This post from over at Eyebeam reports on some survey results regarding how women use and percieve technology. According to Intel, the survey shows that the gender gap regarding how men and women use and view technology is closing. (The raw results of the survey, as usual, aren’t available. Check out the Intel press release.)

I find ReBlogger Mike Frumin’s comments to be right on target:

All good news, but I’m still troubled by how often a woman’s version of a product is merely the same design in pink, or with a mirror glued on for lipstick touch-ups. I think it’s not so much that women need their own separate products, but that companies (from the conceptualizers all the way to the retail end) need to recognize that their products are for everybody, not just men.

While it’s valuable to learn that women are largely integrating new technologies into their lives, I see findings like this as only marginally useful for a couple of reasons. First, as an article by Leo Marx recently reminded me (’Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept’ Social Research Vol 64, No.3 (1997)), technology is an indeterminate and dangerous idea. I think it’s more useful to talk about involvement with discrete technologies - technologies that mean something in the world.

Secondly, saying that women are becoming more involved with technology is no surprise - the world is turning into a place where in many areas (at least in the developed world) it is increasingly difficult to get along without interacting with new technologies, not necessarily as much out of necessity as out of sociocultural pressure.

Finally, this kind of information tells us very little about exactly how women use and value technology in their daily lives, and whether those uses and values are any different from those of men. While it makes a good headline to say, for instance, that ‘women (58 percent) feel as lost as their male counterparts (56 percent) if they don’t check email at least once per day,’ this tells us nothing about why that is. I care about the why because the why is the thing that will make a difference in how technologies are designed, marketed, and percieved.