misbehaving.net

BlogOn: The Business of Social Media

UC-Berkeley will be hosting BlogOn: The Business of Social Media. An all-star cast of speakers are coming to talk about blogs, social networks, syndication and whatnot. Basically, it looks like a great gathering for those interested in social media.

Furthermore, they have discounts for bloggers and i'm very psyched to announce that they have scholarships for students and economically-disadvantaged bloggers. I wish more organized events recognized the importance of getting bright minds involved who don't have the economic freedom to usually participate in these conversations.

Gaming the vote

^From Cornell University's Pastimes and Paradigms: GAMES WE PLAY exhibition of antique and contemporary games.

The goal of this board game is to reach the Houses of Parliament, the pinnacle of achievement for the campaign for Woman’s Suffrage. Although designed to be humorous, the images evoke the darker side of the campaign, making reference to police violence against women protesters and the force-feeding of imprisoned hunger strikers.

See also: Panko or Votes for Women

Are there any current examples of purposeful games, or social software, to encourage women's engagement with politics?

A recent report from the UK's Electoral Commission, Gender and political participation, found that while there is no gender gap in election turnout, and women are more likely to be involved in cause-oriented activities such as signing a petition or boycotting products, they are less likely to participate in collective activities like campaigning or joining a political party. It is also often reported that women have a weaker sense of their own ability to make a political difference than men.

What could be done to increase women's activism? We already know that women are generally most interested in local issues, that allowing postal votes increases women's turnout and that the presence of women representatives increases women's interest and activism, and makes them more inclined to agree that "government benefits people like me". Is there anything that could be done online?

The UK has seen the launch of some fantastic e-democracy projects in the last year (iCan, They Work For You, Downing Street Says...) but I wonder how successfully they'll engage women? iCan, for example, has a campaign for fathers' rights but no results for domestic violence, or even childcare. The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill is the busiest debate in Westminster at the moment but hasn't yet attracted any comments on They Work For You.

What would a similar service designed specifically for women and 'women's issues' have to look like? And what would it take to get women using it? Stephen Coleman's analysis of the Womenspeak parliamentary consultation might offer some clues.

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship

"Though women represent nearly half the U.S labor force and more then half of all undergraduates, just 18% of scientists and engineers employed in industry are women and only about 20% of students graduating with majors in engineering, physics, computer science, and similar fields are women." (from Google Blog)

I was always in awe of Anita Borg and her work towards making engineering and computer science female-friendly. Thus, i was super psyched when i found out that Google gave out scholarships to women in tech disciplines in her name. Congratulations to all!

E3 and Women

Gender and Diversity at E3

I was going to fulminate against the whole booth babe thing, E3, male-dominated industries, the use of tits to sell anything, bodies and the game convention of manual manipulation, but sheesh, these pictures just speak for themselves. I've been to many of these conferences and it's the same thing over and over again. (E3, for those who don't know it, is a big annual computer game convention.) (via sylloge)

The privilege to not fight

Pete, the author of the blog entry that i previously critiqued apologized in the thread. I was going to address him in that thread, but i decided that it belonged as a general discussion for all readers here.

In a sexist society, men and women do not have equal voices. Men acquires a level of auto-privilege; they don't have to fight to be heard. Women, on the other hand, are often fighting to be heard or must play into the cultural norms dictated by men in order to have a voice.

Pete argued that he was just trying to express his exasperation. I believe that exasperation must be deconstructed. What does it mean for a privileged individual to express exasperation over issues of marginalization? I mean, we've all thought "wouldn't it be great if inequality just went away?" Goddess knows i've felt more than enough exasperation in my lifetime, including the exasperation over constantly fighting to have a voice and still not being heard or being misunderstood as my voice is translated by normative culture into something unrecognizable.

With privilege comes responsibility. It is my belief that a feminist man has a responsibility to refrain from expressing exasperation over this topic because that expression is a dismissal, that expression is an execution of privilege with continues the power differential. I believe that a feminist man has a responsibility to be hyper-conscious about how he throws his voice around, knowing that his voice has undue power. In other words, i think that a feminist man needs to also take on the burden of fighting that women have inherently.

Disagree. Discuss. I want to hear what people think.

I will speak until the death of gender inequality

My hair curled over a blog entry entitled Again with the "women and blogging" meme (in response to two entries). The tone is insulting, arguing that the topic of women and blogging has been done to death. It is precisely this kind of post that reminds me of how the blogosphere solidifies misogyny and prejudice rather than acknowledging that people are trying to process. Dismissing discussions about gender inequality permits the marginalized subjects to be dismissed.

There is no doubt that blogs can be clustered by gender, class, race and age simply by clustering based on subject or style. Guess what? Most knitting blogs are written by women and women make up the majority of personal blogs are written by women. Recognizing that style and topics are dividing factors, i'd still argue that the difference has more to do with audience relationships. How are people constructing expression for their audience? How are they seeking to attract/manage an audience?

Move away from the blogosphere. How many women do you know that seek to be heard concerning their political opinion ever anyhow? Proportionally fewer. Why? That's a damn fine question. Men do not dominate the political arena; they dominate a certain aspect of the political sphere, and that's often the most vocal. Go to Capitol Hill and you will see many fine women engaging in change. I remember asking my mother why she didn't run for office; she told me that she wouldn't want to put us through the ringer, having our past dredged up.

Marginalized populations have different issues at risk when they voice their opinion. And damn do you have to be strong when you have an audience who feels the need to berate you just because. That's hard for anyone, but imagine how it feels when you look around and feel like you're one of few, when you feel marginalized from the get-go.

Are women more protective of their stories than men? More protective of their voice? Do they have good reason to be? Cause damn it feels shitty to be told that your concerns are written to death.

In The Washington Post (free registration required), I found this article, Human Responses to Technology Scrutinized. The article shows that people tend to anthropomorphize their computers, often seeing them and treating them as they would actual people. Which brings us to this disturbing anecdote:

A German carmaker recalled an automobile with a computerized female voice issuing navigation information -- because many men refused to take directions from "a woman."

Interesting that a super-compressed identity signifier such as a gendered voice can trigger such a strong response.

The Rise of the Mompreneurs

A recent article in Business Week The Rise of the Mompreneurs (free registration required), outlines the ways in which eBay has made it possible for many high-powered women to create businesses for themselves by selling online. The numbers are amazing. More than 430,000 people in the U.S. make a full or part-time living off of eBay, more employees than GE and Proctor & Gamble combined. The most successful businesses are grossing up to $1 million a month. And it turns out that 48% of these business people are women.

As we have seen time and time again, women are looking for a saner work-life balance, and eBay provides the opportunity to manage one's own business from home, on one's own hours, and according to one's own schedule. And some of the very things that "keep women down" in corporate environments, are a boon on eBay:

EBay, experts say, is a welcome, recession-proof option for many women, especially since it makes a virtue of the very traits that are often perceived as weaknesses in Corporate America. Research shows, for example, that women's detail-oriented strengths -- as well as their tendency to bear down and have lunch at their desks -- are impedients to advancement. On eBay, those so-called shortcomings become a competitive advantage, allowing women to provide the kind of high-touch customer service -- the Holy Grail among buyers -- that the big retailers just can't give.

game now includes women

Intel's rereleased the simulation of making your way as an IT manager we wrote about last month, the one with no women. The new release both lets you play a woman and it lets you hire woman. Thank you. Though it would have been even better not to have released a female-less game, Intel's done good by retracting the game and fixing this major flaw once people started complaining. Tore Vesterby has a longer discussion of the new release.

Misbehaving Kinja digest

I've added the entire Misbehaving blogroll (under 'Misbehaving elsewhere') and the Misbehaving authors' sites to a Kinja digest to help keep up with posts by women in technology. If you'd like to suggest a site to add to the digest, email me - gina at misbehaving dot net.

(Full Disclosure: I work at Kinja.)