gender gap
Latest
UN study finds female voice assistants reinforce harmful stereotypes
For the record, the appropriate response to being called a slut isn't, "I'd blush if I could." But that's what Siri is programmed to say. According to a report by the United Nations, the fact that most voice assistant are gendered as young women is reinforcing harmful stereotypes that women are docile and eager to please, even when they're called lewd names.
Google says it was paying men less than women in some jobs
In a surprising contrast with typical pay disparity situations, Google found it was paying men less than women working in similar roles in 2018. In particular, Level 4 Software Engineers who identified as men "received less discretionary funds than women," Google said.
Nielsen: Consoles bridge TV gender gap
When you boil the American people down into a set of television-oriented numbers, women spend more time on average in front of the ol' tube than men, according to Nielson. Specifically, women between the ages of 18 and 34 watch an average of four hours and 11 minutes of TV per day, whereas men in that same age bracket watch an average of three hours and 34 minutes.That's a disparity of 37 minutes, but factoring in the amount of time spent playing console games reduces that gap. Average daily console usage for women -- in this case, time spent with a 360, PS3 or Wii -- clocks in at 22 minutes, with guys pulling down more than twice as much, playing an average of 48 minutes a day. Combine all these figures together, and the gap between daily male screen-time and daily female screen-time drops to just 11 minutes: Four hours, 22 minutes a day for men and four hours, 33 minutes a day for women.There's a lot to glean from this research, like the fact that time spent watching TV still far outweighs time spent gaming in the average American household. More importantly, however, is the fact coach potatism is a gender-neutral phenomenon, and we should all probably go for a walk or something.
Online gamers are logging more hours, but spending less money
Interactive marketing firm Future Ads revealed a very telling survey from Gamevance today, showing that casual gamers were playing games for longer, yet were spending less money on them overall. Other notable sections of the survey showed a declining gender gap in the gaming population, a melding of the "casual" and "hardcore" gamer markets, and a decline in purchases made for video game consoles.Gamevance's survey revealed that 61% of the 8,000 "casual" gamers who responded said they were playing games for longer periods of time than they were a year ago. However, 80% of those same gamers reported that they were cutting back on console game purchases while 77% of the 8,000 stated that the biggest drawback to console gaming was that it was too expensive.Pair this with the rising Free Realms, Wizard 101, and FusionFall populations, as well as the proliferation of free online gaming sites, and you have a very noticable switch to cheaper gaming alternatives. Will this recession be the rise of the free to play gaming model in America, or will this die off once the economy stabilizes?[Via GigaOm]
Technology is a girl's best friend?
It's fairly obvious companies have realized that men aren't the only ones doing damage on the credit card at the gadget store, but recent studies have drawn some perplexing conclusions about just how much the ladies love their tech. Putting a presumably prominent notion about women to the test, Oxygen Network (a cable company owned and operated by females) found that 75 percent of the women they surveyed would choose a plasma television over a diamond necklace (take that, DeBeers). To further substantiate the findings, women were found to own about 6.6 gadgets each, while men sported 6.9 -- definitely not a very macho-sized difference. Not even the closet was safe, as 86 percent of ladies said they would prefer a digital camcorder over a fresh pair of designer kicks. Women said they would likely increase their involvement with digicams, cellphones, email, and SMS over the next 5 years, drawing the gender technology gap ever closer. Of course, studies like these should always be give attention with a grain of salt, but we'll admit that the industry is better off with gals' design concerns and needs in the mix, and besides, how else would we be able to excuse ourselves from rebuying all our gadgets in pink?[Thanks, David]
