May 31, 04:12 pm: [Net2]Gender

(live blogging with all the attendant misspellings, mistakes and missed contexts)

Gender and the social web: new tools, same old stuff?
Speakers: Catherine Geanuracos, Christine Herron, Fran Maier, Lisa Stone, Susan Mernit (Immoderator)

Bits:

  • Mernet: give everyone a platform. Women are using the social networking tools in different ways?
  • Momsrising.org – subtext is about how people are going to drupal and what does that mean for organizing?
  • Aha (based on Stone comment): Social tools help moms to stay closer to home. The open new career opportunities to women
  • Stone: Looking at the ways that the way women’s use of the internet is presented. Women are so successful online because they are excellent listeners. They listen like hell. And that’s the secret (it’s the secret for working w/ any traditionally less empowered or mainstream community)
  • Stone: talked about the way drupal allowed them to set up a site that allows people to take the conversation they want to go
  • Stone: question – what kind of tools do we develop and how do we use them?
  • (confusion of sex for gender – still being talked about as a binary issue – not as something that is greater than just what piece of bio you got at birth)
  • from the room: able to use these connection tools to not just change their social connections but also change their economic status
  • Momsrising.org: people will use linked in for other’s advantage before their own. What does this mean about women’s motivation in a service to others kind of way?
  • from the room: decision/navigation can generate different behavior and attract different audiences. GuerillaNewNetwork is built around an army metaphor and so less likely to attract women users
  • Herron: it’s not just about being pink. It’s about the behavioral process that’s coded in somewhere. So what happens if we are absent?
  • (how does this get applied to other communities?)
  • from the room: myspace is sexist. Go to the search function and it defaults to search for women. Sexism is alive online because it’s alive offline.
  • from the room: how do you organize the civic society equivalent of linuxchicks
  • Stone: the way to make a difference is to get active
  • Momsrising.org: deliberate mentorship of other women. Needs to be strategic and forward looking. Who comes after you? Don’t be ashamed about wanting to advance women in these fileds.
  • (action item: best places for women to go get tech training)
  • (action item: deliberate mentorship)
  • Mernit: share best practices. You’ve built something. How do you make it work?
  • Stone: the way to subvert the dominate hierarchy was to give up control
  • Herron: if you’re having a good party it’s about your guest list. Take a systems level view. Where are trying to go, why do we care, and what else do we need to do to get to the end.
  • Momsrising: you have to know your goal and actually try to make sure that you are moving toward.
  • Mernit: you have to just do it, you have to have a vision, you have to have a platform, and bottoms up just helps

tagged: , ,

Marnie Webb  |