The Gender Digital Divide

Bruno Mori
October 12, 2005

The Gender Digital Divide

Today, technology is everywhere, at home, work and of course on our “third place”. Many things changed a very short time, most people were not ready. Then gaps on the Digital Divide starting to appear; they may get smaller later. But still there is a big difference. One aspect that affects the Digital Divide is the differences between male and female, the Gender Digital Divide.There isn’t a better TV series that describes stereo types like “Leave to Beaver”. It creates the idea of women as a housewife and the husband that works at a good place with children, the perfect American family. With the rapidly development of technology women stayed behind in technological knowledge. Still when I was in technical high school, there were no girls on the computer major. It looks that women didn’t want to be left behind, so today women like Shirley Turkle is one of the best to talk about technology.I think that the Tech-Savvy article is valid because even though many women have a broad knowledge of technology, overall men is still way ahead. It doesn’t madder, girls will always want to play with their dolls and boys will like to play with videogames. When I first started to use computers I was about 7. During my childhood it was boy’s things. I can’t remember any girl that was interested in playing computer games with me. Little girls today, have interesting things to do on the computer that usually are not only the “Barbie Dressing Game”.Children become teenagers that become adults. It is the base that is important in today’s generation. However, some people like professors or workers had to develop knowledge very fast to keep up with technology. Then still the Gender Digital Divide takes place. At MSU, most professors like to use Power Point presentations and some still use just the regular projector. Besides Math, all other classes that I have taken at MSU professors used some kind of PowerPoint or regular projector presentations.Blackboard is a thing of the past. The Telecommunications professors have to be into all these basic requirements. The Digital Divide in teaching a class is smaller between technology professors at MSU. However, the Gender Digital Divide appears clearly in the number of male and female professors on the department. I had only three female Telecommunications professors on my core classes. All three were using the power of technology to emit their message to the students as a male would do. On the Telecommunications department at MSU there is not a digital divide between professors, but the number of professor of each sex gives all the statistics needed.The Gender Digital Divide may go away soon. Technology develops very fast; we need it there is no way you can escape from it. If people don’t start to think technology and live technology they will be left behind. Do you remember those days of the typewriters?

Works Cited

Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age
<http://www.aauw.org/member_center/publications/TechSavvy/TechSavvy.pdf>