This week’s topic is gender representation in video games and virtual worlds.
I doubt that anyone is going to argue that the representations of women are either hyper-sexualized or non-existent in most video games. But, I argue that that while the representations of the men are indeed more frequent, they are equally hyper-sexualized.
We [...]
Archive for March, 2009
30 Mar
Gender representation in video games
27 Mar
Is it cool to be a geek or a nerd?
One of the recommended readings for last week’s class was this article from the NY Times: The Alpha Geeks It discussed whether or not it’s “cool” to be a geek or a nerd.
The author of that article, David Brooks throws around many names in the article. Of them, only one is a [...]
25 Mar
Another Example of the Gender Gap
The lack of recognition of women occurs in many fields, not just technology.
Even the most talented women writers often aren’t validated in the same way that their male counterparts are.
That’s from this blog post from bitch magazine discussing how there were no women given awards this year by the National Books Critics [...]
24 Mar
Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
Who is Ada Lovelace?
Born in 1815, she wrote the world’s first computer programs for the Analytical Machine, a device invented by Charles Babbage. That’s pretty impressive. So, why isn’t her name as well known as Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, or Bill Gates? If you read over the posts in this [...]
21 Mar
Men text from Mars, women text from Venus
The following article was in today’s Bloomington (IN) Herald Times. I’m reposting it here for three reasons: It features current technology research done by two female researchers specifically about gender and computing, the current focus of my blog (and I think womens research needs to be promoted as much as possible); Asta is [...]
12 Mar
Women are damned if the do, damned if they don’t!
I stole title of this post from my friend, Anna, BTW.
First, there was Jessica Valenti. She is the founder of a feminist blog who was invited to attend a luncheon with other bloggers and Bill Clinton. After the lunch, everyone posed for this picture:
Jessica is the one in the gray sweater in front [...]
9 Mar
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world …
This week’s topic in our Gender and Computerization class is “Computer-mediated communication on the Internet (Part II). Gender, identity, race, and sexuality.” The four articles we read look at how people portray and perceive and gender and race online.
One article from 1998 and another from 2000 pretty much started out with the assumption that [...]
4 Mar
Why WIC?
I am active with Indiana University’s Women In Informatics and Computing (WIC) group. Recently, I’ve been promoting our upcoming events. In doing so, I’ve been asked by a couple of people why women interested and working in technology need a “special” group. After all, they said, doesn’t giving special attention to a group [...]
