Digital Divide-Gender

When referring to gender when discussing the digital divide, we are talking about the gap in between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. This includes usage and interest in technology, computers especially. When I was researching the digital divide, I found that boys believe they are more computer savvy than girls, even though girls spent more time on the computer and started using the computer at a younger age.

Much research has been done on the digital divide between socioeconomic groups, but not enough, in my opinion, between gender groups. Some of the reasons for inadequate access between the poor and the wealthy overlap between women and men. This may be because the majority of people living in poverty are women. 

Some barriers include lack of childcare, reluctance by other women and girls, family members, tech-related class organizers and tech center staff to support women and girls in participating in tech classes or in using tech, class and tech center structures where "squeaky wheels get the grease", meaning that unless you know how to be very verbal and demonstrative about needs and opinions, you won't be attended to or supported much and cultural barriers, as in a woman may feel uncomfortable being the only one, or one of just a few women, in a computer class.

When I was looking through my classmate's information on the what they found while researching the digital divide, I found this interesting quote from Becky's Blog; “It is important for boys and girls to see that adult women use the computer as well as men. Simply put, moms should spend time on the computer so that sons and daughters view technology as something that adults make use of rather than just dads. This will help boys and girls resist the idea that technology is gender linked.—that is, that it is a toy or tool primarily for men.” I think this is really true because we should never underestimate the power of influence that parents have on their children. Children, especially daughters, need to see strong women in their lives and see that they can grow up to technologically competent as well.

Via Aremy's research, I found that less than 15% of Wikipedia’s editors are women and Wikipedia has set a goal for getting the number of women contributors up to 25% by 2015 to address this gender gap. I think it is great that Wikipedia is doing something to address the digital divide and that they knowledgeable that it even exists. To me. It makes sense that websites would want to do something like Wikipedia is doing because if they are only appealing to men, they are losing half of their possible audience.

Interview with Nadine Moawad Vimeo

In this video, the woman is saying that in her country, Lebanon, this internet access is very limited. Many internet cafés exist but they are monitored by the shop owner and the majority of these shops are not women-friendly. The internet is not regulated by the government like it is in most of the world, but by shop owners; they can decide what websites to block and which ones will be available.

Because of this, many women who cannot afford the internet are being very limited in what they are able to see when they are using these internet cafés. Even if one was able to afford the internet, the connections there are extremely slow. This woman giving the interview believes this because the government does not want a lot of certain people using the internet so the slowness will discourage them from even trying.   

http://vimeo.com/9950475  

Class and Gender Impact Internet Use

"Young Swedes and the Internet" is an annual survey that shows that internet use continues to creep down the age groups shows that socioeconomic backgrounds and gender are remaining to be the key factors in how early and how children learn to use the internet. Some children are starting to use the internet as young as age four; the debut age was age thirteen in 2000 when this survey was done.

Children with parents from a family with more income used the internet much more than children from poorer family. Thus children from families with more money are going to school better prepared and receiving a better education.

Girls have been found to use the internet in much varied ways compared to boys, such as chatting, blogging, following and commenting on each other's blogs, communicating with instant messaging, joining social networking sites and uploading videos and photos. They also found that girls start using the internet at a younger age as compared to boys as well. Despite this, boys are considered to be better at using technology than girls.

http://www.thelocal.se/26750/20100520/

Got Facebook? Investigating what's Social about Social Media-Response

Being an avid Facebook user, I thought this article was interesting for a number of reasons. It lists the gender differences in the willingness to disclose certain information such as political and religious views as well as relationship status. They findings suggest that men are more likely than women to post these views on their profile. Also, when it comes to to age, they found that college graduates are less likely to share their religious and political views as compared to aduts that are in college currently; this may be because they are entering their professions and would like to remain more private within their company.


As far as login frequency goes, this poll found that 78.8% of their respondents report that they log into Facebook on a daily basis; with the login rate for current students being much higher than past graduates. The difference between what current students and past graduates do on the site did not vary significantly; they are mainly posting status updates writing on their friends' walls and navigating to different sites through posted links. This research shows that women are more likely to post pictures on their profile than men and that men are more likely to share videos that relate to current events. 


When it comes to creating an inviting other users to events, this proved not to be a very important feature that Faebook offers; only 32% of respondents said that they created events and there was not a difference in popularity between college students and college graduates. When they were created that were mainly for social gatherings with friends such as parties.  


The graphs that they provided were helpful because it clearly laid out the differences answers that men and women had, also it showed the differences in education level and ethnicities as well.


http://www.scribd.com/doc/46059952/Got-Facebook-Investigating-What-s-Social-About-Social-Media