Presentation given at the Alternative Party 23rd Oct 2010 (Helsinki Finland).

1. What are the differences between
girls and boys geek culture?
Sonja Kangas
Tiina Malin

3. NERD CHIC!
WHY NOT PETRA PURHO?WHY NOT PETRA PURHO?

4. ?
How manly
is this?!

5. Alt Party by girls?
• How would it look like?
• Wouldn´t be hc technical
• Different skills, different techniques, different
approaches
• Appearance and behaviour
• Geek guy = norm
• Geek girl = wonder woman, special

6. Women and technology
• Girls are ”the other”
• Boys like cars, girls like barbie
• Dads do stuff with kids, moms fix food and
clean up the house
• Guys geekness is visible: Alt Party, Assembly,
demo scene, gaming, compos, hacking
(=challenges)
• Girls geeks out by expressing themselves,
more privately and not that technically

7. Women and technology
Common comments:
• Tech is not for girls
• Math is not for girls
• Girls are not into games
• Geek culture is unhygienic
• Boys will be boys
• Good girls syndrome
• Social environment has an impact
• Girls lack pioneer attitude (don´t get value out of
that?)

8. Big differences
Girls like to do
the same as
their friends –
friends are not
into demo
scene, games
or computers
Role models?

9. Big differences
• Challenges / performance vs. other activities
• Community
• Focus on different things (technology vs. self
expression)
• Guys want to show up
• Technology is core
• Girls focus on handicraft stuff
• Girls don’t want to be gurus?
• Girls don´t have balls to act differently?

10. Big differences
• Reputation, ranking & rating
• Reputation for girls = skills + behavious
• Girls want to utilize, not develop (that much)
• When motivated: learning to create & develop
• Not similarly social as with boys (mainsteam
vs. marginal)
• Girls often marginal, need to be tough

11. Examples
• Second Life handicraft
• Decos and swapping
• The Sims
• Etsy.org
• Nail and hair tutorials
• Ullan unelma
• Indie game development, experimental games

12. Second Life

13. Etsy

14. Deco
A Deco is a small book sent away
to a friend who decorates a page
or two, who then sends it on to
another friend who also
decorates your pages, and so on.
When the Deco is filled it is
returned to its owner.

15. The Sims

16. You Tube

17. From hobby to Biz

18. Games
(Nanobots) Erin Robinson
Kaptain Brawe) Cateia Games
Napthaline Prod)
(Hey baby) Ladykillas Inc
?
(Papermint) Babsi Lippe
(Boxgame) Sophie Houlden

19. Closing words
• Video games have long been a refuge for the scrawny,
the unattractive, the socially awkward.
• Video games empower people by projecting their
consciousness into realms where they can do things
that might be otherwise impossible (like, perhaps, date
the girl of your dreams).
• “Geek chic” has a great deal to do with marketers and
content producers finally realizing that geeks represent
an audience eager to spend money on media.

20. Closing words
• Boys and girls both had a lot in common! They both
had arms and legs and inability to communicate with
the other
• Games made for boys indicated that boys liked stealing
cars and murdering and being lonely, and girls liked
being pretty, and making themselves sad because they
will never be a princess.
• Geeking is not only doing things one way = demos &
programming
• Girls geek out by utilizing technology and developing
stuff with help of existing tools
• Find different ways to reach (different) goals