A Study of Girls’ and Young Women’s Electronic Information Design and Content Preferences
By Denise E. Agosto, Ph.D., Project Investigator
For many years now, women have held a minority of the high-status, high-salary
jobs in computer- and technology-related fields (Comber et al., 1997;
DeRemer, 1999; Dorman, 1998; Gorriz & Medina, 2000). Various factors
account for women’s under-representation in these professions, including
adolescent girls’ generally less frequent use of computer games,
which are primarily targeted at male audiences; adolescent girls’
reduced levels of computer confidence; and young girls’ gradual
loss of interest in computers as they mature (Comber at al., 1997).
Another major cause of young women’s lower interest in computer
and related technology fields is that interface designers generally do
not understand young people’s experiences and perspectives. As Laurel
(1990) explained, user-centered examinations of youth computer use are
sparse. The result is computer software, websites, and other electronic
information resources of limited interest to young people, including young
women.
The “Leading Young
Women to the Sciences and Technology” Project
In response to these issues, Douglass College’s Douglass Project
for Rutgers Women in Math, Science, and Engineering, in collaboration
with the Girl Scouts of the USA, secured a grant from the Toyota USA Foundation.
Part I of the “Leading Young Women to the Sciences and Technology”
sought to develop institutes, materials, and other methods for encouraging
adolescent women to enter computer, science, and technology fields.
Creating a Framework
For Part II of the grant, the project investigator created a framework
for evaluating the appeal of websites, CD-ROMs, and other electronic information
resources to young women. This framework, called “The GirlsTech
Model,” was developed by analyzing library and information science
and gender studies research, and through original theoretical work.
After creating the GirlsTech Model, the project investigator reviewed
37 CD-ROMs and 342 websites to determine the degree to which they reflected
the evaluation criteria set forth in the model. She also tested the validity
of the model using group interviews with twenty-two 14- and 15-year-old
females. Finally, the project investigator triangulated the group interview
results by presenting the model to a panel of technology and education
experts.
The resulting GirlsTech model -- the basis for this website – includes
the following eight evaluation criteria related to gender:
• Confidence
• Collaboration
• Personal identification
• Contextuality
• Flexibility/Motility
• Social Connectivity
• Inclusion
• Graphic/Multimedia Concentration
Each of these eight criteria is explained briefly below:
Resources that offer strong encouragement and support
can help to counteract the gender-related lack of confidence in their
computer abilities that many young women possess. Since most young women
prefer collaboration to competition when studying and learning, resources
that avoid competition are preferable to those that present information
through competitive formats, such as scored quiz games. Moreover, most
young women learn best through personal identification, or though role
playing and connecting lessons and problems to their personal lives. Young
women also generally prefer contextuality, or lessons, problems, and other
information presented in a narrative or story format.
Young women also tend to prefer electronic resources that have multiple
possible navigational paths and many correct answers to questions and
problems posed, or resources that support flexibility/motility. Most females,
adolescent as well as, tend to value computers for their ability to connect
them with other human beings, or as tools for social connectivity, making
resources that enable contact with live individuals or that couch information
in terms of human relationships the best choices for young women. To express
the idea that all young women can become scientists and engineers, science
and technology resources should depict roughly equal numbers of women
and men, as well as people from many racial and ethnic groups, in positions
of status and leadership, supporting the concept of inclusion. Finally,
most young women prefer electronic information resources with considerable
amounts of high quality graphic and multimedia context, or resources with
strong graphic/multimedia concentration, to plain-text resources.
Resources that are strong in many or all of these eight areas are more
likely to appeal to young women than are resources that are weak in many
or all of these areas. Consequently, resources selected using the GirlsTech
Model can encourage young women to increase their use of websites and
related technology, thereby increasing their computer experience and confidence
and making computer and technology professions more appealing career options.
The project investigator also generated lists of recommended websites
and CD-ROMs that were selected according to the GirlsTech Model. However,
it is important to note that electronic information resources are ephemeral.
CD-ROMs quickly go out of production, and websites regularly move, change,
and disappear. CD-ROMs have particularly short shelf lives, and many of
the CD-ROMs recommended for this study are no longer in production. As
a result, the GirlsTech website has been revised accordingly, and most
of the recommended CD-ROMs have been removed. Thus, the GirlsTech Model
is the greatest contribution of this work, due to its likely duration
beyond the obsolescence of specific CD-ROMs and websites. Teachers, librarians,
parents, and other adult intermediaries will be able to apply this model
to new resources for many years to come.
