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.