There are not many female CEOs of companies around. Although women are traditionally underrepresented in technology professions, there were a number of high profile CEOs in the US in recent years. We can think here of Carly Fiorina, formerly of HP, and Anne M. Mulcahy, of Xerox. Now Xerox has entered history books by appointing the first African American female CEO to lead a major US corporation: Ursula Burns. Interestingly enough she is also the first female CEO who succeeded another female CEO.
Burns had a long-term career at Xerox. Burns, who holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University, joined Xerox in 1980 first as a summer intern and then in product development and planning. In 2000, she was named senior vice president, Corporate Strategic Services and in 2007 she became president of Xerox.
Business Week suggests that part of reason that Xerox appointed two female CEOs in a row is Xerox’s commitment to diversity. 30% of Xerox’s executives are women and 22% are minorities. Xerox has a long tradition of affinity networks. Xerox also had a Executive Diversity Council early on. In addition there are leadership programmes that foster diversity and managers are evaluated in their performance reviews on their ability to recruit, retain and promote underrepresented groups. If they fall short of expectations their chances of promotion are diminished and they pay is negatively affected. This shows that diversity programmes do have an impact – even though it might take decades for them to unfold their power.
Historically women were often seen as the reserve army of labour who take men’s jobs in factories and offices while men were at war. In a crisis women’s labour power was deemed important.
A similar thing seems to happen in regards to women’s purchasing power. Often ignored in good times, The Economist claims that marketers realize the importance of women as customers during the recession. In the article entitled ‘Hello, girls’ echoing the iconic ‘Hello, boys’ Wonderbra adverts of the 1990s, it is mentioned that women buy 90% of food and 55% of consumer electronics and in fact most new cars. Women are thus a major force when it comes to purchasing power.
Marti Barletta, who authored ‘Marketing to Women’ points to three reasons why women are the new target market. First, brand loyalty which is apparently higher with women. Second, women are good at spreading the message about products they like. And third, most of the job losses in the States were in male-dominated areas.
The examples of recent campaigns quoted in the article includes Frito-Lay. Frito-Lay is enticing female customers with the slogan ‘Only in a Woman’s World’ to get away from the masculine image that crisps apparently have. McDonalds’ is sponsoring the New York Fashion Week to promote new hot drinks for women.
However the article also mentioned that changing the brand image through associating it with women can have negative effects: when Porsche designed a car for women, this increased sales with women temporarily but many male customers were lost - on the basis that the brand was too feminine.
In relation to technology, Dell seems to get the message. They launched a website called Della, where they sell amongst other devices the Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook explicitly to women. The exterior seems to be a far cry away from the appearance of the Dell laptop I used to have from work. It is available in many colours and patterns. Many of those are designed by artists. Della laptops allow customization and while your netbook might look more artistic, once you open it, it looks as dull as many other Dell computers. Maybe companies need to be a bit more creative in marketing to women – particularly in a recession.
Women’s contributions to the development of technology are often forgotten or written out of history. It is all too easy to forget that women had a significant impact on the development of technologies we use today.
The Ada Lovelace Day is celebrated today by more than 1,600 bloggers who have signed up to blog about her today. We at LadyGeek want to support this initiative and are proud to raise awareness for this exceptional woman.
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) is rightly acclaimed to be one of the first computer programmers. She wrote programmes for a machine - an early mechanical general-purpose computer - envisioned by Charles Babbage. Ada Lovelace was one of the visionaries who anticipated the power that computers can bring that go beyond number-crunching.
Ada Lovelace can be seen as a role model for women in technology and some of today’s role models are mentioned in this article in Computer Weekly.
The current economic crisis has raised many questions in regards to whether it fosters or harms gender inclusivity. Recent reports seem to suggest that it harms rather than helps the diversity and inclusivity agenda. However what can we learn from previous downturns?
The technology industry faced a crisis after the dot.com bubble burst. Sarah Dempsey, whose article ‘The Increasing Technology Divide - Persistent portrayals of maverick masculinity in US marketing’ was interested in what happens to gender inclusivity in times of crisis. She studied advertisements in Wired, the flagship magazine of the technical revolution, in 2000 and 2006.
Prior to the year 2000 the assumption was that the digital revolution is leading to an egalitarian lifestyle where everyone regardless of gender, race or ability could enjoy the newly found freedoms of technology. However by 2006 the industry had gone through the dot.com bust.
Sarah Dempsey’s detailed study of advertising in Wired in 2000 found three portrayals. First, men were seen as the main consumers of technology and women were mainly used as objects. Second, in an attempt to attract a wider audience more ‘Average Joes’ appeared in the adverts. Finally, technology was portrayed as empowering for men and women but the portrayals followed strict gender guidelines. Men were empowered as users of technology though maverick figures that resisted the mainstream. Women were empowered through technology through ‘damsel in distress’ narratives. Here a victimized woman would be rescued by technology.
How did these portrayals change in the year 2006? In the year 2006 the adverts were dominated by nerds and geeks. This supports the ideal of the masculine maverick figures. In contrast to the 2000 adverts, women were less likely to be used as objects. This might be related to the fact that many companies became increasingly aware of stereotypical gender portrayals of women. However the research found that overall, technology adverts were much less inclusive in 2006 than in 2000. Many more adverts were targeted at the white, male consumer. This research indicates that in a crisis, people tend to convert back to mainstream thinking leading to less diverse and inclusive gender portrayals.
This clearly shows that advertising portrayals of men and women engaging with technology have to change. Women need to be seen in active roles as users and creators of technology. We also need to see more variety in the portrayals of men. Instead of just confirming the tired cliché of the masculine maverick, men have to be shown in relevant contemporary situations which allow men with different background to identify with them. The media plays a crucial role in shaping our views of the world and it is therefore crucially important that there are realistic yet aspirational role models for women and indeed men in technology that are displayed in leading magazines like Wired. Particularly in a crisis.
Marketers seem to have finally come around to see that mothers use the Web 2.0. The insightful report called Digital Mom was produced by Razorfish and CafeMom.
The first part of the report is based on a survey with 1,500 mothers who are users of Web 2.0. The report produced some interesting findings:
1. 65% of mums use social networking sites, 56% SMS and 52% game online or via a game console. This is for me the most striking finding showing that gaming is no longer a niche activity for adolescent boys but has gone mainstream.
2. There are also age differences. Moms over 35 are more likely to use the web as an information tool while moms under 35 are more likely to use social network sites. Also women with children over 12 tend to game more (57%) than women with children under 12 (51%).
3. The mothers’ interests go beyond parenting. These women retain many interests. In the last three months the surveyed mothers had researched or purchases fashion items or clothing (40%), food and cooking (31%) and baby/parenting (26%), banking (22%), computer and electronics (21%) and medication/medical condition (20%).
Part 2 is based on an in-depth survey of 1,750 women active in CafeMum.
4. Digitalmoms spent 18.5 hours per week online.
5. These mums are active in social networking sites not passive consumers.
6. The report develops five segments of digital mums: the self-expressor, the utility mum, the groupster, the infoseeker and the hyperconnector.
Marketers seems to have discovered that mums online a worthwhile target group. I wonder when we will see the Digital Dad.
Belinda mentioned in one of her recent posts that the consumer tech industry is now at a stage the car industry inhabited many years ago. Many car manufacturers have indeed started to take women as consumers seriously. For a long time, most cars are implicitly or explicitly designed for men and by men.
At London Business School, I have conducted some research with Volvo. A group of women at Volvo thought it was about time to show the world what a car designed by women may look like. This produced the first concept car designed by an all women team to provide the world with a practical example of how women would design a car. The car was presented in 2004, but there are some valuable lessons to learn here.
The task was to design a car that would not be futuristic but realistic in terms of the needs of women as well as men. Their research has indicated that in the premium car segment women are the hardest group to please and building a car that meets their expectations also means to build a car that will please men.
The team conducted an external and internal study to explore what women want in cars. The central idea about the project was to ask questions in a different way.
Research found for instance that women like an easy to park car not because they cannot park but because they park a car much more often during a day.
The team also challenged the idea that cars are designed with men in mind fitting their bodily features much better than those of women.
The concept car was very innovative because the team re-thought fundamentals of car design such as where the hand breaks or the washer fluid were situated or how the doors should open.
In addition a new concept of headrests was introduced allowing people with ponytails to sit comfortably and the layout of the car was a 2 by 2 version with the rear two seats being moved in slightly to allow the driver to see the rear passengers.
The team wanted to create a car that felt more like a living room and decided to include having movable cushions and different fabrics for the upholstery of seats.
Although it was never intended to be built, the concept car provided a lot of thought provoking ideas which influenced the design of other cars. Tasking women’s perspectives into consideration challenged how things had always been done. The result was a concept car that was built by women for everyone.
In most Western countries studying computing has long been seen as a male endeavor. However this is not the case across the world. Vivian Lagesen’s research in fact shows that in Malaysia computer science is populated by women. In her summary report for Women-nomics, she stresses that in Malaysia computing is not seen as masculine but instead a good employment for women. In fact, faculty in computing degrees is often female. There are perceived to be plenty of jobs in computing and the office environment of IT jobs is seen as safe. Vivian’s research shows how flexible the social construction of computing can be.
The New York Times reported this week that the number of women studying computer sciences has fallen. 28% of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women in 2001. However by 2004-5 women only gained 22% of the degrees. This number is even lower at elite institutions like the MIT where only 12% of the degrees go to women. And according to this article, many computer science departments now report that women make up 10% of the newest entrants. This is in stark contrast to 25 years ago when – as the author claims - women made up up to 50% of computing classes.
Interestingly enough the article quotes figures stating the number of women in science and engineering has increased to 51% in 2004-5 up from 39% in 1984-85. Why is it that the numbers of women in science and engineering are rising while those in computing are not?
I found this very surprising because computing has changed significantly in recent years. Particularly the advent of Web 2.0 seems to attract more women to the internet in general and to working on Web 2.0 technologies in particular. The Fast Company magazine was celebrating women in Web 2.0 just this week.
However Web 2.0 might have little to do with what computer science is all about. The number of female web designers is sizeable but web design is by most tech specialists not seen as real programming and - as the article points out - it pays much less than software engineering.
Reasons for the lack of women in computing have been discussed widely. It includes that computers are seen as toys for boys, the constant questioning of women’s ability to engage with technology and the geeky and nerdy image of computing - to name but few. With more women using technology to get things done and technology becoming more intuitive and humane, one could have thought that the image of computing is changing.
Maybe women are voting with their feet against the way computing is portrayed and taught and instead chose to engage with technology on their own terms. Like with technology design, women might want different computing courses or a different marketing of computer courses. It might be time to explore why computing was a more interesting choice for women 25 years ago than it is today despite of the fact that computing is now omnipresent.
A couple of years ago I had a debate with a colleague at the UN World Summit on the Information Society about the paperless office. I voiced my frustration that despite of the fact that we now do so much online, we still print so much paper. I wondered if the paperless office would remain a dream. My colleague said that people just have to try it seriously but so far they have not. We then talked about how society has to adapt to technological change and how this might take time. That was in 2005.
What we did not know then is that since 2001 the paper consumption in the US was according to the Economist declining. While the paperless office is an idea of the 1960s, it has never really caught on – despite of the fact that new technologies like the Internet did not seem to rely on paper. However what happened is that many people printed their emails and treated them just like paper letters which were delivered via email rather than a postal service.
People need to adapt to new technologies and need time to change their established behaviours. The decline of paper usage is linked to the rise of a new generation. Generation Y or the millennials grew up with new technologies like the Internet and many of them adopted Web 2.0 applications readily. They do things online. They are not only paying their bills online but also network online. This younger generation is confident in reading on screen and filing documents virtually rather than physically. All is tagged and stored in the virtual cloud.
According to the Economist not all paper consumption is declining because people are still keen on printing for the special occasion. Sometimes it seems that good ideas just need time to develop. It needs time until people adapt or rather until the younger generations get rid of many routines and practices that influence how we interact with technology.
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