01-22-2004, 12:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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Are Women As Geeky As Men?
A new survey, conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association, indicates that men may no longer have the geek market cornered. ChannelLine.com reports that last year:
"In total, women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion (U.S.) spent on electronics equipment in the U.S. last year, but three out of four women surveyed complained of being ignored or patronized by electronics stores that cater mostly to men and assume women aren't interested in their wares."
The report goes on to say that only one percent of the poll's respondents feel that manufacturers have women in mind when developing their gadgets.
This brings up a few questions in my mind:
1. Are women really using all these gadgets themselves, or simply buying them for their geeky men?
2. Why do salespeople assume that women aren't interested in geeky toys?
3. There's obviously a real market for electronic gadgets that are designed specifically for women. Besides painting them pink, what Pocket PC design features would make them more appealing to women?
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01-22-2004, 02:09 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,734
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Let me look at my wife's tech purchases:
She bought a 17" LCD monitor (as a gift for me)
She bought tom-tom navigator gps receiver and maps (as a gift for me)
She bought a digital camera (as a gift for me)
She knows if she really wants to make me happy with a present, it should be electronic is some way. She herself however knows not much about the latest gadgets, and would spend piles of money one something thats behind the curve (and always buys the insurance the salespeople push). So she would buy a GPS receiver, in stead of the bluetooth version. And she would buy a 2 mega-pixel camera when 4 mega-pixel are out already.
On the other hand, when I buy clothes for her, she often ends up exchanging it. Of course more men buy flowers, but that does not mean they love flowers (or have become less geeky  )
So in my experience at least, it probably only indicates an increase in the acceptability of gadgets as presents (I bet many many Ipods were given this christmas, most likely to men from women)
Surur
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01-22-2004, 02:22 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 298
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Down with pink :!:
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01-22-2004, 02:25 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,264
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Re: Are Women As Geeky As Men?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brad Adrian
but three out of four women surveyed complained of being ignored or patronized by electronics stores that cater mostly to men and assume women aren't interested in their wares."
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Actually, most of the bigger electronics stores are pretty good at ignoring or patronizing all of their customers, not just the female ones.
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01-22-2004, 02:31 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 135
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by yvilla
Down with pink :!:
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I agree, that is stereotyping :evil:
My girlfriend has a Jornada, Franklin translator (she is Korean), a better computer than I have (though I have more computers (5 to 1 :lol: ). She is an auditor for the U.S. Army and understands technology. She likes gadgets and if she doesn't know enough to make a sound decision she will do the research, then ask my opinion and then do what she wants!
I believe that more and more professional women are using gadgets because they find them useful in their work, and leisure.
One very nice thing about my girlfriend and her understanding is that she is an excellent tester of my Pocket PC software and makes excellent suggestions.
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01-22-2004, 02:38 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 69
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Not all geeks are men and not all men are geeks. But men are far more likely to be geeks than women are; I'd hazard a guess at a 20:1 ratio from my experience.
I buy some gadgets for me, and some for my husband. My experience of sales people is mixed but reasonably positive. I always head straight for the saleswoman if there is one, as she will be far less likely to patronise me than a salesman. In general I've found geek salespeople fairly open minded; they respond at the technical level of the questions I ask. If I go gadget shopping with my husband and I ask questions then I get the answers not him, unlike when we got car shopping.
A pink gadget sounds truly awful, I wouldn't buy it and I suspect other women wouldn't either. The style range of mobile phones is fairly restricted, but women don't seem to have problems with those. It would be nice if the built in themes on a PPC included at least one slightly feminine one - I'm partial to McDeb's various flowers.
I don't see any fundamental difference in the things I want from a PPC. I might want an app for recipes to look up what recipes I have with ingredients x and y in, but that 's just a particular database app. It isn't really any different to a database of music which might be thought of as a more male application. But then I already bought a PPC, so I don't need them to be made more appealing to me. My basic motivation for purchase was email anywhere so I bought an XDA, and then found that I use it more for other things, especially the reader.
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01-22-2004, 03:42 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 1
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My husband is totally useless tech wise, its me that has the PDA, the computer the gameboy the playstation and knows how to use and programme them.
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01-22-2004, 03:44 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 10
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What an excellent news post just 4 hours after saying that no woman would like the geeky car and that it was actually "anti-woman". Seems like you aren't quite settled on your opinion of women and geekiness.
and my wife has 1 more computer than me (though she killed one of mine to take the lead). She has a Tablet, I have a PPC. I think I win that one so we're about even now.
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01-22-2004, 03:53 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 340
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I know that my wife is not adverse to purchasing technology, but will not buy it unless it does what she needs and is extremely portable. When I first got my Casio E-125, she would just as readily pick it up off of the cradle and look up phone numbers or addresses as if this was nothing special.
When I asked her if I should buy her one, her comment was it was too bulky to carry in her purse on a regular basis. Yet when we go on vacation, she's the one who remembers to pack it with the cf modem so we can check our aol account when we are away.
Now that the form factor has improved so greatly, I thought she would now consideran HP 19XX series, but she said she would rather wait for the new Motorola Smartphones to come out since she could solve two issues with one package.
Steve 8)
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01-22-2004, 04:15 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 713
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Most of the women I know who use high-tech stuff aren't really geeky. They tend to approach it from a practical standpoint, a definite non-geeky attribute. Being geeky would imply a love of technical gadgets for their own sake, not for any practical reason, i.e. having a GPS in your car when you never travel anywhere you haven't been before, or having a Blackberry to read email that has no real time urgency to it.
It reminds me of my roomates in college who were ham radio geeks. They constantly worked on and talked on their radios. What did they talk about on their radios? They talked to other people about their radios and the quality of reception they were getting.
Sort of like me using my Pocket PC with a WiFi card to log in to Pocket PC Thoughts to read about Pocket PCs. :lol:
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