I am so grateful to Erin for this new skill! It’s amazing, being able to explore my thoughts and express myself and post it online for everyone to see. Someone from Germany and Japan looked at our blog! So cool. And anyone can do it, you can learn how to blog in minutes and make your voice heard. I love this, and I think everyone who wants to learn should be allowed the space, especially girls.
Girl Power 3.0 Empowered by girls who touch the buttons, supporting girls who want to learn!
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Member Meeting
What we have been up to....
Last night we all met to work on our project! The goal was to introduce the girl to the world of blogging. I feel this was an important experience for us all- girls learning from girls!
 |
| Nathalie learning how to start a blog, and mastering it in minutes! |
Timeline
5pm -7pm: We took pictures and edited them, made facebook interview questions, wrote a reflection response, made an email address for our group-which is the first step of creating a blog
Then we ate dinner all together!
7:30-10:30: We brainstormed interviewquestions, created the blog, learned how to post and how to design ablog, shared our research, discussed what we found in the readings to apply to our project, planned our next meeting and set out tasks to be completed
Goals-
We will have interview questions to email to our 5 participants by Sunday
Nat will write the introduction to explain what our blog/project is about
We will post our reflections
Whitneyresearches blogs to link to
Erin uses quotes from readings for posts that each member then can comment on
Narrow our subject by defining technology further
Fill out our individual contributor profiles
Meet on Monday!
Words of Wisdom from Li'l Azúcar, 13
"It's important for girls to learn how to DJ because it's a fun hobby and it's fun to learn. It also proves girls can do the same things guys do. I learned how to skip beats, set up the turntables, and mix music together. I learned that old music can sound better than new music. My friends are proud and they all want to try. Plus they want me to do parties. DJing is harder than I thought it would be because I have to set it up just right or it won't sound good. I would tell girls do not give up on it (DJing) even if it's not something you want to do, because in the end, you're going to have fun."--Li'l Azúcar, Gemini, 13 years old
Research Study on Girls and Technology
Kekelis et al. conducted a research study to engage a group of 126 girls aged 11 to 19 from a range of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds to investigate why girls interested in technology do not choose to go on in a career in advanced technology. They designed an after-school program, called “Techbridge”, which taught and engaged girls in software engineering, robot making and other avenues of technology, and they formed focus groups to give the girls a space to discuss their relationships with technology. The researchers found three main hurdles girls face when considered pursuing a career in technology:
1) Negative Stereotypes about Computing Jobs
2) A Disconnect between Dreams and Plans
3) Lack of Career Guidance and Support from Family
Application to Girl Power:
Many girls are told by their parents and schools to graduate, go to college or university and to keep their options open and try many things in post-secondary education. Girls are told they can be anything, do anything, and as a result change the world, hence giving them a false sense of power. However, this open-minded guidance has made it hard for girls to focus in on a career, especially technology careers, and it leaves them unaware of the future challenges, barriers, and work required by the careers. Many girls set their minds on a dream career, singing, acting, web designer, or world class D.J., but have no idea of the high school courses, resources and skills needed to get into these vocations. How then, do we get girls to harness the true power of engaging technology and participate in positive prosumption?
Kekelis, L.S., Ancheta, R.W.. & Heber, E. (2005). Hurdles in the pipeline:
Friday, November 25, 2011
Journal #3: Pa Pa Pa Power!
I think the girl who knows technology has access to the greatest girl power of all, the power not only to consume and deconstruct media, but to combat popular media with new, alternative media! It’s a marriage of consumption and production! Also known as PROSUMPTION! Proactive, positive ways of consuming to produce, and producing for others to consume positive messages. You go girls, GIRL POWER REDEEMED!!
The Gendered Dialectic of Technology
So much analyzing media and so little producing it. This is a common theme in feminist studies; we critique, critique, critique, but don't offer an alternative. And why not? Perhaps its because we don't have the technological skills to do so... Many of us girls were never encouraged to learn media technologies, because it's not a "girl thing". So we're left overflowing with ideas, yet lacking the ability to disseminate them. It's interesting our that production technology, our communication and media technology, is largely dominated by men. Generally speaking, girls and women lack the technological skills, knowledge and perhaps even motivation to produce media and communicate publically. Why? Is it because girls and technology actually don't mix? Because they don't have anything to say? Or is that a master narrative in our society, a story that is told over and over, that permeates our institutions and discourses in such a way that it appears natural, inherent...? I argue it is the latter.
I am beginning to realize that this lack of technological skills and abilities in girls and women is part of what Luce Irigaray calls a phallogocentric economy, an economy of castration, an economy of lack. By this she means that women are signified, defined, by what they lack in relation to men. It is women's lack of a penis, lack of "rational thinking", lack of "production skills", lack of "power" that defines her. Men's power and higher social status is dependent, is contingent on what women lack. So to bring it all back together, the master narrative that girls and technology don't mix is a cultural story that keeps girls and women locked into a position of inferiority, of naturalized lack.
But, just like Hegel's master / slave relationship, men's supposed natural technological abilities are in a dialectical relationship with women's supposed natural inabilities. What happens if girls and women start touching the buttons, crossing the wires... ?? That's what we want to do here... we want to empower each other to master the skills many of us have long believed and accepted as purely boys and men's domain.
I am beginning to realize that this lack of technological skills and abilities in girls and women is part of what Luce Irigaray calls a phallogocentric economy, an economy of castration, an economy of lack. By this she means that women are signified, defined, by what they lack in relation to men. It is women's lack of a penis, lack of "rational thinking", lack of "production skills", lack of "power" that defines her. Men's power and higher social status is dependent, is contingent on what women lack. So to bring it all back together, the master narrative that girls and technology don't mix is a cultural story that keeps girls and women locked into a position of inferiority, of naturalized lack.
But, just like Hegel's master / slave relationship, men's supposed natural technological abilities are in a dialectical relationship with women's supposed natural inabilities. What happens if girls and women start touching the buttons, crossing the wires... ?? That's what we want to do here... we want to empower each other to master the skills many of us have long believed and accepted as purely boys and men's domain.
Why are there no female DJs on DJ Mag's top 100 list?
This article was posted October 28, 2011 by Hanna Hanra on The Guardian's music blog.
As a female DJ I've had guys telling me how to use the decks and even changing the speed of my records for me – so perhaps it's no surprise we've been left out of a list of the best DJs ...
Head-in-hands moment … not even BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac made DJ Mag's top 100 list. Photograph: BBC
Clicking through DJ Mag's newly published list of top 100 DJs, it's easy to spot the one thing missing: women. Revered in the clubbing industry as the "black book" for DJs, producers and promoters, the list is voted for by the public every year. Between 2007 and 2011 just one girl, Claudia Cazacu, scraped on to the list, charting at number 93 in 2010. Not even Annie Mac – who hosts three shows on Radio 1, DJs regularly at Fabric and whose Annie Mac Presents mixtape is No 1 in the electronic charts – gets a look in. It's clearly a bone of contention with some women in the business – Peaches, the Berlin DJ/producer posted "DJ MAG! Your Top 100 DJ boy club list can eat a dick! Where the ladies at???" on her Facebook page in a fit of frustration after the list was published.
For the last 10 years, my main source of income has been from DJing. It's taken me around the world, from dive bars in Krakow where the kids went wild when I played Nirvana to glitzy fashion parties in New York where Grace Jones serenaded me with Pull Up to the Bumper wearing only a headdress as I stood in the DJ booth (which was, incidentally, disguised as a tiki hut). I thought, based on my experiences so far, that it could be an exciting career. I've DJ'd in the coolest clubs and the shittest pubs, I've played at a record-breaking 13 parties during a four-day period one London fashion week and I've been flown across the world to play 10 songs at a party. I lost count of the number of mornings I've spent trying to get tequila off my CDs. But just at the point where my parents finally began to understand exactly what it was I did for a living, it became harder to break through into top-billing territory. I hit the glass ceiling. I always thought that term applied to women in skirt suits in big, windowed office blocks – not those whose working day starts at 11pm and involves sticky floors and a disco ball.
I realised that it didn't matter how many times a week I DJ'd or how much I charged or how much people loved what I played, I was losing the impetus to fight my way through the boys' club and try and make it to the top. And if I got there, would the fight to stay there be worth it? Annie Mac, who is one of the handful of really successful female DJs, admits that she might not have made it without her radio show. "I had a profile through that and got gigs through that," she said in a recent interview.
Boys aren't better at DJing than girls. We don't DJ with our vaginas. But the fact is, in my experience, they clearly think they are and do make it more difficult for us. I've had male DJs reach over as I mixed two tracks and start twiddling with the knobs. Or come and stand behind me and instruct me on what to do. My personal favourite was when, at a regular Sunday nightclub, the male DJ who played after me reached over the sound desk and start to change the speed of a track for me. Did he think I had sped the track up slightly on accident? Another brilliantly sexist moment was when a DJ span round and said to me bluntly, "Well, boys just know more about music, don't they." And it's not just the other DJs – there are the soundmen too, who persistently ask me if I know what I'm doing. You know, after 10 years, I'm still not sure.
I guess maybe the whole unbalance is something to do with the fact that it's only in the past 5 years that most venues have acquired CD decks, so you no longer have to play from vinyl, which is heavy to carry. Maybe that's why there are so many more men at the top. They're better at carrying heavy things.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/oct/28/female-dj-mag-top-100
For the last 10 years, my main source of income has been from DJing. It's taken me around the world, from dive bars in Krakow where the kids went wild when I played Nirvana to glitzy fashion parties in New York where Grace Jones serenaded me with Pull Up to the Bumper wearing only a headdress as I stood in the DJ booth (which was, incidentally, disguised as a tiki hut). I thought, based on my experiences so far, that it could be an exciting career. I've DJ'd in the coolest clubs and the shittest pubs, I've played at a record-breaking 13 parties during a four-day period one London fashion week and I've been flown across the world to play 10 songs at a party. I lost count of the number of mornings I've spent trying to get tequila off my CDs. But just at the point where my parents finally began to understand exactly what it was I did for a living, it became harder to break through into top-billing territory. I hit the glass ceiling. I always thought that term applied to women in skirt suits in big, windowed office blocks – not those whose working day starts at 11pm and involves sticky floors and a disco ball.
I realised that it didn't matter how many times a week I DJ'd or how much I charged or how much people loved what I played, I was losing the impetus to fight my way through the boys' club and try and make it to the top. And if I got there, would the fight to stay there be worth it? Annie Mac, who is one of the handful of really successful female DJs, admits that she might not have made it without her radio show. "I had a profile through that and got gigs through that," she said in a recent interview.
Boys aren't better at DJing than girls. We don't DJ with our vaginas. But the fact is, in my experience, they clearly think they are and do make it more difficult for us. I've had male DJs reach over as I mixed two tracks and start twiddling with the knobs. Or come and stand behind me and instruct me on what to do. My personal favourite was when, at a regular Sunday nightclub, the male DJ who played after me reached over the sound desk and start to change the speed of a track for me. Did he think I had sped the track up slightly on accident? Another brilliantly sexist moment was when a DJ span round and said to me bluntly, "Well, boys just know more about music, don't they." And it's not just the other DJs – there are the soundmen too, who persistently ask me if I know what I'm doing. You know, after 10 years, I'm still not sure.
I guess maybe the whole unbalance is something to do with the fact that it's only in the past 5 years that most venues have acquired CD decks, so you no longer have to play from vinyl, which is heavy to carry. Maybe that's why there are so many more men at the top. They're better at carrying heavy things.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/oct/28/female-dj-mag-top-100
Has technology become the new "Boys' Club" ?
This study is a decade old, but still very interesting...
The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) study, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children documents a diminishing gender gap in achievement in mathematics and science, with one exception -- technology. The study concludes, "While girls have narrowed the gender gaps in math and science, technology has become the new 'boys' club.'"
Only 17% of the high school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test in 1997 were females - the lowest percentage of all tests given. AB Calculus is up to 47%, Chemistry is 42%, Biology is 56%, and Physics, although still dismal, is over 20%. Complete data was published by the College Board.
The AAUW study also concludes
The American Association of American Women's (AAUW) study, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children documents a diminishing gender gap in achievement in mathematics and science, with one exception -- technology. The study concludes, "While girls have narrowed the gender gaps in math and science, technology has become the new 'boys' club.'"
Only 17% of the high school students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science test in 1997 were females - the lowest percentage of all tests given. AB Calculus is up to 47%, Chemistry is 42%, Biology is 56%, and Physics, although still dismal, is over 20%. Complete data was published by the College Board.
The AAUW study also concludes
- Girls are significantly more likely than boys to enroll in clerical and data-entry classes, the 1990s version of typing. Boys are more likely to enroll in advanced computer science and graphics courses.
- School software programs often reinforce gender bias and stereotypical gender roles.
- Girls consistently rate themselves significantly lower than boys on computer ability, and boys exhibit higher self-confidence and a more positive attitude about computers than do girls.
- Girls use computers less often outside of school. Boys enter the classroom with more prior experience with computers and other technology than girls.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Journal #2: My middle name: Technical Difficulty
Why has “technological difficulty” become a key word in my vocabulary? Erin sent me a link to a practice blog she created to get us started and I couldn’t open it. I eventually figured it out, but after much frustration. This is going to be a long road. My laptop, his name is Archibald, has been blue-screening and doing funky things on me lately so this should be fun.
A foot in the door, camera in hand...
Last May I had the incredible opportunity of participating in an intensive documentary film workshop with five other young women taught by a few very accomplished women in the film industry. We learned everything from stories, to sound, to camera equipment, to editing, to funding. The program is called the Kris Anderson Connexions Youth Forum, a collaboration between DOXA film festival in Vancouver and the NFB, and it is meant to help young female filmmakers get a foot in the door of a male dominated film industry.
DOXA Connexions: Barriers
This post was written by one of the young women participating in the 2011 Kris Anderson DOXA Youth Connexions Forum, as part of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival. “Connexions” is an immersive 2-week program where 6 selected emerging female filmmakers create 6 short films in 6 days, while also connecting with industry professionals & checking out all the doc films & panels.
The big moment had finally arrived. I stood on stage beside 5 brilliant aspiring filmmakers. We waited prettily in our party dresses and high heels to introduce our films to a sold-out house at the Rio Theatre. My friends and family filled the entire front row. Despite being blinded by the spotlight, I grinned at them proudly. My years of hard work had gotten me here. I could get used to this. The announcer began thanking sponsors and volunteers. I kept smiling.
Then the announcer turned his attention to us, the participants of the 6th annual Kris Anderson Connexions Youth Forum. But what he said made my stomach crunch and my feelings of excitement and anticipation curdle into confusion and smallness. “The Connexions Youth Forum is designed to help youth who face barriers in attaining their goals as documentary filmmakers…”
What!?! Barriers?? Really? And all this time I thought it was a program for talented young women. But I haven’t faced any barriers, I thought to myself. Actually quite the opposite. Through my privilege as a Canadian university student, making films found me, picked me up, and coddled me. I was troubled by this and continued thinking about it over the next few days.
Am I just a girl being given a chance to break through barriers? Or do I actually have talent as a filmmaker? This is a question that taunts many female artists. We are given special recognition for our womanhood, rather than for our art. The same goes for many artists of “marginalized” identities. We remain in special categories, we have our special shows, and are celebrated for our ‘different’ (non white male) identities.
I now realize the barriers I face are not obvious at the surface level. Women filmmakers are dealing with internalized barriers. Barriers arising out of the collective psyche that tell us women and technology don’t mix. Don’t touch those buttons, mind the wires, nevermind the lingo, you wouldn’t understand. It is the reason that in my youth I was an aspiring actress, not a filmmaker; a model, not photographer; a dancer, not a music producer. As a woman I am conditioned to see myself as an object of the public gaze, not as a cultural creator.
It is only in recent years, in the safety of academia (where I have always excelled), that I began touching the buttons, using technology as a medium to enhance research. But it was not until the incredible support I received in Connexions Youth Forum that I am now hoping to pursue documentary filmmaking as a career.
Throughout the Connexions program I felt empowered, excited, motivated and capable. Surrounded by incredible female mentors and peers, and equipped with a PD 150, a tripod, and a shotgun I broke through barriers that I had never even considered challenging.
So next year, if they decide to introduce the Connexions participants as ‘aspiring female filmmakers’ rather than ‘youth facing barriers’ (which skirts around entrenched sexism anyways…), this conversation about ‘barriers’ remains a necessary one. To address a problem such as sexism within the film industry we must recognize and name it. And although we must continue celebrating those who break through these barriers, we must not forget that their art is still art, and must to valued and integrated into mainstream culture as such.
—
It was such an amazing experience to be surrounded with technology and women, all teaching and helping each learn in such a non-judgmental environment. As someone who'd never used Final Cut or a professional quality video camera I was quite intimidated to be working in the National Film Board studios, but after a being given instruction I picked it up so easily and made an amazing little film which screened for 500 hundred people at the DOXA festival. It was so empowering to be encouraged and supported to learn things that have always been for "guys". I realized that it wasn't that I was incapable of learning technology, it was just that I'd never has safe and supportive learning environment to experiment in.
I was in amazed to learn in our Girlhoods Studies class that my experience was not uncommon, that it is a documented phenomenon experienced by many young women. Andrea Richards, author of Girl Director, comments: "I think it honestly doesn't occur to girls that they can be a film director -- the possibility has never been planted in their heads because it's so off limits through cultural and gender stereotypes" (quoted in Lipkin, 2009, p. 148). My own experience confirms Richards assessment of the situation. I had never even considered fillmmaking until being introduced to it as a method of present research in a femininst participatory action research class, the thought had never occured to me that I might have ideas worth sharing through film. Still, even after working on three films, I doubt my abilities. I still have this feeling that for some reason I'm incapable, like it was a fluke that I managed to do it all, that I couldn't do it again. I'm intimidated to be in the public eye, I feel like I don't have anything to share that others would find interesting... but I know I do.... it's weird. Elline Lipkin (2009)writes how "girls have to overcome the perception that this [filmmaking] is a sphere in which they don't belong -- no small hurdle to jump" (p. 148). Learning about this stuff in girlhoods is really helping me understand that it's not just me and my own deficiencies that keeps me from jumping in, its the culture I've been raised in.
Looking back on the blog I wrote for the NFB website (see below) following the workshop, I'm surprised to see how I started to realize there were systemic and cultural forces working against me before even reading the theories in Girlhoods Studies that affirmed my own experiences. But still, even knowing this, it doesn't change the reality, the fear, the insecurities... but it does help.
I was in amazed to learn in our Girlhoods Studies class that my experience was not uncommon, that it is a documented phenomenon experienced by many young women. Andrea Richards, author of Girl Director, comments: "I think it honestly doesn't occur to girls that they can be a film director -- the possibility has never been planted in their heads because it's so off limits through cultural and gender stereotypes" (quoted in Lipkin, 2009, p. 148). My own experience confirms Richards assessment of the situation. I had never even considered fillmmaking until being introduced to it as a method of present research in a femininst participatory action research class, the thought had never occured to me that I might have ideas worth sharing through film. Still, even after working on three films, I doubt my abilities. I still have this feeling that for some reason I'm incapable, like it was a fluke that I managed to do it all, that I couldn't do it again. I'm intimidated to be in the public eye, I feel like I don't have anything to share that others would find interesting... but I know I do.... it's weird. Elline Lipkin (2009)writes how "girls have to overcome the perception that this [filmmaking] is a sphere in which they don't belong -- no small hurdle to jump" (p. 148). Learning about this stuff in girlhoods is really helping me understand that it's not just me and my own deficiencies that keeps me from jumping in, its the culture I've been raised in.
Looking back on the blog I wrote for the NFB website (see below) following the workshop, I'm surprised to see how I started to realize there were systemic and cultural forces working against me before even reading the theories in Girlhoods Studies that affirmed my own experiences. But still, even knowing this, it doesn't change the reality, the fear, the insecurities... but it does help.
DOXA Connexions: Barriers
This post was written by one of the young women participating in the 2011 Kris Anderson DOXA Youth Connexions Forum, as part of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival. “Connexions” is an immersive 2-week program where 6 selected emerging female filmmakers create 6 short films in 6 days, while also connecting with industry professionals & checking out all the doc films & panels.
The big moment had finally arrived. I stood on stage beside 5 brilliant aspiring filmmakers. We waited prettily in our party dresses and high heels to introduce our films to a sold-out house at the Rio Theatre. My friends and family filled the entire front row. Despite being blinded by the spotlight, I grinned at them proudly. My years of hard work had gotten me here. I could get used to this. The announcer began thanking sponsors and volunteers. I kept smiling.
Then the announcer turned his attention to us, the participants of the 6th annual Kris Anderson Connexions Youth Forum. But what he said made my stomach crunch and my feelings of excitement and anticipation curdle into confusion and smallness. “The Connexions Youth Forum is designed to help youth who face barriers in attaining their goals as documentary filmmakers…”
What!?! Barriers?? Really? And all this time I thought it was a program for talented young women. But I haven’t faced any barriers, I thought to myself. Actually quite the opposite. Through my privilege as a Canadian university student, making films found me, picked me up, and coddled me. I was troubled by this and continued thinking about it over the next few days.
Am I just a girl being given a chance to break through barriers? Or do I actually have talent as a filmmaker? This is a question that taunts many female artists. We are given special recognition for our womanhood, rather than for our art. The same goes for many artists of “marginalized” identities. We remain in special categories, we have our special shows, and are celebrated for our ‘different’ (non white male) identities.
I now realize the barriers I face are not obvious at the surface level. Women filmmakers are dealing with internalized barriers. Barriers arising out of the collective psyche that tell us women and technology don’t mix. Don’t touch those buttons, mind the wires, nevermind the lingo, you wouldn’t understand. It is the reason that in my youth I was an aspiring actress, not a filmmaker; a model, not photographer; a dancer, not a music producer. As a woman I am conditioned to see myself as an object of the public gaze, not as a cultural creator.
It is only in recent years, in the safety of academia (where I have always excelled), that I began touching the buttons, using technology as a medium to enhance research. But it was not until the incredible support I received in Connexions Youth Forum that I am now hoping to pursue documentary filmmaking as a career.
Throughout the Connexions program I felt empowered, excited, motivated and capable. Surrounded by incredible female mentors and peers, and equipped with a PD 150, a tripod, and a shotgun I broke through barriers that I had never even considered challenging.
So next year, if they decide to introduce the Connexions participants as ‘aspiring female filmmakers’ rather than ‘youth facing barriers’ (which skirts around entrenched sexism anyways…), this conversation about ‘barriers’ remains a necessary one. To address a problem such as sexism within the film industry we must recognize and name it. And although we must continue celebrating those who break through these barriers, we must not forget that their art is still art, and must to valued and integrated into mainstream culture as such.
—
Erin and her Objectives
Hello,
Me an technology do not get along, much like my mother and technology. She refers all questions to Dad, without trying to figure it out herself. I am a self proclaimed Luddite- I walk into a room and computer with shut off. But in this technological age, where we are immersed whether it be by choice or not, there is no denying our dependence on the stuff! I tend to navigate all the technology that is imposed upon me on a day to day basis: filling out forms online, shopping online, keeping up with friends, uploading pictures, watching videos, blogging and reading blogs too.
But what strikes me is my passive consumption of these online service. I am browsing, absorbing, spending and supporting. With the exception of my blog, which I do not make money from, I rely on these online features, while producing nothing. I contribute nothing except nameless hits on peoples' blog stats, furthering the ever pervasive market research.
My history with technology was that I was born and educated before we became so dependant on the forms so prevalent today. I was raised before microwaves and laptops, I went to school before Internet and cellphones, I learned to type on a computer larger than our TV, I played video games back before Macintosh computers had been re-branded Apple.
Interrogating girls relationships with technology interests me greatly, because I do believe I see a gendered difference in our interactions with technology both in our proficiency utilizing it and in our under representation in fields such as web design and computer programing.
Is this a learned behaviour? Would my awkwardness around technology different if I had have been a boy? Why do I ask for help instead of sort out problems myself? Why isn't a girl geek a feature in films and tv shows?
Me an technology do not get along, much like my mother and technology. She refers all questions to Dad, without trying to figure it out herself. I am a self proclaimed Luddite- I walk into a room and computer with shut off. But in this technological age, where we are immersed whether it be by choice or not, there is no denying our dependence on the stuff! I tend to navigate all the technology that is imposed upon me on a day to day basis: filling out forms online, shopping online, keeping up with friends, uploading pictures, watching videos, blogging and reading blogs too.
But what strikes me is my passive consumption of these online service. I am browsing, absorbing, spending and supporting. With the exception of my blog, which I do not make money from, I rely on these online features, while producing nothing. I contribute nothing except nameless hits on peoples' blog stats, furthering the ever pervasive market research.
My history with technology was that I was born and educated before we became so dependant on the forms so prevalent today. I was raised before microwaves and laptops, I went to school before Internet and cellphones, I learned to type on a computer larger than our TV, I played video games back before Macintosh computers had been re-branded Apple.
Interrogating girls relationships with technology interests me greatly, because I do believe I see a gendered difference in our interactions with technology both in our proficiency utilizing it and in our under representation in fields such as web design and computer programing.
Is this a learned behaviour? Would my awkwardness around technology different if I had have been a boy? Why do I ask for help instead of sort out problems myself? Why isn't a girl geek a feature in films and tv shows?
I really want to do this project! I want to teach other how to make online journals, giving them then skills to produce a blog and the confidence to learn new things. I want to learn how to use video equipment, which I have always want to learn, but haven't out of fear and shame! I want to work together with other girls, finding out their experiences when it come to technology! I want to apply the readings in our course to better understand our behaviours and the construction of girls when it come to technology. I want to meet girls who work in the competitive computer based industry, and I want to find out their stories.
I want to make a blog that tells of the trials and tribulations of this group project about three girls and their troubled with technology.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
References
Borg, A. (2009). Institute for Women in Technology. Retrieved Nov 29, 2011
Currie, K., & Pomerantz. (2009). Chapter 2: “Hardly innocent” popular meanings of girlhood (27- 52). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Driscoll, C. (2008). Girls Today: Girls, girl culture and girls studies. Journal of Girlhood Studies, Summer 1(1) 13-32.
Driver, S. (2007). Queer Girls and Popular Culture, (1-30). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Girls DJ.com. Retrieved Nov, 26, 2011. http://www.girlsdj.com/participants.html
Hanra, H. (Oct, 28, 2011). The Gaurdian UK, retrieved Nov 24, 2011.
Lesko, N. (1996). Past, present, and future conceptions of adolescence. Educational Theory, 46(4), 453.
Lipkin, E. (2009) Girls Studies. Berkley, California: Seal Press.
Kearney, M.C. (2009). Coalescing: The development of Girls Studies, Feminist Formations Spring 21 (1) 1-28.
Nelly. (2011). Young Feminist Wire. Retrieved Nov 10 2011
Oda, T. (2009) Slide Share-Present Yourself. Retrieved 27, Nov, 2011
Journal #1: The Beginning
When Nat, Erin and I began to formulate the idea of interrogating girls’ relationships with technology, the idea sort of spurred a mini revelation in me. I had flash backs of my own girlhood. One flashback was of me at eight years old in computer class, defiant about learning to type and always peaking under the typing skins. I still pick and pluck at a solid ten words per minute. My second flashback was seeing my mother always getting my dad to fix the VCR, or push play on the “boom box”. My mom is still fearful of the universal remote and every time I try to teach her how to text on her cellphone, she yells. “TOO MANY STEPS!!”. My revelation was: at a young age, girls are not encouraged to be tech-savy, and as a result, many avoid technological jobs or degrees in computer science, or they remain fearful of technology in their adult lives. Most cartoons and sitcoms depict men as boys as the nerds, mad scientists or the brains behind the operation. Girls and boys in elementary schools learn behind the same computers, but it is the boys who are most likely to be found behind laptops, soundboards, cameras and video game consoles in their free-time. I don’t believe it is for lack of desire that girls don’t engage technology as often as boys but instead, they are deterred by the negative "computer nerd" stereotype and girls are simply just not encouraged to do so.
Think back to high school, who was that kid the teacher always called upon to fix the power point or projector? Was it a boy? How many DJ’s do you know that are girls? How many girls have grown up to work for Apple? Open Source? The media support centre at Uvic? I am excited to begin this quest to find and locate these geek girls, computer chicks, and techno-freak females, that often go under the radar and deconstruct this social conditioning around girls and technology. I am excited to learn how to blog from Erin, to learn how to use iMovie from Nat, and to put to death my girlhood fear of everything technological, so other girls can too!
In Acknowledgement
We would like to start by acknowledging the territories. We would like to acknowledge that the area where we live and learn is unceded Coast Salish traditional lands. We recognize Victoria is located on Lekwungun traditional territory, and thank the peoples of the current day Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.
Secondly we are in gratitude to Dr. Jo-Anne Lee,whom without her vision and support we would not have had the opportunity nor the inspiration to participate in this process. For this we Thank You!
We would like to thank all of our wonderful survey participants for sharing such candid accounts of your relationships with technology. You inspire us! And through access to our blog, and through your work, will continue to inspire girls throughout your paths in this world.
We would like to thank our friends and colleagues for their input and their advice.
We would also like the thank the readers of our blog. We aspire to understand further the societal barriers that prevent us girls from feeling more confident in entering and succeeding in this Tech-World we live in. We hope that this site has provided some insightful, feminist analysis, and perhaps some inspiration and tools to delve further into these fields and forms of production.
Thank You and Enjoy,
Girl Power 3.0
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