Women play the games and use the gadgets to transform their lives, so why is the technology industry still marketing to them as if they slept with fuchsia-clad, faux-diamond-studded Barbie dolls tucked under their arms?
The more you look at women's market share, the more baffling the industry's approach becomes. Out of every 10 gadgets, four are bought by women, and we're talking high-end consoles and digital cameras, not steam irons or hair curlers! Furthermore, in the 25-34 age bracket, women make up the lion's share of all gamers at over 50% (Source: YouGov/Lady Geek Feb 2011). So the question remains, why is the industry still trying to palm them off with patronizing, dumbed-down products?
This question is particularly relevant given the lessons that ought to have been learnt from Dell's disastrous Della website (a site that gave you recipe tips with email suggestions). After all, money always talks, and with such a cash cow waiting to be milked, millions must surely have been spent on expert consultants examining just what it is that "women really want."
Sadly wherever the money's been spent, it hasn't made any marked impact on the products themselves, where stereotype continues to prevail. Take HTC's new Bliss phone, with its calming wallpapers, calorie counter, shopping apps and irritating 'charm indicator' that flashes when you get a message. When this was being designed, someone really should have taken a step back and asked just who really wants a Barbie charm hanging off their phone.
Compare this to the eminently masculine stylings of the Motorola Droid 3 phone and its "it's not a princess, it's a robot" tagline, and you get the picture. Instead of marketing to women (and men) as the complex, informed and fundamentally varied customers they really are, the battle lines have been set out from a 1970s template, with Android "dudes" on one side, and glitz-fed bauble babes on the other.
To frame a complex issue in the simplest of terms, women want smart devices that enhance their lives. They don't want to be bamboozled by jargon but nor do they respond favorably to being marketed to like pre-teens cooing at the latest Justin Bieber add-on. Frankly, the current approach smacks of marketing so lazy it needs its pulse checked.
To end on a bitter-sweet note, consider the iPhone PMS SOS Betty Crocker app, which sought to cure pre-menstrual tension through cocoa-laden product vouchers. What we are witnessing here is a marketing approach that is perilously hard to swallow, and that is a reality the industry is simply going to have to digest.
@belindaparmar is the founder of @ladygeektv. Please join the Lady Geek's campaign to end the stereotypes in the tech industry and make technology more appealing to women and young girls. http://www.facebook.com/LadyGeekTV
Follow Belinda Parmar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/belindaparmar
They are obsessed with maintaining strict gender role separation in all areas of life. And "gender" separated products helps to achieve this. It's is an unhealthy fear of women coming into "male" space and using "their" products. They would really prefer to ignore the existence of women altogether if they could. Hence the endless geek chat about the internet that makes the presumption that everyone using it is male.
The jock's parents had just bought him an iPhone 4, and he was all "look what this can do" as though he had invented it. For some reason good looking guys think they are smart, and girls think so too.
Try looking at modern, professional women for your anecdotal evidence that women aren't "interested" in technology. Besides, at that age, they were probably more concerned with talking to whichever guy was the best looking and vice versa. Kudos to your son for having more interest in the substance of the discussion than the rest of them. It's people like him who will ultimately win out in the battle of the wits anyway.
I hire essentially all entry level young women engineers for a large petrochemical company. I'm looking at one. Her browsing tends towards obtaining shoes instead of solvents. She keeps looking over to the only good looking guy summer intern because it's his last day, and he is ostentatiously flirting with another smiling young woman. Her baubled phone is not just used for texting, but also looking at Facebook pictures.
Her cubicle partner has his electrical-taped earbuds jamming, with his phone streaming music videos. He repaired his insulation-broken charger cord with a squid of multiple choice ends, and she uses his because hers broke the same way.