Infographic | Women Who Tech

Infographic | Women Who Tech.

A friend shared this with me on Facebook and I think some of the numbers are quite interesting.

It is very focused on Engineering, Computer Science, and Entrepreneurial endeavors. I would be interested in seeing what the numbers look like for women in arts and technology and digital design as I think these are important sectors that are somewhat neglected when we talk about women in STEM. Perhaps it is because these other areas already have substantial female participation? Either way, we should be careful to not devalue these areas as well. For example, other than entrepreneurs, these numbers don’t really represent the number of amazing women we have in our Emerging Media and Communication programs at UTD.

Not a joke: Tampon-shaped USB flash drives.

 FLASH.DRIVE – Meninos Store.

When the ad for this popped up on my Facebook news feed, I didn’t hesitate before clicking it. It may be the first ad I have ever followed from Facebook.  I can’t specifically remember ever doing that before. But this one caught my attention and I clicked without thinking, fully expecting it to be a joke. It seems like the kind of thing ThinkGeek would offer on April 1st. Turns out, it’s real. I seriously don’t know what to think about the Tampon-shaped USB drive (with different sizes coded according to heaviness of “flow”). I really need more time to ruminate on it but I felt it warranted immediate blogging to see what other people thought.

On one hand, based on cultural discomfort with anything related to menstruation, I’d guess that this is probably pretty secure when left unattended in one’s bag. Nobody’s going to steal what they think is a tampon. On the other hand…I’m having incoherent thoughts about cyborgs, hyper-personal data, the abject, negative associations with transvaginal ultrasounds…I’m distracted by the image of the “tampon” in the USB drive, suggesting a parallel between a USB port and a vagina…I’m imagining oppositional uses of it where its very existence causes discomfort in the people around me…I’m also wondering why an 8gb flash drive, which one can get for less than $20 at Fry’s, costs $55 when it is in encased in a “feminine hygiene product” shaped shell? Who will buy it? All of these jumbled thoughts are happening pretty much at once. If I ever get them sorted out, I’ll get back to you.

According to the product manufacturer, Meninos,

“Our design is aimed at people with modern and bold lifestyle, which enjoy innovation and cultivate the forever young spirit. Funny, geek, vintage, technological…”

So I guess this falls under the umbrella of “funny” and “technological”? I don’t know what the equivalent male product would be to turn into a flash drive, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be as “funny.”

Also, I wonder what about my Facebook profile suggested that I would be interested in this product? As I indicated above, I’m not sure I’ve ever followed an ad link from Facebook before this, which indicates they are usually pretty far from the mark.

While I don’t foresee myself buying the tampon usb drive any time soon, I have to admit that considering its existence is an interesting intellectual challenge. I don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head. Maybe both?

re-blog: The Digital (Gender) Divide: Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog (and a Facebook Profile) – Megan Garber – Technology – The Atlantic

The Digital (Gender) Divide: Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog (and a Facebook Profile) – Megan Garber – Technology – The Atlantic.

Megan Garber relates Nielsen findings that suggest women spend more time online than men.

Is there a silver lining to brogrammer culture?

If you are unfamiliar with the term brogrammer, read Tasneem Raja’s piece at Mother Jones. Actually, read it even if you already know all about them: “Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem | Mother Jones.

Raja’s overview of the “brogrammer,” anchored in a critique of Matt Van Horn’s SXSW talk, provides some insight into the recent rise of this term.

I’m happy to say that I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a “brogrammer” in the wild. When I raised the term with my students, they seemed to ridicule and reject the idea without missing a beat. Nonetheless the term makes me uneasy. It seems that start-up or programming spaces that embrace this ethos are regressing into what Raja rightly terms “testosterone-fueled boneheadedness.” Raja frames the brogramming trend as perhaps something that hapless men without Human Resources guidance fumble into. That seems to be letting them off the hook too easily.

I would perhaps push Raja’s suggestion further and argue that the intent to foster and propagate brogrammer culture is hostile to women.  Not only is it demeaning to the women who are objectified by brogrammer tactics, it is alienating to the women who may need to share these spaces. It is hard to believe that any of these “brogrammers” could be completely clueless about the impacts of their behavior.

I suspect that the extreme hypermasculinity of the “brogrammer” is relatively scarce when they are considered as part of larger programming populations. However, the inanity and problematic gender politics of the brogrammer may also help focus attention on the often more subtle ways in which women are made to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome in male-dominated spaces. Raja outlines a few statistics on the issue of female programmers and the number of women heading up start ups, all of which she uses to suggest that the imbalance of women in programming and start ups is a larger problem than the brogrammer.

So while the brogrammer is a shudder-inducing term, the very thought of which makes me grind my teeth, his presence may have the potential to open up wider conversations about gender in tech spaces that tend to be male-dominated. And that is a conversation worth having.

Blinking Dresses and Robot Girls in Perfume’s Spring of Life video

Perfume 「Spring of Life」 (Teaser) – YouTube.

H/T to the Craftzine blog

This is a teaser trailer for a new song from the Japanese pop group, Perfume.

I agree with Brooklynn at Craft. This color changing dress is indeed cool. As is the song. What I find most interesting, however, is that the dress is placed on bodies that are robotic and puppet-like. So far the characters are shown in fairly passive positions, not doing much more than the Geminoid-F mannequin android about which Janet M. blogged at Fashioning Circuits last month.

It is unclear whether there will be a longer video released with the song. From this brief teaser it would seem that the portrayal of cyborg-femininity is one that is passive and devoid of power. The beats are played out in luminescence across a body that cannot even meet the gaze of the camera.

Can’t we do better than fantasies of pretty, puppet-like women in flashing dresses? To what end should a dress blink? And how can we leverage the electrified garment to challenge mainstream representations of passive femininity?

Cross-posted at Fashioning Circuits.

Blog post of interest: Siri: Intersections of Gender, Economy, and Technology » Cyborgology

Siri: Intersections of Gender, Economy, and Technology » Cyborgology.

Yes, yes, and yes. Jenny Davis’ analysis of the gendering of Siri is spot on and of definite interest to Spiral Dance readers. Of particular interest is the comparison between the prominence of sexual references to Siri in the U.S. in comparison to Europe, where Siri has a masculine voice.

Whose Idea of Bliss?

If you haven’t heard the news, HTC has tapped deep into the female psyche to develop a phone geared toward women: the HTC Bliss, due in September 2011. The host of a CNETtv show casually describes the Bliss in their story lead-in as “the first phone for women” [1]. Silly me, I’ve had a mobile phone for years, never realizing that I was transgressing gender norms by doing so.

Upon hearing news of the Bliss a few months ago, I was immediately reminded of an experience I had while preparing to move into my first apartment. Recognizing that I would need some basic household tools, I added a tool kit to my shopping list. When out and about, I was dismayed to find special tool kits developed for, and directed at, women. The tools were smaller and more expensive than those included in your run-of-the-mill tool kit. And they were pink.

Reading of Interest: Female Inventors from the 19th Century

 

MIT Press Journals – From the Archives Fridays.

In their new feature, “From the Archive Friday,” MIT Press shares this article by B. Zorina Khan from Autumn 2000 issue of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History: “Not for Ornament: Patenting Activity by Nineteenth-Century Women Inventors.”

Free access for one week. I look forward to reading it!

Hotties in the Library: YouTube’s Response to Alexandra Wallace’s Cleavage

02:52. That is all the time it takes for UCLA political science major Alexandra Wallace to alienate and offend, expose her own ignorance, and pretty much put an end to her prestigious UCLA education. Wallace accomplishes all of this in her video “Asians in the Library,” initially posted to YouTube on March 11, 2011. The video is commonly labeled a “racist rant” which suggests that she turned on her webcam and, in the heat of the moment, let the hate flow. However, there is clear evidence that someone took the time to edit the video and an article from The Sacramento Bee quotes her father as saying that she was planning to purchase a domain name to support the video’s distribution [1]. While this does not mean that the video isn’t technically a rant, it is important to recognize that this was not the rash outburst of a young woman with no sense of how the internet and publicity operate. Wallace did not assume she was safely anonymous among the noise of the Internet. Rather, if her father is to be believed, she sought publicity and intended to use the video to launch her career. In my opinion, the evidence of forethought and planning makes the video even more egregious.

What she clearly did not plan was the overwhelmingly negative response. Dreaming of a career as a video blogger, she expected neither death threats, nor the exposure of her personal information, nor to be ostracized on campus. Her official apology, printed in The Daily Bruin on March 14, indicates that if she could take the video back, she would. Questions of her sincerity aside, it is clear that the Internet remains unsatisfied. New video responses continue to appear on YouTube almost three weeks after her official apology.

As a researcher who is writing about viral structures, and an educator in a program in Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas, I have been watching the debacle with interest. The video provides a valuable opening to discuss ongoing issues of racism and the insufficiency of strategies of “color blindness” in U.S. culture. It is also a concrete lesson on the uncontrollable and long term consequences of our online actions.

But there is one more lesson to be gleaned from the video and the responses to it. What follows is in no way intended to condone Wallace’s ideas, nor her actions. I find her ignorant and offensive. However, I do feel compelled to focus the discussion here, if just for a very brief moment.

If Typists Were Robots…Typists, Robots, and Mina Harker

Note her feminine robot eyebrows. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

According to Friedrich Kittler, typists may as well have been robots: