For a long time, I have been tops when it comes to tech. I’ve been courted by its marketers, appealed-to by Steve Jobs and seen as the major driver of an entire industry that has changed the world. I am male. Therefore, I’ve been seen as the dominant force among gamers, mobile phone users, computer builders, coders and tech heads who spend way too much on gadgets.
It looks, however, like men may lose the spot atop the pillar. In fact we may have already lost it.
New research from Intel’s resident ethnologist and anthropologist Genevieve Bell (as outlined in this story in The Atlantic) shows women lead the way in far more technological categories than previously thought.
Bell’s studies show females lead tech adoption in areas such as internet use, mobile location-based services, skype, texting, social networking, e-readers and more.
The short but strong Atlantic article (by Alexis Madrigal) posits this reality gap may be due to a subtle sexism in the tech industry. She looks at how tech products are marketed, the dearth of women in key roles both in the industry and in venture capital organizations, and the possibility that some key points in the industry’s history may have glossed over contributions made by women.
Quoting Bell, the article closes with a call-to-action that marketers should heed.
So it turns out if you want to find out what the future looks like, you should be asking women. And just before you think that means you should be asking 18-year-old women, it actually turns out the majority of technology users are women in their 40s, 50s and 60s. So if you wanted to know what the future looks like, those turn out to be the heaviest users of the most successful and most popular technologies on the planet as we speak.
