Gender Balancing
While helping a friend get started on Yet Another Social Networking Site today, the topic of gender balance online came up again. It seems that no matter what, every online or technology related social situation ends up with more men than women being involved.
Now, I’m not a social scientist, so I don’t having any defensible theories on why this is the case, nor any solutions for fixing The System, but I do have an idea/experiement I’m going to try.
I have accounts on a bunch of social networking sites, but there’s only two that I use on a regular (daily) basis: flickr and dodgeball, so my experiment will be confined to just these two sites.
My experiment is this– I’m going to create and maintain gender balance in my list of contacts on those sites, equal numbers of men and women. In the short run, this means removing men from my contacts lists, but so be it.
I’m sure this seems to many like a superficial, simplistic and artificial way to solve this problem, but seriously, I’m frustrated and don’t know what else to do. Hopefully this is a good starting point.
Who’s with me?
February 9th, 2006 at 1:18 am
Did you mean “more men than women” being involved?
February 9th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Yeah, elea, that was a typo. Fixed now. Thanks.
February 9th, 2006 at 5:53 am
I think it’s much less about a tick-box exercise (“I’ll maintain gender balanced lists”) and more about being pro-active about noticing that you don’t have a gender balance (“I’ll make an effort to meet and converse with more women in a tech/social setting”).
Let’s face it, there are certain things that are more of interest to men than women, and vice versa. I don’t just mean the stereotypical things (cars vs babies, for instance), but even with, say, the tech field, different things are interesting to different audiences. And one thing that can result in different level of interest is gender.
I think what doesn’t help anyone — whether it be in a blogroll, or a company, or social networking site — is artificially levelling the numbers. If you start adding crap blogs to your newsreader or blogroll just because they’re written by women, or promoting women who aren’t on par with male colleagues, then that just reinforces the prejudice.
I have an alternative challenge for you: every time you are at a conference or similar, this year, make the effort to talk to as many women as you do men. If what follows is a gender balanced Flickr list, then all the better!
February 10th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
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=I have an alternative challenge for you: every time you are at a conference =or similar, this year, make the effort to talk to as many women as you do =men. If what follows is a gender balanced Flickr list, then all the better!
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thats a good idea! I AGREE with Meri!!
February 22nd, 2006 at 4:36 am
Hey so, a couple weeks into this, how’s your experiment going? (And yes, I think Meri pretty much makes the right points — it’s more about treating women as equals and creating a respectful environment than anything else. One shouldn’t lower the bar just coz someone’s woman — and articificially balancing your friends lists is just that… artificial. What are we as men in the tech industry doing to turn women off from this stuff? Is it really innate or are we creating a hostile atmosphere?).
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:07 am
“and articificially balancing your friends lists is just that… artificial”
Well, you know, I did admit to that in the post. And, anyway, there’s a lot of people I’m connect to on social network sites, who I wouldn’t call friends.
I really don’t think I’m lowering the bar for anyone, I’m just trying an experiement, and, if anything, I’m raising the bar for men.
Back to Meri’s suggestion, I already talk to as many women as I can, but it seems that all the frickin’ dudes get in the way.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:10 am
[…] rting on Friday, I have some challenges for those of you who will be attending, similar to the one I set for Ryan a while back: TALK to women at SXSWi — and in t […]