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(My 2nd Youtube video!!)
Yesterday was Gangaur, a holiday celebrating marital bliss, and for once I went out to see what the festivities were all about! And of course, some more bliss is always welcome.
Actually, the holiday is mainly for women–those who are unwed wish to be blessed with a husband, and those who are wed wish for their husband’s wellbeing. So it got me thinking about women and several things I’ve read recently about women & technology.
Janet Fouts asks, “Why aren’t there more women in open source?“ Rachel Happe of The Social Organization discusses the cultural barriers of women entering tech leadership in her recent post. She mentions a piece from TechCrunch, “Why Women Rule the Internet,” which I also had read and made me cringe (it’s actually more about online shopping being dominated by women, and marketing to them!).
I also came across a couple posts by Allison Fine where she explores women’s role in leadership and in Social Media. Juxtaposed against Mashable’s survey on How Women Really Feel About Their Facebook Friends, the picture isn’t so rosy and describes women in particularly catty terms who see their contacts as mostly irritating.
Yet, a key theme running throughout these discussions is that something dramatic is shifting due to the opportunities presented to women by technologies. Certainly for me personally, the sense of empowerment I get through the use of ICTs on a daily basis is pretty much unparalleled.
Yes, getting educated was also empowering; but just refer back to those sorry statistics that are mentioned in the above posts which point to the lack of women’s leadership despite their levels of education. They speak for themselves.
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