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!

I've got a problem: Blogging and Bedroom Culture

I noticed the very groomed and potentially airbrushed photoshoots of girls using technology in their bedrooms: and this is my resistance to it!

I blog from my bedroom. I always have, and in this particular instance, I am ready for bed and in my pajamas!

This is the reality of blogging-You can do it from anywhere and it is not restricted to business hours and does not require a uniform. I share information, ideas, photos, opinions and recipes online all the time. The fact is, I can do this from the comfort of my home-I can make money, produce content, contribute to the web, and create a space for myself in the 'public sphere' from my 'private sector'. This blurs the boundaries of the public/private divide that has been asserted to why research on girls has been only recently established.

I assert that the popularity and prevalence of internet technology in the home is a huge step in the direction of girls creating their own presences in very public ways in the very publicly accessible domain of cyberspace. Girls are literally creating space for themselves and for their realities through contributions to blogs, online zines, in their comments of links and participation in online gaming. This space is progress. It is empowered. It is girls engaged! And in relation to our Driver reading, the internet is a place to find alternative messages about girlhoods, the bedroom where these messages are both produced and consumed; a contrast to television where girls are only the consumer, and in no way in control of making the messages about girls and their experiences. The internet technology available is a venue to talk back to messages and popular constructs girls, by girls for girls.

Blogging is both valid and valuable.

Blogging happens! And it happens in my bedroom! I am not being sexualized, I am being subjective! We are creating inclusive alternatives for girls that they, themselves can contribute to, and it is all done from the comfort of my room!

Pretty powerful position to be in, if you ask me!

Brainstorming...

These are some notes from our project brainstorming sessions. We had so many ideas and connections it was hard to keep up at times!!

Whitney's further Reflections on Bedroom Culture

"Boys are thought to occupy the public world for their leisure and subcultural activities, while girls are thought to resort to the private sanctuary of the bedroom where they read teeny bopper magazines and indulge in fantasies with their girlfriends about rock stars and Jackie pin-ups" (McRobbie 1991: 72).

I love this Erin! I remember you saying how you created your first blog because you were tired of reading fashion blogs. What we are doing is resisting the reality portrayed in the above quote. This technological shift in bedroom culture is uniting the private and public spheres so girls can create alternatives for other girls to be inspired to live out who they truly are instead of subscribing to and reproducing heteronormative cultural clichés!!

Girls, Technology and Bedroom Culture

“Bedroom Culture” is the name given to nature of girls’ lives, which prevented the advancement of the academic study of girls. In the past, and in many ways still to this day, girls involvement in society was confined to the private sphere, they remained at home learning domestic trades while boys engaged in the public sphere by being involved in the education system and the “outside world”. This caused barriers for scholars who wanted to study girls and many found it difficult to locateand comprehend the agency of girls (Driscoll, 2008, p.p. 21).

Bedroom culture among girls has continued to this day, but this bedroom culture is driven by the vehicle of technology. Many girls have powerful views on politics, rights, justice and the like and they express it to their friends on facebook, text it to their friends on their phones, and email it to their teachers, but they do not blog or make their thoughts for public access. Many girls express themselves on

Skype, or web cam, or on short videos done on their desktop computers, but only their friends and family ever see it. Many girls sing to brush in front of there mirrors, play their guitars on their beds, or compose their original music on Garage Band, but they

never put their music up on public sites or become D.J.’s. This is bedroom culture, all of this can be done from the comfort of the bedroom, the private sphere.

Why then do we want to encourage girls to make their opinions, movies, and music, expressed through technology, public? Because we value girls voices and believe the world needs to hear them. We believe this technological bedroom culture has starved the public of an equal representation of what needs to be said. Girls voices tend to be a minority in terms of what is represented in technology but they are not a minority in terms of the population of the world. Let's bring the girls ideas out of the bedroom and into the public!

INTERNET DISRUPTED!!!

We also want to disrupt the internet and technological public sphere. The pictures I show around this post are results from a Google image search of girls and their relationship with technology. What do we typically see? Smiling, pink, middle-class, mostly white, happy girls whose family can afford to get them their own laptop at age eight. Where are the queer girls? Where are the girls of ethnic minorities? Where are the girls of lower class engaging in technology? We want all girls to make their technological endeavors public so ALL girls are represented not just the "pretty" ones the internet wants us to see.

C. Driscoll. 2008. Girls Today: Girls, girl culture and girls studies, Journal of Girlhood Studies, Summer 1(1) 13-32