Lady Geek

 

In the recent article Would the ‘real’ girl gamer please stand up? Gender, LAN cafés and the reformulation of the ‘girl’ gamer, which appeared in Gender and Education, Catherine Beavis and Claire Charles look at girl gamers in a cyber LAN café in Australia. Earlier research in the field has suggested that gaming is seen as something that boys and men do. Women and girls just do not play. This article highlights how girl gamers construct their identities.

 

What is interesting is that these girl gamers often claim to have started gaming due to their boyfriends or other male friends. This is very similar to what I found in my research on IT workers. While men regularly claimed to have a natural interest in technology, women claimed to have become interested in technology though fathers, uncles, brothers or boyfriends. I have analyzed this in my PhD thesis as a way in which gender norms are reenacted in society. Whereas it is normal for men to be interested in technology, women somehow need an excuse to be fascinated by technology.

 

The article on girl gamers argues that these young women create new ways in which being a woman is performed in society. In the long run it might then be seen as less ‘odd’ that women have a genuine interest in technology and they might finally been seen as a target group for technology that is taken seriously.