
Sorry, Young Man, You're Not the Most Important Demographic in Tech - afuchs
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/sorry-young-white-guy-youre-not-the-most-important-demographic-in-tech/258087/
======
untog
"A young man contemplating his decreasing significance on the world stage"
...hilarious.

There's some truth in this. And it's what often concerns me about the tech
world- that it's a big echo chamber of young, tech savvy people that actually
represents a tiny demographic. It's one of the reasons I like living in New
York- it gives me perspective. I see hundreds of people that are using
'dumbphones' and are quite happy with them. I know I've been reading too much
TechCrunch when my friends who work in fashion, media, finance- anything but
tech- tell me to shut the hell up.

"Path? What's that? A social network that limits how many friends I can have?
Why the hell would I use that?". Sometimes it's good to be exposed to a little
cynicism in life.

~~~
look_lookatme
I agree with you in theory but I'm equally, if not more, skeptical of whatever
perspective I think I'm getting from living in NYC.

~~~
sneak
Concentric bubbles of culture.

Entrepreneur bubble, inside of the hacker bubble, inside of the "internet
culture" bubble, inside the Anglophone bubble, inside of the white male
firstworlder bubble...

It's really quite hard to get actionable perspective, sometimes.

------
goodside
This is an extremely bold and unsupported assertion:

"[Men] were the one who decided what products failed and what products
succeeded. That's why companies like Asus tweet ridiculous, sexist stuff.
That's one reason why less than 10 percent of venture capital-backed companies
have female founders and there is a massive gender gap in tech."

There are plenty of industries where there is a huge discrepancy between the
gender ratios of consumers and entrepreneurs. Fashion and cosmetics companies
for example are far more less female-dominated than one might presume from the
extreme over-representation of females in their customer bases. The author
hasn't given any reason to suspect that male dominance in tech is caused by
gender-linked consumer trends influencing employer demand rather than more
mundane explanations like gender differences in employee preference for
developing programming skills.

~~~
jaems33
Indeed. Despite the fact that women's fashion is far more lucrative and with a
larger market, the majority of top end fashion houses are headed by men or
whose label is a man's name.

~~~
ljf
Indeed, but they are men who have made it their life's mission to understand
their audience needs and enjoy everything that comes with that. I think the
issue is young men in tech (and many other indistries) presuming that everyone
is just like them and have their needs and interests.

------
citricsquid
No evidence is presented that women are the more valuable market, just that on
average they spend more time online and using their devices. Which would you
pick: 10 customers that use a mobile phone for 20 hours each vs. 100 customers
that use a mobile phone for 3 hours each?

No statistics are posted on how much male usage counts for, saying 17 percent
more is a big difference when 100% is 4 hours vs. 40 hours.

> One huge reason is the relative lack of women at major venture capital
> firms, startups, electronics makers, and Internet companies.

This seems like a strange conclusion, the obvious conclusion is that on
average 1 18 - 24 Male (the "most valuable demographic") is more likely to
spend money with the advertiser after seeing advertising than a female
counterpart, isn't it? They present no evidence disproving the obvious
conclusion. I also don't see how tech adoption can be that important to a
company like Apple. Maybe if it's 25% more likely a female that owns an iPhone
will recommend to a friend and have them purchase it and the chances of a
female purchasing vs. a male based on an advert is equal then sure, but if a
male is 10x more likely to buy after seeing an advert what value is women
causing "adoption", isn't people buying your products adoption?

Not a very good article. I would suggest it's just written to fit the
narrative ("not enough women in tech") or it's just really badly written: you
can't make assertions without proving them.

Sales = adoption.

~~~
donzimmer
"No evidence is presented that women are the more valuable market, just that
on average they spend more time online and using their devices."

Perhaps that's because the evidence has already been stated clearly?

Here are the stats:

"Women account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United
States, and over the next decade, they will control two thirds of consumer
wealth.

Women make or influence 85% of all purchasing decisions, and purchase over 50%
of traditional male products, including automobiles, home improvement products
and consumer electronics.

BUT 91% of women say that advertisers don’t understand them."

(via [http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/24/the-
top-30-stat...](http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/24/the-top-30-stats-
you-need-to-know-when-marketing-to-women/) )

~~~
xanados
Those aren't real stats. Those are just numbers on a page. That link doesn't
include any methodology for how they collected these numbers, doesn't include
any references, doesn't included any reason I should believe any of them
whatsoever. Some of those numbers are either obviously false or obviously
misleading, such as the theory that 51% of private wealth is controlled by
women when we know the huge concentration of wealth in the US and know the
huge disparity in sexes in the top 1% of earners. This statistic thus is
either completely false (perhaps they surveyed a power law distribution or
something), or their definition is extremely poorly represented by their
choice of words.

Edit: It's probably not a good sign that they have two directly contradictory
statistics for the amount of US private wealth controlled by women.

~~~
enobrev
Not really interested in this specific argument about whether or not the OP
has real statistics, but I thought this was interesting (and includes sources,
which I haven't checked).

<http://www.catalyst.org/publication/256/buying-power>

[http://www.she-conomy.com/report/marketing-to-women-quick-
fa...](http://www.she-conomy.com/report/marketing-to-women-quick-facts)

------
csomar
It began with

 _That's one reason why less than 10 percent of venture capital-backed
companies have female founders and there is a massive gender gap in tech._

and then

 _It turns out women are our new lead adopters. When you look at internet
usage, it turns out women in Western countries use the internet 17 percent
more every month than their male counterparts. Women are more likely to be
using the mobile phones they own, they spend more time talking on them, they
spend more time using location-based services. But they also spend more time
sending text messages. Women are the fastest growing and largest users on
Skype, and that's mostly younger women. Women are the fastest category and
biggest users on every social networking site with the exception of LinkedIn.
Women are the vast majority owners of all internet enabled devices--readers,
healthcare devices, GPS--that whole bundle of technology is mostly owned by
women._

That's a whole world of difference. There is production, and there is
consumption. In the first part, he talked about production. In the second
part, he is talking about consumption. I can't make a link.

~~~
doktrin
The OP is describing what he believes to be an emerging trend.

Specifically, he is challenging the stereotype that technology is still a
male-dominated market on the consumption side. Part of his argument centers
around the fact that _because_ the production side is heavily lined with men,
they can be partially blinded to the fact that women are becoming a very
important tech market.

To piggyback on the above, consumption logically would precede production.
Most of those working in technology today had some interest in it prior to
their career. If the author is correct, we can probably expect to see the
gender gap narrow over the coming years.

------
zxcvvcxz
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but honest question -

How come that ASUS tweet message was considered so sexist? Using attractive
women in advertisements has been around since the dawn of, well,
advertisements. And she definitely had a nice rear.

I mean what if the woman was replaced with a strong muscle man and the tweet
said "Nice biceps" or "Nice pecs" or something? Hell, say "Nice rear" for a
man, why not? Would that also be sexist?

Why are we all so uptight about this stuff?

------
wglb
Time to go read [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/26/software-for-
underserved...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/26/software-for-underserved-
markets/) again.

~~~
smoyer
Or watch his talk at BoS on how we suck at marketing to women. I guess you can
choose to be capitalist or sexist ... show me the money!

------
nerdo
Easier to make a profit by painting it pink, under-speccing and overcharging:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/does-this-
smartphone-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/does-this-smartphone-
make-me-look-stupid-meet-the-ladyphones/1/)

------
nadam
"there are clear business reasons for technology companies to focus their
efforts on women. But few do."

Well, for example I am creating a writers' tool (basically a markdown editor).
I wonder if there is _anything_ in the product design with which I can target
man/woman. I was thinking in terms of ease of use, intuitivnes, efficiency,
etc...

I am thinkging in terms of power users / casual users, geeks / non-geeks,
etc... but should I think in terms of women / men?

The article says Asus has sexist tweets... Wouldn't it be sexist if I had
prejudices about women's use of a 'word processor'? I am not cynical, I
genuinely ask this.

~~~
jmathes
'Sexist' has as many definitions as there are English-speakers. It's not a
useful word unless you're a politician or a journalist.

If you thought women never used words longer than three letters, then you
could design some very useful features for them, like smarter autocomplete,
spell check, and inserting the space automatically after three characters.
Then you'd do what everyone building a product should do - try to sell it, and
if it won't sell, try to find out why. You'd quickly learn that women can use
big words just fine, and you'd redesign your product accordingly.

I used an example misconception in which you underestimated women, because in
the other direction it'd be politically incorrect. But, you need to be
objective about what you see. You can't be afraid of the political
ramifications of knowing the truth about your market. If the data were to tell
you something drastically politically incorrect, like that Brits and Canadians
never buy your word processor because they're too busy eating babies, you
still need to redesign your product to fit your customers, and your spell
checker should not accept "colour", "lorry", or "hockey".

------
elchief
Is there a hackernews that isn't focused on consumer software?

------
astrofinch
So where is the female-dominated equivalent of Reddit?

~~~
ericabiz
It's called Pinterest -- 82% female:
<http://mashable.com/2012/02/28/pinterest-women-marketing/>

Perhaps you've heard of it? ;)

~~~
astrofinch
Fair enough.

To be honest, I was hoping for something more intellectual like Hacker News.
It would be nice to have a website where I could get my fix of thoughtful
discussion that didn't feel like a sausagefest.

Any idea how more intellectual discussion sites could cater to women?

~~~
cldrope
>sausagefest

Honestly I think the ones who have a problem are the ones who see a
difference. Those that just put what they have out there and discuss openly,
maturely will generally find (regardless of where they go) some kind of
return. Even on PInterest you'll find immaturity and other negative qualities,
merely exhibited by men instead of women. Does that make it innately better?

~~~
nsxwolf
Is sausagefest offensive?

~~~
cldrope
It's juvenile.

------
vacri
_So it turns out if you want to find out what the future looks like, you
should be asking women._

No, that's the wrong lesson to take home. If you want to see what the future
looks like, you should be asking women AND men. It's not an either/or
proposition. This comment just reverses the bias.

------
ender7
A great place to see this in action is with smartphone ads.

Almost all of the smartphone companies have been producing ads that cater only
to the young male (see: those terrifying Motorola Droid ads). Apple is an
exception, as usual.

They finally seem to be getting their act together, however. The latest Droid
ad is almost Apple-esque.

------
gbog
Wondering why every weekend HN needs a dose of gender issue in tech posts.
Genuine question.

~~~
swdunlop
No idea. Seems like HN rolls out a gender dispute on a slow news day like
Congress rolls out flag burning when they need to avoid a decision.

------
sixbrx
I'm starting to suspect that the "sorry" in the title is not really sincere...

Also interesting that the title was originally "Sorry _white_ guy...", as
evidenced by the permalink.

------
codedivine
I wonder if it is true only in geographies like the USA or Canada, or whether
it holds true in countries like India which have a much younger population?

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omonra
tltr: women yap more, today they do it using phone/skype/facebook.

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krakensden
The technical term for this is "concern troll".

------
Camillo
I already knew this from reading Hacker News.

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billpatrianakos
Although this was surprising to me at first it doesn't take long at all to
realize why this is: women communicate more. They're all about communication!
We think of men as being all about tech specs and building new tech but really
it's the user of the tech that's important. What is the Internet but a big
communication platform. That's probably why women are using it more. I realize
I may be called sexist for saying this but I thought it was pretty widely
accepted as fact that women are far more adept at and likely to use
communicate with others via any channel than men are.

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eswangren
Did we really need a study to tell us that women spend an inordinate amount of
time sending text messages and stalking profiles on Facebook?

