10 10 220?

The images continues to be set and embedded. It has been incorporated into everyday society so much that the mirror reflection has been displayed in commercials.

It is an ongoing challenge to watch commericals that include technology and have women of color positioned in subordinate positions around the technology and never with their hands on it completing any tasks. Today, the commerical for 10-10-220 which promotes long distance service usage for a buck (dollar) had an African American women sitting at a computer complaining that she can't get it to print. A football player and spokes person for the 10-10-220 ad walks up types on several keys saying some technical language very quickly and gets it to work. She looks up telling him that he is so "smart". He then says using 10-10-220 is smart for only a dollar. Now, a football player generally know in our society as "dumb" jocks is considered "smarter" than the average African American Women when it comes to technology. Women of color are very rarely seen in strong technology positions but this is a clear indication that they are considered not smart enough to even get a document to print, so why should they bother with technology at all?

These messages are major signals to young girls and women they are not expected to achieve any level of expertise, comfort or control of content that involve technology. This is more than a simple social impact it develops into a major economic impact when it affects education, information, ideas and services.

Women of Color in Technology

The ITAA has recently sent out a report that African American women are decreasing in their interest and participation in technology while Latina and Asian women have increased. The Barnes and Noble incident is only one of many incidences that go unnoticed as their contribution to why such issues occur. If computers are listed in the Men Interests section, commericals including those like the Dell Interns which features African American Men and women of other ethnic backgrounds but never a African American women engage in any technology use why should the report by ITAA be so surprising. There are many social activities and media content that contribute to this social problem. All of these will be discussed further in upcoming blogs.

Can we have technology equity if the bottom line is money?

Now to root of these blogs. One of the biggest responses to why there are so few video games or other technologies geared toward girls or women is because they don't "sell" so companies can't make money marketing to girls. The ironic part is that they don't sell because they are not marketed to girls or women. It becomes an endless circle. Many decision makers have made a blanket decision to not make any attempts at changing this, it has become so evident to me as I walked into Barnes and Noble Book Store in Washington DC.

I decided that I wanted to take a look at the tech magazines and see what was going on in the industry. I have been in this book store many times and bought many books and tech magazine from here so it was not a first time visit. As I started to look for the place I once found the magazines previously I realized they had been moved I started to search in the different sections. As I am looking at the titles listed above the magazines I find one named "Men's Interests," I didn't think much of it until I looked at the next title "Computers," side by side. I thought this has to be a mistake. I begin looking at all the titles surrounding these titles. Directly across was "Transportation" (cars), on the other side of computers was "Sports" on the opposite side of Transportation was "Entertainment" and all of these were in the back of the magazine section.

So of course now I go looking for the women's interest sections. I find a section called "Juvenile" under this section I find Working Mother Magazine, ePregnancy.com, some magazines for children and teens, and parenting magazines. I am not sure but does ePreganancy.com fall under Juvenile? I go back to the magazine section for computers I pick up my few magazines including Working Mother and ePregnancy.com, curious to know what this ePregnancy is really about, Smart Computing and JAVA developers. I proceed to counter and ask the cashier "Why is the computer section for magazines in the Men's Interests section. She explains to me that there is a Magazine Manager that organizes the section who was not present but that I could talk to the store manager who was only 2 feet away from me. She called him over and I asked the same question.

His reply, "We did not set the magazines up in any way to offend anyone, but we get our magazine display information from the New York head office, it is organized in the manner that we MAKE money." Men are the ones that buy computer magazines." He then decided to take me to the women's interest section, which I never found because it was facing the glass outside and in the FRONT of the magazine section. If I recalled the Men's Interest section was in the back. My recommendation was to have the computer magazines on the wall or in a central location between the Men's Interest and Women's Interest so that customers leaving either section would see the magazines. His reply, the wall was too small to have the computer magazines there, but he will discuss my concerns at their next meeting on the magazine displays. Again he apologized and indicated that it was not designed to offend.

Needless to say I was offended. Should any woman feel comfortable going to a magazine section labeled "Men's Interests?" I don't think any man would feel comfortable going to a section labeled "Women's Interests." As the Executive Officer of a nonprofit that focuses on promoting technology education and enrichment for young girls and woman, how do I convince a teenage girl to find resources about computers in the "Men's Interests" Section?

We will be sending a letter to Barnes and Noble and continuing our campaign on technology equity. Technology is neutral, it is the presentation of it that makes the difference. Keep checking this weblog for ongoing updates.

I have decided to start this weblog. It took some time and energy to begin this but I think I have it all together now. The final decision to start these web logs was because of an incident that happened in Barnes and Nobles here in DC. I realize that some of the inequalities that exist are because of some the expected social behaviors that our society has grown accostumed to. These behaviors then begin to show up in places that I don't think we even think of, we are so used to the behavior that we just ignore it. I will elaborate more on the incident in another blog. As the executive officer of a nonprofit that was designed to empower people with tools I realize that the empowerment we seek includes some external behavior changes in our society. So this blogging will be used to openly discuss them.