Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

October 29 2006

Just call Me Geek Girl

We have real snow today, which didn't keep RT from heading into his office for a bit. It's not the first snowfall of the season, but it's the first one that looks like it might have staying power.

That means that I am left to my own devices for most of the day. I suppose I could go outside and shovel the walk, but I wouldn't want to undercut RT's masculinity. We may live in the 21st century, but gender-based role expectations à la 1950 something are alive and well in our house. Most of the time, it works pretty well for us. And whilst we are both fine with how it plays out for cooking, cleaning, and taking out the garbage, we are all about equality when it comes to techie goodness.

We're both a little, urmmm, geeky. OK, a lot geeky.

In general RT is our in-house network and database guy and I am our in-house web wizard. We're both enthusiastic about new technologies, and we are both, budget and time permitting, early adopters. I guess it's because we share that sort of thing that I was so amused by a commentary on CNET today entitled Top products with high 'wife-acceptance factor' .

From the article:

Today, WAF is one of those dirty little secrets of the electronics world, and it's both openly discussed and rarely talked about, because it's now integrated into the DNA of so many products. It's not always called WAF, because, after all, not everyone is married, but it's become fairly common practice for manufacturers to market electronics directly to women as they wink at men.

The article goes on to talk about how Sony sought to increase sales of one of their television lines by making the slogan associated with them more appealing to women. Apparently ease of use is an important part of WAF. Sheesh.

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of my freelance techie time trying to explain things that seem awfully simple to me to men who are truly clueless. I do the same thing when I am working with women. The only gender based difference I see is that men don't generally admit they have a problem until they have screwed it up big time, and then there is this odd mixture of shame and bravado involved. Helping women is really much easier.

Women tell me what the problem is, I look for (and usually find) a solution. They say thank-you, and pay my bill.

With men, they have to be sure that I am aware that its an example of some sort of well thought out plan by Big Business to take advantage of them and that the knowledge that I have (and they don't) is esoteric in the extreme. They also grumble as they pay the bill until I point out that the Best Buy Geek Squad charges $129 to put a memory chip in their computer and I do that sort of thing for free if I have the box open for something else.

Somehow, once they understand that I work (relatively) cheap, they have something to smile about. They are no longer tech-impaired men, they are men with an on-call computer girl.

It works for me...all the way to the bank.

posted by taming at 13:37 | link | comments (2)|
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Comments:

#1 30 October 2006 - 05:00

I love this post! I'm currently grading student drafts on gender differences in conversation, and I really appreciate the balance you've got here between tradition and non-tradition and the general trends that can be highly distinctive in both men and women in conversation. Studies show that women generally communicate with connection in mind, while men generally communicate with a one-up, one-down ranking system at the back of their minds. Hence, a woman who is knowledgeable in a field that is perceived as a masculine one can be a threat to a non-techie male.

Those trends are not across the board, however. I found that I had to deal with feelings of inferiority because my son-in-law is such an accomplished chef that he made me feel inadequate in the kitchen. When I got over that, I learned TONS from him.

Admiring your blog still from afar!