Women and Technology

I was reading today an article for the Nobel 2010 prizes. On the 5th of October 2010 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010 to Andre Geim/ University of Manchester, UK and Konstantin Novoselov/ University of Manchester, UK "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene"

(more info at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/press.html)

I was so curious of what graphene is, that spend about an hour after work at home, searching the web for info. Then I thought of posting it on my blog/ facebook page, as it may interest other friends also. And then it hit me... 

My best male friend always makes fun of me for liking new technologies and wanting to learn such details. He finds it pointless and says that I scare men with such interests! Ofcourse I do not agree, but I must recognize that most men I know, find it, maybe not intimidating, but indifferent and not charming (in cases you know more info than they do).

That got me thinking of the relationship between technology and the genders....

 

Technology has traditionally been a male area. Even nowadays, most of the women are facing difficulties using for the 1st time let's say an iMac (although they know how to use a Windows PC -only software, not hardware) or a new electronic car, a Playstation etc...

On the opposite side, men are so familiar with every new technology, that sometimes for some women it is scary, as they fill useless (try learn your 60 years old parents how to read and compose text messages... only fathers can text,mothers find it hard even to read an incoming text in their mobile). Maybe it is something in our DNA, someone could say...

But I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Men DO stare some devices like they have just landed from Mars... which ones? a washing machine for an example! so many buttons, how can they combine temperature, clothes, washing program, cleaning products all at the same time while avoiding explosion? The same thoughts pass through a woman's mind when hearing the word iPad (the majority of my girlfriends has not even heard it...)

Both genders use technology daily in their life (women claim to not like it, but can easily buy services and products through internet or set up Facebook pages...), but as men, choose to ignore knowledge in anything they found not useful or boring.

To be honest I recently found out how to use the washing machine (and still I always read the manual before every wash), not because I am less of a women ( I wax, put make up on, wear high hills etc...), but because I find it a boring process.

So, Alex (who by the way is not following by blog, because he can not understand the purpose of having one), it has nothing to do with genders. It has to do with interests. And if a guy is intimidated by my interests, then he doesn't suit me!

Moreover, the word technology comes from the Greek technología (τεχνολογία) — téchnē (τέχνη), an 'art', 'skill' or 'craft' and -logía (-λογία), the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline, so studying the art, can not be that bad ;)