduce something you know nothing about to a color scheme problem. do YOU actually understand and read the articles here or did you bumble over from the forums in a haze of being lost in the internet, refusing to pull over and ask for directions??
whether or not female readers at anandtech are being represented, they are often being nudged out in the industry as a whole. when the latest nvidia card hits the shelves with a half-naked fairy plastered across the front, the sellers have already chosen their market. don't get me wrong, if it will make playing black and white a more seamless task i have nothing against cluttering up my motherboard with it. but that's not always going to be the case with pre-gender-designated technology or with other women.
in my personal experience, the flaw in the educational system was not the fault of the professors, but of the students. as i worked up the ranks of mechanical engineering, i found the average female presence per classroom went down as the course numbers went up, and the people who made my life the hardest were the many males in the classroom. several of them tried to make me feel ridiculous for gathering members to do group homework, others acted like a pair of boobs clearly made me a viewing object and not a colleague, one of them even tried to rape me! after giving up on the major altogether, i wandered over to the math department and found all of the chewed up, spat out women. and they were significantly more accepting of their classmates after the trauma of trying to make engineering work. some of you posting here sound so much like the guys from solids. it's kind of horrifying.
as for how the site can draw more women... i agree that foundation articles and female writers would be an excellent start. i appreciate people who took this posting seriously and for what it is: a query for reasonable suggestions. it's never a bad thing to include more readers, and the great difficulty will be not losing current loyal readers to the changes. but sadly, right now it seems the reason women don't feel so welcome on sites like this one is staring us in the face on this comment list.
TechFarmer - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Quoting Derek Wilson: "I happen to know women who are much more intelligent than myself"I think that sentence proves it! :)
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But if you're authoring an article for AnandTech, you should know better (unless you were trying to prove a point - then well done!) I think it should be ". . .women who are much more intelligent than I (am intelligent)."
"Allow myself to introduce. . . myself." -Austin Powers
persimmon - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
derek, dear,no doubt you are an intelligent man, educated and open-minded - i agree with some others here that you need not convince us.
i would agree with many of the comments that this not-enough-women concern is a non-issue. yes, this is a great opportunity to show us that you are aware of disparity.
but seconds to those who urged you to keep doing what you do best, focusing on hardware at (i'm not a very regular reader) whatever levels and breadth typify this site.
the web is a medium slightly different than print - those who want/need to read what you write will come, and those who find it lacking will leave. it is easy for new readers to find you, and easy for olds to leave. regardless of how you count them, i think it's important to ask yourself _why_ you are worried about your present and target demographics.
i am, in relation to my peers, a geeky girl. i'm the one they come to when they hear clicking, whirring noises from their pc (uh oh), or call up and say "something's wrong with my computer!!!" (great, but could you possibly be more specific?) i have arrived at AT pages often in my researching and troubleshooting efforts, but rarely check in as part of my regular reading. would i call personal computing technology a hobby? yes. i've just spent weeks agonizing over which CPU and heatsink to get, and i cared about every little hertz, watt, and decibel that i read in reviews. i ended up choosing a green solution that will work for me, though not without often saying to myself "you're not going to notice the difference in real life" over and over. but hey, some folks will. perhaps unlike some of the women that commenters have mentioned, i do care about the how and why and endless specifications that go on, to best make an informed decision that will serve me today and in the future. at least, i cared in the last three months. i've just finished my build, and as much as loved it, it's time to enjoy the fruits of my learning. (er.. right after some burn-in time, of course)
my geekiness comes and goes, as does the need for it to matter in my life. usually that need coincides with my upgrade cycles and/or hardware/software failures. i think this is a demographic you might need to consider - many people are not consistent and constant in their needs. when the need comes, i am glad that anandtech is the way it is - the last thing the web needs is more generalized sites chock full of brief and shallow information - generalized ostensibly to appeal to the widest possible audience.
in my geeky periods, i learn a lot about the current state of things, as well as spend some time reconstructing what was happening while i was away. i wholeheartedly support articles of historical/basics focus, as this definitely an area in which so much changes so quickly, including the basics. sound advice during my last upgrade cycle doesn't cut it anymore.
whether or not this need for both specific and general knowledg arises because i am male or female is, i believe, a moot point. it has nothing to do with my level of education or my interests or how i was socialized to view tech. i am both obsessed with level 2 cache and totally unconcerned with it, within the span of a week. i haven't read enough articles to know whether worries about playing tech advocate on a social level is a regular feature here on AT. if so, i will probably stumble upon you again when i'm looking for views on women and technology. it's an ongoing question with many answers.
but in the meantime, serve the needs of those readers you do have - male and female alike. by the miracle of the search engine, potential readers who also have a need for what you have to share will find their way to you, when do what you do best. if you start tailoring articles to appeal to women (can you possibly tailor to such a *varied* audience without reducing the focus of your work?), my guess is that women will not magically flock.
keep up the good work - see you at the next upgrade!
(i've not touched on what i think might account for underrepresentation of women in the field and the overgeneralization of women not liking or caring about tech - but i would like to share the last time that really got my goat... read on if i haven't bored you to tears yet.
years ago, my work pc sputtered and died during term papers season. a basic run-through revealing nothing obvious, i corralled up a friend with a car to take leo (the pc) to the local shop. the tech repeatedly spoke to my male friend instead of me, under the assumption that either it wasn't my computer, or that i wouldn't understand. ironically, my friend had no idea what the tech was telling him. anyway, i left leo overnight for the tech to diagnose and went back to work.
the next day, i got a call to say that the motherboard had gone south, would i approve a replacement, and the cpu fan's starting to go, would i approve that? sure, go ahead, make sure the board has the same features as the current one.
it did, almost. unfortunately he'd replaced the motherboard with an entry-level board which ruined my impending upgrade. to replace the board again would incur a restocking fee so i let it go. what bothered me was his attitude, as if he had already decided certain things about me because i was a girl, such as ... all i would care about the motherboard was that its colour matched my case. yup. he picked the only purple in-stock motherboard to go with my purple anodized lian li case. unfortunately, the case doesn't have a window so it hardly matters.
i want to share this because assumptions are so dangerous - to make assumptions about a person's attitude towards tech because of their gender is closing a mind much more than it is opening one. guy things and girl things are all just things in the end.)
nowayout99 - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
I think a lot of it simply boils down to left brain vs. right brain.The site is dominated by the proverbial tape measure. Stats and benchmarks and stats and stats and benchmarks and 1.21 gigawatt PSU roundup tests only matter so much.
We are now in a world where mid-range products are more than fast enough. So find out what's now relevant. Find other focuses. What new things can we DO with this performance surplus? How can we SAVE money, energy and time with our current systems? What about silencing our PCs? What about green products? How do we build a green PC?
You know the saying. It's not the size that counts. It's how you use it. We're there.
That being said, there are a lot of things that are just socially referred to as "guy things". Be it cars, gadgets, computers, A/V equipment, or whatever. This is a tech site with a geeky premise, and so geeks will visit. It's generally gender-neutral in that regard.
*But* I told the smartest woman I know (teaches physics at a university) about a new sound system I got for the TV room, all she could say was, "but how does it sound?" And that's as honest a question as can be. She understood me but that doesn't mean squat because systems are not all created equal... How does it sound?
It can be done without "alienating" the current audience.
Left brain, meet right brain.
rickl7069 - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
While it may not be politically correct to say it, there actually are differences in intelligence between men and women. On a sliding scale of intelligence, iq, men tend to clump toward one extreme or the other while women tend to be more evenly spread across the spectrum. So, while it is true that there tends to be more men that are genuises, it is also true that there more men that are completely stupid - kind of balances out.Hrel - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
First definetely do the introduction articles; I researched every term and every thing I came across about computers when I was starting high school; instead of doing homework, then later I started working in the field. I have the base, but it took a while. It would make it much easier for people to get interested in this if the base was written out in a few articles. Videos and pictures would definetely be good to include. Second, there have been studies showing that womens brains are less inclined to be able to understand hard logic and reasoning and there-fore it's harder for them to understand math and science; obviously there are exceptions. Just as it's harder for most male's to understand metaphore and indirect logic. If you understand that, and that women run on emotion not logic, it will help in writing articles they may be interested in. Pretty and shiny and socially elevating, more so than bang for buck. That last part is based on most girls I know, so maybe it's not true of most girls in general but I doubt it.