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TECHNOLOGY | Noah Brier

Gender Tech

Does tech promote one gender's approach to the world over another?

November 10, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 8 COMMENTS

I was reminded of this post I wrote a month ago (and never posted) when I read at Overcoming Bias that women being more picky than men at speed dating events was the result of the way the event was set up, not some insight into the difference between genders. Here they quote the original Washington Post article:

In almost all speed-dating events, women sit in stationary positions and men rotate to talk with each of them. When Finkel and Eastwick set up a dating event like that, the standard result bore out -- women were more selective. But when they reversed the roles and had women rotate, that was no longer the case. Suddenly, the men became more selective and the women less so.

Anyway, here's the post I wrote about tech and gender, which I don't think is offensive, and certainly isn't meant to be, but if it is I apologize.

Last month [September] I went to a Yankee game with my buddy Jimmy. We went to high school together and hadn't actually hung out in two years or so. While at the game we remarked, as is common, how amazing it was that we could just hang out after so long apart and just feel like we picked up where we left off. We talked a little about how it was easy to feel connected with things like Facebook and email, allowing us to casually check in on each other without actually being in the same place.

Then, as the conversation progressed, we started to talk a little about how this seemed to be an especially male trait. In my personal experience (and I feel like I might be verging on sexism here, so I am going to continue to be quite clear that this is personal experience), it is more difficult to maintain these types of casual relationships with female friends. There are probably lots of reasons for this, but personally I've found those relationships require far more constant contact (not all of them certainly, but many).

Anyhow, I mention all this because of a paragraph I just read offering an "untested anecdotal theory" roughly about the Dunbar Number:

There's a spectrum of 'stable' relationships. There are stable relationships of daily interaction regarding personal and intimate topics. There are stable relationships of regular interaction, and there are stable relationships of irregular (potentially very irregular) interactions. The more stable the basis of a relationship is with another person, the less regularly you need to 'groom' that relationship. I have friends who I've known for a long time, with whom I speak or interact very irregularly, but when we do talk or interact - whether it's been months, or even years since our last conversation - it's like we've been in touch the whole time. I thnk that new social media helps maintain these less regular, more stable relationships over long periods of time. Basically, if a relationship's base is strong or deep enough, then it degrades slowly enough so that even extremely irregular contact, or maybe even just the knowledge that the contact could be made, is enough to counter the degradation.

Which made me remember the conversation and leads me to where that conversation eventually led: Is the new technology driving the current trends in communication inherently male? (Or female, for that matter?) Are we pushing a mode of communication (many loose connections) that is more suited to one sex over the other? I'm not sure we are, though I suspect based on the founding teams that both Facebook and Twitter are a bit male-biased. However, both services, to my knowledge, have a very healthy gender ratio (I know 54 percent of 18-24 year olds on Facebook are female).

Like I said, I don't know the answer, but I do find it quite interesting to think about the possibility of a gender bias in new technology.


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COMMENTS

1Amber Rae Lambke

Interesting and thought-provoking post, Noah.

While I agree that there are certain people in life that you can lose touch with and quickly pick back up where you left off (I often experience this with both male and female friends), I think this has less to do with gender and more to do with the level of stability perceived by each person in the relationship (as you touch on). Some non-gender factors that will impact the level of perceived stability include: past experience, personality, motivation, emotions, environment and so on. I'd argue that regardless of gender, personality, motives and compatibility between two people will more strongly determine the level of contact desired.

I also think your point that the need for less frequent contact seems "to be an especially male trait" reflects how much of society and our culture perceives certain personality traits as either male or female. For example: male v. female, stable v. unstable, logical v. emotional, independent v. dependent, many loose connections v. few tight connections...

So to your question: is new technology driving the current trends in communication inherently male? (Or female, for that matter?) - I don't think it's gender specific. I think people with certain personalities, interests and motives work in tech. So, instead, are the current trends in technology and communication inherently tech-focused and more suited for innovative + entrepreneurial-minded early adopters? To that, I'd say yes...

November 10, 2009

2sarah

you're pretty much digging for shit here. retard.

November 16, 2009

3Noah Brier

Thanks for the feedback.

November 16, 2009

4Matt

Very interesting post. I would argue that the medium is inherently male, but that females often try to compensate by using sites like facebook as a primary form of communication. I have a number of friends who leave specific or personal information on posts rather than sending an email or picking up the phone. As if we are also using facebook to communicate every detail of life or our plans. If you are like me and are rather inconstant in checking my page, then you tend to miss a lot of potentially important information. My advice is "pick up the phone and call once in a while."

November 17, 2009

5Buzzlord

I've noticed the same thing with my male friends. I think it might be (now I might be getting sexist) that women are culturally more accustomed to changing friends over time than men are.

How many women are still friends with the girls from high school or college? How many men are still friends with the guys? I don't have the numbers, but I would guess that there is a wide disparity there.

I think the friendships of men are just different in many ways from the friendships of women.

November 23, 2009

6harris

There are more male programmers than female programmers, so the founders of Facebook and Twitter being male isn't that surprising.

November 30, 2009

7Andy Cheung

so, this is the general problem domain i'm trying to solve with my project. this post makes me want to dig through my data to figure out usage patterns by gender. i don't have any conclusive evidence yet, but i'd say that while more men use my app, the women who do use it, use it more.

as an aside, i've wondered for the better part of a year whether its possible to build tools that facilitate the maintenance of relationships. we just launched our first product, so we'll see.

December 1, 2009

8Travis Walter

Harris, a research shows that there are more female users on Youtube than male.

As the growth of social media, Internet is no longer for geeks, and many female internet users are very active on social networks, the number of male internet users will most likely continue to drop in 2009 while more and more female start to engage online. What's your opinion on this Noah?

December 11, 2009