New York Times on Web Girls

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…a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17).

The quote above is from an article by Stephanie Rosenbloom, who writes for the New York Times Fashion-Style section(s). The article’s placement makes Mary Hodder angry. Hodder says,

So when they interview people like Doc Searls or [Loic LeMeur] or David Weinberger, all of whom are very smart about tech, those articles are in the tech section, but when they talk to girls, who for the record, are far more technical than these three tech experts, girls are put in Fashion.

Can you tell I’m pissed? WTF?

While she has a point, she could make it more judiciously. Working for the Fashion-Style section, Rosenbloom has written loads of features like this on the quotidian emergence of webby trends. One of my favorites was on Atoosa Rubenstein’s Alpha Kitty YouTube series inspired by the book, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B, and Back Again.” In that article, Rosenbloom asks regarding Rubenstein,

Can this old-media veteran make it in the virtual world, where so many others have stumbled?

One thing going for her is that teenage girls are more socially active than boys online and are more likely than boys to participate in blogs, bulletin boards and chat forums, according to Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com.

I think that’s the point she was sharpening with the article that put Hodder’s knickers in a twist.

*** UPDATE ***

Mary Hodder has revised the post at Napsterization, deleting the reference to Shirky and referencing instead Loic LeMeur. She’s also temporized nicely to include assurances that her post wasn’t “about David or Loic or Doc (all extremely supportive of women in tech, btw)….” She goes on to say, “My point is that the NYTimes puts men who talk tech and trends or social impact in tech/biz, and women who code web art / pages in fashion.” I’ve left a comment asking if she’d care to share the reasons for that update. My comment remains in her moderation queue.

I think I understand why the four females featured (ages 13, 14, 16 and 17) aren’t found yet in the Technology section with Doc and David; but, the feature itself is well placed to pick up a readership of young females who — we hope — will have their techno-interests validated and affirmed by their peers in Rosenbloom’s story. Rosenbloom acknowledges,

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2024, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2024 to 2024, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

It should be obvious to even the most committed feminist that spreading the word about the disparity, giving it the widest possible exposure, including in the Style-Fashion sections of the newspaper, is a positive gesture.I’m glad that people writing on the fashion beat are clued in to what’s happening in pop tech. Mary Hodder should be glad too.

[tags]whoa, no money quote from danah boyd, wtf[/tags]

6 thoughts on “New York Times on Web Girls”

  1. Hi Frank,
    Yes, but if girls in tech are fashion and boys in tech are technology, according to the NY Times, isn’t the message that when girls do it, it’s well.. fashion, frivolous, ephemeral, not serious, (all the things we love fashion for but when it comes to business make it easy for men to dismiss women over) but also, not well.. serious like math and science and all those things boys do that get them into the technology pages as respected technologists and taken seriously?

    These girls are just fashion makers by that standard. People respect power, and coding is a powerful position to be in. I want girls to see that power and reach for it. Not think, “oh, what I do is just frivolous.”

    Can you imagine an article about boys 15-18 who make code for design items like things in second life, world of warcraft, webpages and myspace pages, being in the fashion section?

    I really don’t think the NYTimes is doing women a favor here.

    Regarding the sections of the paper, lots of people just read by section. You are right that girls may (this is a stereotype but why not, both our posts are full of them) be more likely to read an article in the fashion pages.. but do you think they will think, “yeah, I want to be a coder?” But boys who read about coders in the tech section are often dying to do that.

    mary

    mary

  2. Oh, one additional item, the NYTimes left sidebar is ranked, and bolded, implying importance.

    It’s not that fashion, style or food aren’t important, but if this is really the same as technology then why is the NYTimes sidebar, for browsing topic areas ordered as follows:

    # World
    # U.S.

    * Politics
    * Washington
    * Education

    # N.Y./Region
    # Business
    # Technology
    # Sports
    # Science
    # Health
    # Opinion
    # Arts

    * Books
    * Movies
    * Music
    * Television
    * Theater

    # Style

    * Dining & Wine
    * Fashion & Style
    * Home & Garden
    * Weddings/ Celebrations

    # Travel

    What there is serious news? The stuff at the top. What is more for play, not serious, not as important? The stuff at the bottom.

    Technology is #5, and gets a fully bolded category. Fashion is under #11, as the second sub-item in light grey.

    I think that says it all.

  3. Two quibbles and I will let go of this with the agreement that the struggles against sexism for parity in the workplace, in particular for technology training and opportunities are not over.

    1. The sidebar in the NYT appears in the order you listed, but it scans better there than it does in my comments lay-out… the page composition lessens the subjective distance, I think, between “World” and “Style.” The article in question was on page 1 of section G of the dead trees edition of today’s paper, better placement perhaps than the page 7 of section C technology articles. In fact, since my quibble is about layout, you might want to take a peek at the TECHNOLOGY link. You’ll see that Rosenbloom’s “Fashion” story is listed at the bottom of the 2/21/2008 Technology index page.
    2. Ms. Rosenbloom writes for STYLE. It’s her beat. The emphasis on beat journalism is shifting all across the country, but the NYT today seems to pretty much segregate their contributors by section. Rosenbloom’s work frequently has a technology focus, but the emphasis on people and popular culture manifestation makes it well placed in STYLE. TECHNOLOGY articles in today’s paper were written by people named: Steve, Steven, Jesse (disambiguation – Jesse is male), Miguel, Michael, Saul and Stephanie. Some of these are cross linked from the BUSINESS section. Stephanie’s story is cross linked from FASHION. (All the Fashion writers today are female, and the rest of the STYLE sections breaks out a 2 to 1 ratio women to men writers).

    Today the TECHNOLOGY stories are boring BS about companies and products. The STYLE stories are about people, their homes and their lives. To the extent that the journalists themselves live in isolated silos of beat journalism, and their editors are happy each with his or her own fiefdom, I think that this is how they’ll be publishing the paper for some time to come. I think the real challenge at the NYT comes down to integrating women tech writers and women science writers. (Today’s SCIENCE section included stories by Dennis, Kenneth, Thom, Keith, Martin, William, and Warren).

  4. The STYLE stories are about people, their homes and their lives.

    And just to be a pain in the …., aren’t these kinds of things what many of us (me most days) would prefer that technology stories become more about ?

    Heck, I know almost nothing tangible about technology, and virtually zero about coding, but it sure seems to me that amongst geeks technology is essentially as much about fashion and style (particularly if you can think about all the performace comparisons in a large sense), albeit in a somewhat twisted way to date, as it is about social or societal power.

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  6. Jon and Leslie,

    I’d first like to repeat my compliment to Stephanie Rosenbloom. I think she is a very good writer crafting informative stories that are fun to read within the contextual boundaries of her STYLE and Fashion beat. Maybe I should be embarrassed to enjoy her work, but I like good puff pastries and candy bars too. Guilty pleasures. The fact that her paper is the apex of main stream journalism in the US and enormously influential in bolstering the USian cultural status quo may detract from her work, and that is central to Leslie’s criticism.

    I think that the story as printed was well placed in FASHION. Leslie’s post is a nail-gun on full automatic driving many points home. Among the most relevant is this:

    I have five daughters, all of whom think coding is a normal thing to do. They laugh at this continued attempt by the MSM to be defined by their gender. Sorry Frank, this article is not a move in the right direction. This is bullshit. Samo© Samo© A piece of shit on the kitchen counter or a piece of shit on the work bench of a home carpentry corner is still a piece of shit.

    And, agreeing with this on its own terms, the article would be just as stinky in the Tech section as in Fashion. But I don’t entirely agree. This is a story about young people, basically girls informed by their privileged class American experience, enjoying the use of expensive appliances, passing the time creatively. As Leslie points out, the gender bound cultural setting…

    They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

    … is cloying at best. Yet, as Jon points out, our goal is to ease the integration of technology into the daily lives of people. Rosenbloom’s story is about one area where young people have accomplished that as the quotidian interstices of the web become more and more woven through our lives.

    Leslie quotes Chomsky,

    “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

    Clearly the American Revolution will not be fought in the layout and semantic context of the New York Times. The tinkle of wine glasses, the clatter of cutlery on fine china, the conversation of markets will drown out the information passed in the streets.

    And it’s one if by land, two if by sea
    Three if by guile and duplicity
    Brookline

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