Interview with MISTIC's Gabrielle Odowichuck

This Thursday the girls at Girl Power 3.0 took a break from our studies...or did we? We attended one of our previous survey participants' events - Pecha Kucha Nights. This presentation format means 10 people present 20 slides and speak about each one for 20 seconds. This phenomenon, which is Japanese for 'chit chat' has spread throughout the world. Pecha Kucha night happens every two months in Victoria. This months theme was Music, so of course we were on board. Perhaps it might relate to our project, or provide some inspiration for us to commence our musical pursuits! This is where we met Gabrielle Odowichuk. Her presentation really stood out for us for two reasons: one, it was phenomenal!!! She is doing some really progressive stuff at her MISTIC lab at UVic involving computer science and music. Secondly, she was one of very few girls presenting, hmm....We were so happy to have met her, and we wanted you to hear her story right from the source. This is her interview with us here:

Girl Power 3.0:Please tell us your relationship with technology. For example, what field are you in? or How do you use technology in your spare time?

I’m an masters’ student in electrical engineering. I use technology enthusiastically at work and in my spare time.

GP3: If you have a good relationship with technology, how did you forge this? What experiences provided you with the tools to feel confident using technology?

I think I’ve always been good with technology… I was definitely always good at math. I remember back as far elementary school the feeling I got from doing math… but I think it was more about feeling like I was good at something that made me love it so much.

Also, I think my strong intelligent mother gave me the mindset that these sort of traits were a good thing.

GP3: What barriers did you face,if any, due to your gender or gender stereotypes?

I somehow brainwashed for a couple years in high school, and had actually convinced myself that I wasn’t smart and I wasn’t good at math and science. In grade eleven I didn’t even do well in my science classes!

I think the issue was this stereotype that blond girls … or girls in general… aren’t supposed to be smart. More specifically, that being smart isn’t pretty.

GP3: How, if at all, is technology tied into your identity? ie. Identity production...

I don’t think I would do this kind of work if I didn’t get so much pleasure out of telling people about it. Very much tied into my identity… and I like it when people are pleasantly surprised. “Oh, good for youuuuu”, is the most common response and it’s kinda awkward sometimes.

Where it’s the best is with the guys I work with – I like working with them a lot and I’m really popular cause they don’t know many other girls. On top of that, across the board they respect me for my work. I think I’ve earned that respect and it’s a good feeling.

GP3: What, in you opinion, prevent girls from accessing or feeling confident using/producing technology?

It’s like, if you decide you’re not going to be good at something, you won’t be good at it.

I think some girls don’t want to be good at this stuff, and if they really don’t want to be good at it that’s ok.

If the reason they don’t want to be good at is because they’re worried they won’t be able to get a date, that’s bad. Though maybe sometimes accurate :P

GP3: What message would you give to girls today about pursuing technology or computer based fields?

It’s almost never going to work right away, but there is always an answer to your question. Computer science and technology involves many hours of beating your head against a wall before you figure things out. Don’t give up

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us Gabrielle! As three Women's Studies majors initially intimidated by technology, it is so nice to have someone from the inside of the industry, and more importantly from our own school to speak to us. We appreciate so much the application of what you produce to your interpersonal relationships. You are a local resource and tangible motivation to us! Please keep us updated with your influential, ground breaking work!

Grrrrrl Power to Girl Power to Girl Power 3.0

The phrase "girl power" is commonly attributed to the mid to late 1990s pop sensation the Spice Girls. However, the pink, peppy, and consumer-happy version of the term was itself an appropriation of the an earlier version of the term "Grrrl Power" made popular by the feminist informed Riot Grrrl movement, which was very subversive and political in nature. In our girlhoods studies class we learned about how the term Girl Power as commonly used is a commodified version of the once feminist term, that has been stripped of its subversive messages to become an empty cultural trope used to imbue products with a sense of dynamism, rebellion, freshness, and youthful femininity.

Several girlhood theorists, such as Angela McRobbie, Dawn Currie, and Elline Lipkin, link the contemporary term "Girl Power" with both postfeminism, which is a notion prevalent in popular culture today that gender equality has been achieved and thereby positions feminist struggles as irrelevant, passe, and longer necessary, and also with neoliberalism, which is an economic ideology that promotes privatization, cutting social programs, and deregulation. Currie explains that "girl power" positions girls as ambitious, success bound, and independent, and this celebrates both youthful feminity and individualism. She writes that "in the current neoliberal social and economic order, young women are being constructed to signal freedom, personal choice, and self-improvement with little to no attention being paid to persistent gender and other inequalities" (p.42). Lipkin (2009) argues that in unpacking constructs of "girl power" today, what we are left with is "the power to shop and to excite men, the power to serve capital and patriarchy" (p. 134). McRobbie explains how postfeminist notions of girl power present images of equality, individual success and self-achievement which serve consumer culture and hence, neoliberalism. At the heart of neoliberalism is the neoliberal subject, the rational, autonomous, competitive, entrepreneurial, consuming subject who is responsible for his /her own well-being. McRobbie asks us to pay attention to how postfeminism supplements the neoliberal agenda. She explains how popular representations of girls in media which celebrate female freedom and gender equality through appropriating quasi-feminist vocabulary is very dangerous because it diverts attention away from, even masks, the very real conditions of patriarchy that continue to shape girls lives.

Upon learning this history, we decided to 'resignify' the term "Girl Power", as Judith Butler would say, and give it a different meaning from the one commonly held in popular culture. Our term Girl Power 3.0 has many layers of meaning. We are playing on the literal meaning of the word "power" by using it in reference to girls engaging with electrically powered technologies, we are updating the term to its third version following the riot grrrls and spice girls, giving it a technological reference twist by calling it 3.0, and we are resignifying the term Girl Power to refer to the power girls have by creating their own media, music, film, entertainment, information, etc., and sharing it amongst themselves. Not only does creating our own media disrupt consumerism, it also disrupts patriarchy by promoting what Kearney refers to as a "Girls Gaze", media made by girls for girls, and also by entering into a technological domain that has been naturalized as a 'no-go zone' for girls for generations.

We realize that the riot grrrls movement was largely dominated by white girls, and that most representations of pop "girl power" also idealize whiteness, as well as heterosexuality. We at Girl Power 3.0 are aware that race, sexuality, ability, and other identities can never be separated from gender; we must be careful not to homogenize anyone's experiences of girlhood because each of us experiences our intersecting identities differently in different situations. We believe that the internet and technological fields opens a space for girls of different backgrounds to come together and collaborate around our shared sensibilities of resistance, of hope, of despair, of power. We realize that we are all historical subjects and it is important to know our histories as we work together and not to erase or conflate our differences. Because there is no essence of "girl", we encourage each and every one of you reading to ask for yourself what Girl Power 3.0 might mean to you.... ;)

Girls just aren't interested in that sort of stuff.... riiiiigggghhhttttt.....

I’m sad today. I’m sad because of what I never knew, what my parents never knew, what my friends never knew, what most people go through their lives never knowing. We never knew that we are limiting children’s lives by socializing them in gender roles from the time they are born. We never knew that girls are socialized to consume and reproduce and display themselves, whereas boys are socialized to create and produce and use tools and adventure into the unnknown. The pink cap on the baby girl, the blue cap on the baby boy, and so we begin. We don’t even think about it, it’s just ‘the way it is’.

We at Girl Power 3.0 spent the day browsing through toy shops. We were looking for clues as to why we are so insecure about our relationships with technology. We found the exact same toys as when we were kids, however now that we have the tools to unpack what we see, everything has such a different meaning. The girls toys were princesses, dolls, tea sets, babies, laundry games, kitchens, puppy dogs, hair-do parlors, styling games, friendship jewels, toy houses, on and on and on. The boys toys were construction tools, rockets, cars, train sets, science kits, music production, space exploration, on and on and on.

As Lipkin (2009) comments, “few toys offered to girls offer intellectual challenges, emphasize exploration or adventure, assume leadership, or goad girls into action. This conditioning seeps in and in a world where the refrain ‘but all opportunities are open to girls now’ is heard, it’s important to think back to how messages (and which messages) are first imprinted and the preparation for what kinds of roles these toys serve (p.10).

For eight years now I’ve wanted to learn to dj, I’ve come so close so many times, but I still haven’t. When I was 18 I used to stand right up close to the dj both and watch him turn knobs and press buttons, trying to learn from observation. When I was 19 years old and living in New Zealand, I bought decks and mixer on ebay, but cancelled my payment at the last minute because I moved cities. Another time, a big time dj in Auckland offered to take me on as his apprentice, but after being sexually assaulted I left the country. I’ve been immersed in the electronic music culture for eight years now, I’m friends with dozens of DJs, music producers, sound techs, and mc’s, the VAST majority of whom are male, I’ve dated an array of them, and still, I have yet to learn for myself. Secretly, many of my girlfriends who dance on stages want to become DJs. We talk about it amongst ourselves – the kinds of music we would play, the way we would work together, the power and thrill of learning the skills – and still, none of us have.


But the world is 'open' to me, to us, we have every opportunity available, right??… so why aren’t we girls rockin dancefloors all over the world like our male friends? Well, before doing research for this project I didn’t really know why. I just thought it was my own fault for not trying hard enough, being committed enough... But something clicked today as I walked down the aisles of toys r us … From the time we are little girls, through the toys we play with and activities we are engaged in, we are subliminally indoctrinated not to produce, not to invent, not to create…

So, next year in 2012, I’m doing it. I’m going to campus radio and I’m going to learn how to use all the equipment. I’m going to get my own radio show. I’ve been afraid of failing for so long, afraid of confirming the stereotypes that girls don’t understand technology, afraid of not being able to create anything ‘good’… But fuck it. I'm going to learn, I'm going to make mistakes in public, and I'm going to get over it... And once I have some skills, I’m going to encourage all my girl friends to do the same, because we need us out there, we need each other making music, playing music, we need each other as role models and supporters, we need to hear each others brilliance, we need to create.

Just Because I'm a Girl doesn't Mean My Technology Has to be Pink

Boy version of an electronic drum kit

Girl version of an electronic drum kit

Nat and I took a stroll down the isles of Toys R US and we found that all the girls toys that were related to technology were located in the section with all the toys marketed toward boys, such as science and equipment for means of media production, such as this pink, electronic drum kit. Also, any technological toys were appropriated for girls, they were pink, flowery and represented as the "token technology". Girls being involved in technology is not the normal. While boys' telescopes, chemistry sets, and mock electronic gadgets look very close to the real thing, they are black or blue and simple, much like in real life, the girl- gadgets are glammed up, they are pink and decorated with flowers and graphics. Lipkin addresses this very socialization, appropriation, and gendering of children's toys. She explains how although gender coding runs strong for both sexes, gender-typing is much more restrictive for for boys than girls (2009, p.p. 9). Girls are assigned with the roles of physical beautification, cooking, cleaning, and having babies, and boys are assigned the jobs, working with tools and technology and earning money, and this was strongly reflected by the girls and boys toys Nat and I observed today. On one hand, girls were allowed to "cross-over" into the boy's realm, but these girl-adapted versions must be hot pink and flowery. Boys on the other hand, boys were not given this freedom. There were no dolls or cooking sets marketed toward boys, not even in blue.

What can be made of this? Although girls are given a measure of flexibility in terms of gender socialization however, the fact that technology-based toys had to be altered and "gussied-up" to suit girls means that girls in technology is not normal, it is a token circumstance. This socialization of children, via what is available to consumers in stores, has caused the slow raise of women and girls being involved in technology. This acts as a barrier to girls when pursuing technology and production of media, because they are not supposed to do it, they were not trained to be work with it, and therefore they are tokenized when they are involved in it.

In the real world, when little girls grow up, if you are a D.J., your decks are not going to be pink. In a standard laboratory, microscopes are not going to pink. In an office, the desktops are not going to pink. Is consumer culture subtly suggesting that girls interacting with technology is a fairy-tale or merely a game of pretend? The boy's world is the real world, the norm, and as reinforced by this pink plastic the message communicated to girls is that they do not belong there.

Glammed-up girl version of a Blackberry

Barbie's pink computer, good grief!

Evaluation

There are two major ways we can evaluate the success of our project. First, is by how well we have satisfied what we have set out to accomplish by creating this blog and skill sharing our technological talents amongst each other. Second, is the practical assessment of how many people have been exposed to the messages we have been putting on the internet. How many hits does our blog have? How many followers do we have? How many comments and surveys have been sent to us?

In regards to the first method of evaluation, we set out with the following main goals:

* To produce knowledge and disrupt limiting 'girl' stereotypes that we had learned about.

* To learn from each other through skill-sharing our technological talents that enable us to communicate publicly, as self-identified girls.

* To subvert our culture's master narrative that girls and technology don't mix by learning new technological skills ourselves, without outside help.

* To support and encourage other girls to seek out technological skills so they too can speak publicly and produce their own knowledge.

* To encourage each other of our capabilities to learn various technologies, and that we can use technology as a political tool to get our voices, our stories, our ideas, our narratives, our knowledge heard.

Overall, we were successful in satisfying the majority of our goals. Through the posts on our blog, we presented our viewers with visual and written representations of popular girl stereotypes found in media and we countered these depictions with thoughtful analysis drawing from an array of feminist girlhoods theorists. Although we initially intended for Nat to skill-share her ability to create movies and edit film clips on iMovie to produce a short film to post on our blog, time did not allow us to do this. However, Erin was able to share with us all the skills to create, edit, and publish, a blog on the internet and this is how girlpowerliterally came to be. We helped to subvert the pervasive idea that girls do not belong in technology by posting interviews we conducted of successful and active "tech-girls". We also offered up critical analysis as to why and how girls access to technology have been limited in our society through commercial and hegemonic powers. We did this while identifying as girls, and speaking to a broader community of girls. We intended our blog to be a resource for empowering girls and helping them to gain confidence by dispelling the myth of our inherent inabilties when it comes to technology and contextualizing ourselves in a patriarchal, neoliberal consumer culture.

The shortcomings of this is that girls without access to the internet, due to circumstance or the lack of resources would be excluded from participating in our blog, so there is a class bias to our blog. However, we have learned that girls access to internet all around the world is increasing, so we hope that our messages can reach a broad range of girls. Another shortcoming has to do with language, in two senses. Firstly, our blog is in english, so only girls who can read in english will have access to our postings, though most computer programs will offer a 'translate' button at the top of the screen. Secondly, some of the language used in our analyses might be inaccessible to girls who have not been trained in women's studies or sociology discourses. Also, we did not get to be involved in teaching other girls outside of our group how to blog or engage in technology. However, we have had one request from a classmate for us to teach her, and we have also provided a how-to guide for certain aspects of blogging. What we, as girlpower 3.0, accomplished most effectively through this project was supporting each other to produce public messages via the internet and reassuring each other that we were capable and what we had to say was and is important.

So, the final question is, what would we change about our project, if we could have done something differently what would it have been? Since we had the disappointment of having to change ideas last minute, we wish we could have more time with the above goals in mind. We would have liked to have Nat teach our group how to film and edit film and possibly set up an event to engage girls in the skills we learned such as teaching other girls to teach themselves how to blog. The bright side of having our blog as a vehicle to engage girls was that we did not choose our audience, rather the chose us. Having the girls engage us is exciting because we are reaching a broader, more diverse group of girls, who chose to engage our project through excercising their own agency. They are free to engage with us on their own time, in their own ways. The project really takes on a life of its own. We are putting our messages out there, free for the taking, and as it turns out, over 70o people have taken...

We are absolutely amazed at how Girl Power 3.0 has taken off. We've reached over 700 people in ten countries around the world, and we've only been up and running publicly for two weeks. This is the true wonder and excitement of having a blog, every day people are accessing our content and sharing it amongst each other. We even got our first 'follower' yesterday, which means that she gets a message whenever we update a new post! Upon linking our blog to our facebooks two days ago, over 100 people accessed it this way, as we found out through the 'stats' tab available to blog administrators. The image below shows how many views we've had from different countries and what browsers and operating systems they have used to look us up.

Overall we have found the true success of this project manifested in our personal lives. All three of us can attest to having developed a new found confidence, inspiration and desire to engage the world of technology. Nat has new inspiration to pursue music production and DJing, Whitney wants to begin a blog about birth for her doula clients and Erin has rekindled her desire to be educated in graphic design. This project has now become a daily part of our lives, it extends beyond this course and has opened our eyes to the part we can play to encourage other girls to engage technology by empowering ourselves. By disseminating our knowledge and experiences in public spaces from our private spheres, we are blurring categories, and creating community in uncharted ways. We are excited to part of a phenomenon of debinarizing the public/private dichotomy that has so often functioned to silence girls voice. We have gained the confidence and the skills to continue applying our new skills in novel ways and sharing with other girls whenever we have the opportunity. Only the cyber gods know what may come of this...

Viva Girl Power 3.0!!!

Girl Power 3.0 Group Statement

What have we accomplished?

Certainly more than we set out to!

We have moved technological-media-mountains... the mountains in our minds that is.

We have overcome a collective setback, and basically planned two projects-successfully implementing one. We re-grouped halfway through class, worked together, got over the loss of a great ideas, shared our life experiences and desires and as a result found a new focus. We have gotten past the socialized idea that we as girls 'don't have anything to say'. We do!

We learned to overcome our fears, both surrounding technology, and fear of failure. We have realized that these two learned behaviours are correlated. Through the support of our group, we have gained confidence in our writing, our ability to blog, and subsequently in ourselves. We have interrogated our girlhoods for the constructs along the way that encouraged our aversions to technology preventing us from the lucrative fields that we felt were not available to us. In doing so, we have rejected the internalization of our inabilities and undertaken tasks that would have previously struck fear into our hearts. This confidence has permeated our lives, and we have all started to assert this new found confidence to other skills that have alluded us.

We worked independently, posting blogs at all hours in separate locations around the city. We came together, meeting often for hours at a time despite our busy schedules. We organized an evening where Erin facilitated a 'Learn how to Blog' session; sharing a skill she taught herself, creating an avenue for mutual production, instilling confidence in both learning and teaching. The result was a fully interactive site to collect and disseminate information pertaining to Girl Power in a more literal sense than the post-feminist appropriation we saw popularized in 90's consumer culture. We have countered consumerism, and created a blog that is free to view and free to comment on-further encouraging our ideal of produced 'for and by girls'. We have embraced our pro-sumer identity. This means we are consuming the media we produce and vice versa. In other words, reminiscent of Kearney's 'girl gaze', we are girls producing media for girls. We are simultaneously subverting popular media forms, and both creating and encouraging production of messages alternative to the pervasive ones available in pop culture, popular media and advertising.

We have learned how to communicate more effectively as a group. We have relinquished ownership of our thoughts, through communal effort and editing. We take pride in a mutual, unified product. In this project, we subvert the neo-liberal subjectivity of individualism by forming a collective. By informing other girls that our lack of technological skills and savvy is not a result of individual deficiency, but is systemic in nature arising from the cultural messages embedded in our lives. We have created space for girls to critically interrogate their relationships with technology. We are exited to be joining this ongoing dialogue.

We have spread our lived realities and analysis all over the world; our message reaching beyond what out individual voices could have done alone. We have created and entered into a community. We have entered the realm of the internet to create an alternative message to subvert that which is dominant today throughout pop culture. Like bel hooks, we want to 'talk back'. We want to encourage other girls too as well. And to investigate the systems and institutions in place that prevented us from feeling confident to in the first place. If we are saturated in media anyways, why not subvert the stereotypes presented, and allow a venue for girls to talk back!

The internet, blogging and online research techniques are by no means a new frontier for girls. We have to remember not to romanticize this idea. We are simply using technology to make available positive messages about girls to girls and they are are the ones utilizing technology for sense of community, sense of self, identity formation and expansion on the narrow amount of knowledge about girls and their experiences available in media manifestations today.

We have connected to our Girl Power, literally. We have touched the buttons, but this is only the beginning. Our project is finished but our message live go on, and Girl Power 3.0 will remain forever as an open information source on the internet. One that contributes to the knowledge about girls, and one that girls can contribute to as well.

Jade Raymond: Hottest Game Producer or Producer of Hottest Game?

Jade Raymond is an executive producer of a very successful video game called Assassin's Creed. When I learned about her I turned to the google machine to find out more. I was surprised to see "Jade Raymond Maxim" come up as one of the top searches. Turns out she was not in Maxim, and states she never will be. It was a big rumour that spread like wildfire through the gaming world. Apparently there was even an x-rated comic made about her. One gamer blogger, Torrence Davis, notes how he has never seen any game producer get so much attention. Davis observed that her picture always accompanies any write up about Assassin's Creed and whenever the game is mentioned in online forums, men invariably starts discussing how "hot" Raymond is. To this Davis responds: "Shouldn’t we be making note that a woman produced one of the hottest games of the year? Shouldn’t we be complimenting her game producing skills and not the beauty that she’s been blessed with?"

It's wonderful news that this young woman is doing so well in the male dominated gaming industry. But what does it mean that she is constantly praised for her looks instead of her talent? What does it matter that she's 'hot'? Can we say that her position of executive producer represents "equality" for genders, or does the fact that Raymond is constantly reduced / idolized for her appearances suggest a much more pervasive inequality?

It's this kind of appearance based-judgment and sexualization of girls' bodies that prevent many women from entering positions of power. As Elline Lipkin (2009) expresses in chapter 2 of her book Girls Studies, many girls experience self-consciousness from a very young age as a result of an "onslaught of images of impossibly perfect-looking, sexually contextualized female bodies" (p.42) in popular media. The fear of being sexually objectified and judged in the public sphere is a very real threat that prevents many of us from entering male dominated work spaces. I experienced this for the first time working in the shop department of a high end car dealership in a New Zealand. Without any feminist analytical skills to help me understand the situation, I resigned from an amazing position as it upset me so much to be objectified by my (male) co-workers in such sexualized ways. Without a critical understanding of how this shapes our experiences, we are prone to internalize sexual objectification, thereby limiting our own potential by building our lives in ways to avoid recurrence of such experiences.

Response to the Sexy Tech-Girl Obsession

Look at these dolls, look at the sexualized poses, one with her leg in the air. Look at the scientist doll, with her doe eyes, blank, helpless stare and her sexualized body. I chose to post these pictures from Nat and I's adventure to the mall because it is the production of products like these that contributes to situations such as Jade Raymond's where girls in technology are given credit for their bodies and beauty rather than their technological skills.

The fruits of consumerism are so embedded in our culture and pervasive in girl's lives that the identity they breed becomes the identity girls perform or are expected to perform.

Interview with blogger Majestic Legay

Girl Power 3.0 interviewed master blogger and feminist activist Majestic Legay about their relationship with technology. Read more about Legay's blogs at That's So Majestic and Glitter Politic.


GP3: Please tell us your relationship with technology. For example, what field are you in? or How do you use technology in your spare time?

ML: I use the internet to blog about body politics, queer identity, whiteness and decolonization and love.


GP3: If you have a good relationship with technology, how did you forge this? What experiences provided you with the tools to feel confident using technology?

ML: I mean, I just always had access to a computer growing up, and I saw the internet as a way to have a voice. Newer blogging websites like Tumblr strive to be very user friendly, so I just saw that other people were doing it and jumped right in!


GP3:What barriers did you face,if any, due to your gender or gender stereotypes?

ML: I would say there were few barriers that stopped me from accessing the internet due to my gender, but that gender is a white and western one so perhaps that is why.


GP3: How, if at all, is technology tied into your identity? ie. Identity production...

ML:I talk a lot about identity politics and identity online. I started out my blog as “innerfatgirl” and was welcomed into the ‘fat acceptance’ community, which on Tumblr is largely white women. Coming out as trans/gender queer really changed that but it also opened me to new political online communities that I wasn’t as much a part of before.


GP3: What, in you opinion, prevent girls from accessing or feeling confident using/producing technology?

ML: I think just the notion that women/those socialized as women don’t have a voice or something to say. For me, my blog has given me a voice which has encouraged other people to use their voices in their own ways that make them feel strong. Getting over the fear you have nothing important to say is a fear many people I know who are women or were socialized women face.

GP3: What message would you give to girls today about pursuing technology or computer based fields?

ML: I really don’t know a ton about technology/computer based fields. I’d say fake it till you make it.


So there you have our survey results from Magestic Legay. I personally LOVE this Tumblog. We wanted to include Magestic in our project as a person who uses the internet to engage in queer-girl politics. As someone that uses the internet to speak their voice, and someone who considers this to be an online community-contributing regularly Magestic's story was so important for us to highlight. This is a perfect example of queer identity production via internet ie. Girl produced media. Just as in Susan Driver's book, Queer Girls in Popular Culture: reading, resisting and creating media, the internet provides an alternative to mainstream, mass media messages about heternormative girlhoods being the norm. These sites provide a place to resignify and reread narratives about sexuality and girls lived realities. They expand the options of media performativity and complicate embodied images available to girls. Instead of queer representation being exploited and appropriated by the skinny, white girls we see kissing on teen dramas as of late, we see a step back from comodification and enter the realm of 'talking back' to media representations. Instead this area of the internet is reserved for opposition to institutional images of girls. We see queer girls engagement with and resistance of popculture. And it is awesome!

Thank you Magestic!

Surveying the situation....

Check out Anonymous Advertising here!

We are fortunate to have interviewed a Tech Girl local to Victoria. We wondered what it is like in a world where girls are competent and confident with their technology, so we sent a survey along to Aleya a talented business owner to provide some insight into her lived experience as a female in the Tech World. We at Girl Power 3.0 thank her for her contributions to our Blog about Girls inspiring Girls and inspired by Girls to touch the buttons! She certainly does, so please read more about Aleya!

Girl Power 3.0: Please tell us your relationship with technology. For example, what field are you in? or How do you use technology in your spare time?

I ‘m an art director and web/digital content developer. I rely on technology as much for my livelihood as my social network and it’s a big enough part of my life that I loose sleep and experience some initial anxiety when access to my computer, iPhone and the internet is limited. I’m not super proud of this.

GP3: If you have a good relationship with technology, how did you forge this? What experiences provided you with the tools to feel confident using technology?

I consider my use of technology to be pretty key to my having overcome a lot of social anxiety and lack of self-esteem It’s also key to my ability to build a competitive skill set in my field. I’ve mostly taken advantage of the passive opportunities – like learning skills required for creative disciplines online where I’m not held back from experimenting by my reluctance to have have my initial attempts on display. It’s has been key to my developing a critical professional network that I wouldn’t have had the confidence to put together in-person.

GP3: What barriers did you face,if any, due to your gender or gender stereotypes?

When I first began working in the advertising/design field in New York as a graduate fresh out of school I was in almost every company I worked for, the only female on staff in the creative department. With the exception of one agency that was owned and run by three female partners, the creative departments were generally staffed by men (young and old), the IT departments were staffed by men and the account management department (responsible for coddling clients) was largely staffed by females deemed better equipped to handle business men and CEOs of varying temperments.

Several things made me realize the gender stereotypes at work:

Despite being employed as the senior art director I was often mistaken for an accounts person.

In meetings and presentations, it was not uncommon for new clients to display a look of concern when introduced to me as the art director on their account than they would with the male designer with 5-10 years less experience.

On more than one occasion I was told I designed like a man. I have yet to figure out what the hell that means.

GP3: How, if at all, is technology tied into your identity? ie. Identity production...

I’m in a field where the tools being used change and advance at a ridiculously rapid rate. Being able to stay on top of the latest technology available to you and giving yourself space and time to grow familiar enough with it to harness it for your own work and creative expression often becomes a part of my profession that’s really only realistic to men in the field once we reach the age that women’s spare time is more invested in finding a partner, nurturing a new relationship or raising children.

Having chosen the more typical “male” path in my field, I’m once again finding myself amongst fewer and fewer females invested in staying relevant and up-to-date. I’m starting to see that being a female in the field is once again becoming a key part of how I’m identified by others whether I like it or not.

Some times I struggle with this sometimes I use it to my advantage. Mostly I wish it wasn’t in the way of how people evaluate what I do.

GP3:vWhat, in you opinion, prevent girls from accessing or feeling confident using/producing technology?

I think I can really only speak for myself on this one. In my case it wasn’t so much my own giving into some really out dated stereotypes about what genders are best suited technology-based fields as it was those around me I relied on for support and reassurance. There’s far too much subconscious programming that happens to a person well-before a kid has developed the agency required to make their own decisions about their plans for their life’s work. Particularly in the field of technology, where there is already a culture of worshipping the newest and latest (in computers, etc.) it takes a certain amount of self-confidence to feel competent and worthy of being given access to these “magical” things.

GP3: What message would you give to girls today about pursuing technology or computer based fields?

The field is ENTIRELY LEVELLED!!!!!! Think sprawling bazaar of wonderful, accessible opportunities to sample rather than towering cathedral to carefully climb. The biggest factor in people’s success with technology has less to do with the opportunities presented or made available to them and more to do with how willing they are to put themselves out there. Anyone that thinks it’s un-ladylike to be willing to put themselves out there and promote themselves will be hurting themselves.

GP3; Can you recommend us any other links about girls creating media or producing technology? How about Programs you may know of for girls trying to get into such a field?

This event has become a huge success locally and gets tremendous participation from women in some creative and technology related fields. My guess it has something to do with the absence of men.

http://dasilvaphotography.ca/2011/02/february-2011-girl%E2%80%99s-night-mixer-event-launch/

OUR EVENT!!!!

While we struggle to find female presenters that are confident and willing, we think we’ve had a hand in introducing some pretty talented women to the local professional community at our PechaKucha Night. Myself and Amanda Smith are the organizers and recruiters:

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/victoria/

Aleya has had a hand in introducing technologically savvy, talented women to the professional community and we are so pleased to have introduced her to you! Thank you Aleya for an insightful and inspiring look into your place of work/world. If you would like to share your relationship with technology with us, please send us an email to receive your survey as engaginggirlhoodsproject@gmail.comhttp://www.anonymousadvertising.com/index.php

Meeting Logs

Thursday, November 17, 2011 5:00 – 6:20 pm

• News of project change and brainstorming for new ideas
• Ideas: Missing Girls? Or representation of girls in media

Tuesday, November 22, 5:30 – 6:30 pm

• Mind mapping/brain storming
• Decision to ditch girls & pregnancy and interrogate gilrs’ relationships with technology
• Notes on approaches and relevant readings

Wednesday, November 23, 6:30 – 7:00 pm

• Meeting with Joanne
• Quick group debrief
• Oral presentation, check-in and progress report

Tuesday, November 29, 5:30-8:00 pm

• Organized class presentation
• Posting Blogs and reflections
• Took pictures

Saturday, November 26, 5:00-10:45 pm

• Set-up group email address
• Made survey questions
• Designed blog
• Created picture for header
• Learned how to post on blog
• Made plans for next meeting

Wednesday, November 30, 2:00-3:00 pm

• Wrote outline for presentation
• Overview of who will speak, what to discuss, which analysis to mention

Monday, December 5, 2:00-6:00 pm
Whitney and Erin

• Went through and formatted all references
• Showed Whitney how to make a menu tab to put references in
• Discussed when to meet next-Wednesday to go through all post to confirm analysis content is satisfied
• Assigned tasks-Erin update meeting post, start acknowledgements section, Whitney-putting her analytical comments into post form instead

Tuesday, December 6, 9:00-11:00 pm

• Finished Acknowledgements and Meeting Log
• Posted interviews
• Continued to include analysis

Wednesday, December 7, 3:00-11:00 pm

• Whitney and Nat went to mall and took photos of the toy isles and the gendered shopping spaces
• 4 pm We all met, Published new post with findings, analysis and edited pictures
• Worked on learning reflections and analysis
• Wrote group statement
• Ate pizza and listened to Nathalie's rap! Amazing
• Planned next meeting
• Mind mapped final analysis to link each post to the purpose of the project
• Updated meeting log

Thursday, December 8, 5:00-....

• Met at Erin's
• Analysis
• Group evaluation
• Big Hug
• Off to Pecha Kucha night to see some women in the music industry!

AMAZING OPPORTUNITY FOR GIRLS TO TALK BACK !!!

*Repost from Young Feminist Wire, my new favourite website!! Original available at:http://yfa.awid.org/2011/11/call-for-participation-in-young-feminist-blogathons-share-your-activist-story/

Submitted by Nelly on 28/11/2011

Call for Submissions: Young Feminist Blogathons – Deadline extended to December 5th!

There is still time to send in your last minute submissions to the Young Feminist Blogathons. Deadline has been extended until December 5th! Hurry up and Submit – we are looking forward to it.

The Young Feminist Wire is calling young women writers, bloggers and activists to submit blogs and/or videos on TWO themes this month. The first theme is Use of Social Media for Social Change and the other theme is Young Women on the Girl Effect. You can choose to submit your blogs/videos to ONE or BOTH themes by answering the questions provided. Please see below for descriptions on both themes including guiding questions and guidelines for submissions. DEADLINE for receiving submissions is November 27th, 2011!

Looking forward to receiving many submissions from young women!

1) USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have exploded amongst young activists especially with the increase of internet accessibility in the last few years. Many young activists and organizers have used these mediums to rally support and spread awareness on social justice. On the one hand, the Arab uprisings have even been dubbed by some media as the Facebook and Twitter revolutions. On the other hand, the safety and security of online social media tools have been put to question with recent State crackdown on youth bloggers and internet censorship in Iran, Cuba and China. The debate on social media reached new heights when a Syrian Lesbian blogger was found to be an English man.

If you have used social media as a young feminist activist in your organizing, we want to hear your story.

How has social media helped you in organizing? How have identity politics and social ethics translated into the online world? How can social media benefit or harm women’s rights organizing?

Tell us about an organizing experience you have had that used social media to create social change. Did it work? What were the challenges? What advice do you have for other young feminist activists using social media in their organizing?

AND/OR

2) YOUNG WOMEN ON ‘INVESTING IN GIRLS’

Around the world, governments, donors, the UN, non-governmental organizations, financial institutions, corporations and the media alike are claiming that the solution to a wide range of the world’s problems is to invest in young women and girls. The Nike Foundation campaign on the Girl Effect, and Plan International’s Because I am a Girl campaign are just two examples of this growing trend. On the one hand, the growing focus on young women and girls presents important opportunities for the advancement of young women’s rights with increased attention and resources available for work with young women and girls. On the other hand, the investing in girls approach is often weak in its rights-based analysis and mostly tends to look at women and girls as an untapped resource for the advancement of their communities and societies.

If you are a young women activist who feels strongly about this trend, we want to hear your thoughts!

Tell us about your initial reactions to the Girl Effect and the Clock is Ticking videos. How are young women and girls portrayed in the videos? How is the “investing in girls” trend impacting the way people perceive young women and girl’s rights in your context? How is this trend affecting the work carried out to advance the rights of young women and girls? Does this influence what kinds of initiatives get funded or types of work that gets implemented? What are the opportunities and threats presented by this trend in your context? How are young women activists in your context responding to the trend?

How to participate

Simply, tell us your activist story through either a written blog post or short video. Refer to the submission guidelines below.

Click “Young Feminist Blogathon” to find out how to enter & see other great content from Young Feminist Wire!

We posted this to share the opportunity to contribute to the production of knowledge by girls! Enjoy.

LOVE THESE POSTERS!!!!

Who would of knew, eh? A poster for international computing conferences with all women.. Amazing! And not just (stereo)typical white, able-bodied, western, subtly "sexy" business women either, but an array of racial backgrounds, styles, and body-mobility.

Reflections

Welcome to the reflexive part of our blog!

Here you can read our personal reflections, throughout the process of our Engaging Girls Project.

From our initial thoughts or hesitations, to our thought processes and frustrations, you will find our individual journal style entries from planning to implementing.

This process has not been a linear one, as we are constantly developing it, improving upon in and critically engaging with the content simultaneously.

Subjectivity plays both an important role in Girls Studies and in life, so we cherish the opportunity to dedicate a section of our learning process to this empowering practise. This enables us to have a record of how much we have grown during this project; how we as students and friends have developed alongside our assignment and as a result of it.

Enjoy our Reflections!