This week I was lucky enough collect an award at Red Magazine’s Hot Women Awards 2011 which celebrates successful women in industry. What made the experience all the more rewarding was being able to spend some time with a group of women at the top of their fields. We even got to shake hands with Sam Cam.

I was particularly pleased to chat to two women who are leading the charge for female technology innovators everywhere: Cary Marsh, who founded MyDeo, and Kate Burns, the outgoing Senior Vice-President of AOL Europe and former head of Google UK. Both are smart, impressive women who have trail-blazed their way to the very top of the tech industry and should serve as inspiration to all aspiring Lady Geeks out there.

Yet while their progress is heartening, it only puts into perspective the uphill struggle women face in an industry where only 18% of employees are female (e-skills uk). The passing of Steve Jobs last month made me wonder how long it will be before a woman reaches the same exulted status. Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, Page and Brin, Bezos: all the technology giants of recent years are men.

Of course questions need to be asked as to what the industry needs to address the imbalance, and first instinct is to assume that, like many things, it’s merely too used to being one big boys club. But I believe the problem goes deeper than that.

These days just as many women as men count themselves as tech users (see my previous blogs) and teenage girls and teenage boys have almost identical internet usage statistics. Yet when it comes to careers boys are five times more likely to go into technology (ComputerWorld). Why is this? At what point are we losing our girl geeks to other industries?

The problem is largely one of perception. Girls tend to want careers that lean towards what they deem as ‘creative’ – advertising, PR and publishing all remain popular choices. Why should they take an interest it tech when all that’s on offer for a teenager is a choice between an Information Technology class (spreadsheets, databases, powerpoints, zzzzzsorry what were you saying?) – and a games console at home (made by boys, played by boys). It’s seen as nerdy, dull and – dare I say it – male.

Frustratingly those of us in the tech world know that it can be one of the most creative places a person can work. Instead of boring them to death we should be introducing our young women to exciting cutting edge skills like coding, software development and games design at an early age and showing them that a career in technology is more about creating and building than it is about number crunching. Only then will we start to see a much needed influx of bright young women in the industry.

Until there is a real overhaul of the relationship between tech and women from childhood on up then the Carys and Kates of this world will remain an endangered species. There is a huge opportunity to make sure our daughters and young girls are creators and leaders of technology as well as consumers.

It’s a great time to be a woman.

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek TV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook (image in post by Joana Pereira).

The first app I remember seeing was shown to me by a guy friend of mine, and it was the Wobble app. In case you don’t have the pleasure of familiarity with this app, it allows you to add “boob jiggle” to a photo of any woman of your choice. And we wonder why our research with YouGov (Source: The App Economy YouGov/Lady Geek 2010) has show women with smartphones were nearly twice as likely as men to have never downloaded a SINGLE app.

Quite remarkable when the same piece of research showed that more women than men bought smartphones in the last 6 months.  So women are buying smartphones but are not buying apps for 2 main problems.  One like me, women perceive a lot of the apps are not relevant to their lives such as iFart, i Burp and so on.  The second is that there is just too much choice out there. Who needs 200,000 apps- most women want a small selection of apps that make a difference to their lives.

And that is exactly the ambition and purpose of the brilliant IdeasProject “Apps to Empower Women” Challenge run by Nokia. The competition asked for submissions of app ideas that would make a real, practical difference to women’s work, education and leisure. The top app chosen in the challenge will be developed by a team of women software developers.

Honours went to Mobile Women African Crafters by Atim Oton, Easy App for Elderly Women by JoJa Dhara and Trigger Free by Jenny Evgenia. Mobile Women African Crafters would be an app  that creates and increases sustainable income for local women crafters in Kano, Nigeria who stay at home and work. The idea is an online space for crafters to share and sell their crafts via Mobile phones. The Easy App for Elderly Women would help elderly women navigate their way through various social networking and communication tools to help them stay in contact with their friends and family. Trigger Free would allow survivors of sexual violence to identify media that can trigger post-traumatic stress. Allowing users to add media to a database, rate them and help other survivors enjoy trigger-free leisure.

The winner was Woman’s Personal Private Market Place by Rustam Sengupta. Often women, especially living in the rural areas of emerging markets do not have access to personal care products such as contraceptives, or the means to purchase them from traditional sellers. The app will have a catalogue of such products and allow the process to be as discrete and comfortable as possible. Now that is what I call a real app.

These ideas show the force for good in innovative technology like apps. Yes we can download apps to get the weather or play a game, but its amazing to see how apps are transforming how women gain access to everything from health services to banking, and employment opportunities to educational tools. The mWomen Programme is an important component of this, and addresses key barriers to women’s access to mobile phones. The appetite for empowering apps is a hunger to feed, and there are inspiring women making it happen.

Written by Sarah Fink from Lady Geek TV.

The judges for the Apps to Empower Women Challenge were Mitchell Baker, Abigail Disney, Libby Leffler, Elizabeth Varley, Angelique Mannella and Belinda Parmar.

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek TV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook

When asked about the lack of women in high-level jobs, Sheryl Sandberg attempted to explain why this is. “[There’s] a really big ambition gap. If you survey men and women in college today in this country, the men are more ambitious than the women. And until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men.” The Ambition and Gender at Work Report found that only half of women said they expected to become managers, versus two-thirds of men. But are men really more ambitious than women?

The issue here isn’t ambition, but instead how we interpret it in women and men. Ambitious men are considered strong, successful individuals. However, women aren’t always valued when they are strong and ambitious. No, they are perceived to be ‘domineering bitches’. And nobody wants to date a ball-buster.  Society doesn’t like women whom we traditionally define as ambitious – having a strong desire for something such as wealth or power. Women aren’t always admired for being strong, men are supposed to be strong for them. Women aren’t to desire success, but be desired themselves. Ambition in women isn’t attractive. It isn’t feminine enough.

We’re always saying how there aren’t enough women in tech, politics or any other leadership roles. But it just isn’t enough to tell people to hire more women, vote for women, or any of that. These environments have been dominated by men for so long, and with men and women still expected to perform their gender in a particular way, things won’t change. You can’t add women and stir. You have to change the recipe for success.

Let’s celebrate ambition in women.  Let’s applaud it.  Let’s stop categorising women because they are ambitious. We should expect and accept people who step outside of the roles ascribed to their gender. Women don’t lack ambition, they just aren’t valued when they have it. Sheryl Sandberg is over-simplifying the issue.

Image via Flickr user World Economic Forum

Written by Sarah Fink of @ladygeektv

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek TV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook

I talked to some of the best women entrepreneurs including Camille Johnson of Pink Ribbon Lingerie and Isobel Beauchamp of DegreeArt, about their experience of starting a business. Here’s what they told me:

There may never be a right time

You may be waiting for the “perfect” time to start your business, but the truth is, it probably doesn’t exist. The women I spoke with about jumping in and starting a business were easily able to make a laundry list of when was or wasn’t the right time for a start-up and why. It will always be daunting. The economy might be crap. You’re too young, too old or your children are too young or too old. You’ll make it work.

You can ask for help

Camille Johnson, the founder of Pink Ribbon Lingerie, a company that specializes in intimates for women post breast cancer surgery, stressed the importance of having a circle of people to support you. “Use your friends and family as much as you can, for support, babysitting, feedback..”. You don’t have to do it alone, and really, you aren’t supposed to.  Its not a weakness to ask for help, it’s a strength.

Your online presence is your storefront

The first thing people see isn’t necessarily your storefront or office, but your online presence. These women don’t just have strong websites. They are active on Twitter, have Facebook pages, video content and online communities of client feedback. Branding is carried out through a multitude of platforms beyond business cards and logos to social networking profiles and hashtags. Remember every channel is an opportunity to make an impression on someone.

It will be 100 times harder than you already think

Isobel Beauchamp is the co-founder of DegreeArt, a company that sells, rents and commissions the artwork of students and recent graduates. Beauchamp spoke about how there will always be challenges, but they are meant to be hurdles, not barriers. Beauchamp went from working on the business with Elinor Olisa every evening and weekend on top of a full-time job, to eventually making it her sole venture.  You need to pick yourself up and carry on when you get a knock back.  You get tougher.  Your skin gets thicker.

Be fearless

When Johnson couldn’t get funding for her business, she took things into her own hands. She carried out extensive market research and learned all she could before making the absolute jump and self-funding her start-up. She felt that it was her only option if she wanted to see her business as she envisioned. Lesson learned: it takes guts, but the payoff is worth the risk.

We need more women putting themselves out there. Job creation is a dire need in the current economy, and women have great potential to help turn things around.

Written by Sarah Fink of @ladygeektv

Belinda Parmar is the founder of Lady Geek TV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook

image via jimbates332000

1)    Don’t pink it and shrink it

The cardinal sin of marketing towards women is to ‘pink it and shrink it’. The woefully misguided approach goes something like this. Take a perfectly decent product, give it a marshmallow Barbie paint job and miniaturise it so it fits perfectly into tiny female hands. Ta da! Women friendly. We’re bound to love it, right? What makes things even worse is that the tech spec on ‘female orientated’ models often falls short of the ‘male’ counterparts. It’s not the colour of a product that entices us, it’s the sleek design quality.

2)    There’s no need to overtly target us

There’s no point trying too hard to push exclusively to women, we’ll see right through it. Take time understanding us like you would on any other demographic, but please don’t over-egg the pudding. Just because we’ve got breasts doesn’t mean we have special needs. We’re different but don’t want to feel we’re that different.

Far too many products are rammed down our throats yelling ‘Look at me! I’m being relevant to women! Here come the girls! It’s patronising, it’s ineffective and often quite alienating. A subtler, more nuanced approach is always far more success commercially.

3)    An emotional connection is a big selling point

Studies have proven that women are likely to form more of a lasting emotional attachment to products, and campaigns that make an effort to engage with this often prove to be very successful.

A great recent example is John Lewis’ beautifully executed advert ‘She’s always a woman to me’, which whizzes the viewer at highspeed through seventy years of a woman’s life. The reason this advert works so well is not only that it’s beautifully executed – which it is, heart achingly so– but that it also promotes a strong, enduring attachment to a reliable brand.

4)    Too much choice is no choice at all

Many men might be perfectly happy to sift through mountains of information in order to find out whether one little black box is slightly better than another little black box, but most women are overwhelmed by choice. If a product is a hassle to buy then we will cease to care about it.

So having a hundred near-identical products in the market can be a real turnoff: we don’t want choice, we want the right choice. We want to know that a product does what it’s supposed to and is obviously at the top of its field. We don’t have time to find a diamond in the rough.

5)    Entertain, don’t educate

Don’t try and use statistics to teach us that we need something. Instead, show us why we need it, how it can benefit our lives preferably in a way that’s entertaining, fun and engaging. I’m much more likely to warm to a product if it’s marketing does not preach, but has surprised me or made me laugh.   Top Gear is a great brand that has made cars acessible to men and women by entertaining them.

And if all fails, call the Lady Geeks to help you understand women.

image by Joana Pereira

@belindaparmar is the founder of @LadyGeekTV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook.

We already know that women rule social media. There are more women users on Facebook and Twitter, and they spend more time than men on these sites. What makes certain social networking sites more female or male oriented?

Less than 15% of Wikipedia editors are women. Only 36% of Digg users are women, and its content doesn’t exactly scream gender equality. Meanwhile, Pinterest (a virtual pinboard sharing site) seems to be a community mostly made of women.

New social network Chime.in is actually not calling itself “social,” but an “interest network.” This means it will revolve around subjects, like tech, rather than people. Is there a clear divide between the two? And what does the answer to this potentially mean for women?

For now, Chime.in appears to be a gender-neutral place where men and women can speak and share freely and equally. Then again, so did Google+, which is still only 31% women. The most headline-grabbing aspect of Chime.in has been the concept that it could generate cash for users through advertising sales, leading to a deluge of get-rich commentary. Will the site even be social? Or a profit-driven interest site for the self-interested?

As for whether women will buy into Chime.in, it depends on whether it caters to their basic roles and natures. Women are expected to be caregivers. They get pregnant. They have families. They are the glue of their interconnected communities. They can’t be 100% self-interested. Perhaps this is why they tend to dominate community based social networking like Facebook, rather than linear, systematic sites like Wikipedia.

Women won’t chime in to a site without a strong community. Chime.in won’t have much of a relationship with women unless it remembers what keeps them interested–a place that feels like an extended family, a real community in their virtual worlds.

–Written by Sarah Fink from @ladygeektv

Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook. @Belindaparmar is the founder of @LadyGeekTV

I hate the feeling I get when my kids watch TV. When I see them slumped there, zombied out in front of the screen it’s so hard not to feel guilty. I should be doing more to get them out of the house. Pump them full of fresh air. I imagine many parents feel the same.

So I wasn’t sure how to greet the news that Xbox are making a big push into the educational market with their new ‘playful learning’ range of Kinect titles aimed at 4-10 year olds. Of course I could see the huge potential that the Kinect’s controller-free interface might have to encourage kids to use their bodies and motor skills to engage with subjects. But the guilty parent in me couldn’t help but worry – might this just another way for us to abdicate responsibility, to plonk our kids in front of a screen and tell ourselves that were doing our job? It’s ok, i tell myself. It’s educational.

Needless to say on arriving at the press launch this week in New York my built in British skepticism was turned up to eleven. Could this be really be ‘education’ or was it really ‘edu-tainment’? As I sat there waiting for the presentation to begin the voice of a member of Lady Geek’s influential mum panel rang loudly in my ears: ‘At the end of the day, I want my children to be climbing trees not playing on an Xbox.’

But then something surprising happened. As the scarily passionate Microsoft team began to show off the new titles, I could feel that, in spite of myself, I was softening. The Kinect really is a wonderful piece of kit which is intuitive and immersive, and the new games take full advantage of its technology. As I watched the demonstrator and her child enthusiastically navigate round a virtual Sesame Street with a series of wonderfully fluid physical gestures, I was amazed when they both appeared within the game itself. I couldn’t help but think that what I might be looking at was the future of learning.

It can be easy to dismiss something as bad for our kids because it involves staring at a screen. All parents do it, and it’s impossible to shake off our natural prejudices that children should be outside hopscotching and bike riding and scraping knees as if it was a Beverly Cleary book and a stash of hidden pirate gold depended on it. But we have to embrace the fact that our children are being raised in a brave new technology age and my 3 year old daughter similar to the baby in the video, thinks a traditional magazine is a broken iPad.

Products like the Kinect can and will play a huge part in their future development. With it’s immersive interactivity, the experience becomes as much about kids teaching themselves as it is about being taught. They no longer have to sit and listen, but can get up and participate. Its no longer about passively sitting in front of the TV, but jumping in and learning with them. It’s wonderful.

Maybe I’m being optimistic, but if used to it’s full potential – and the Xbox demonstration I witnessed showed me that this is entirely possible – I see no reason why Xbox, the darling of the ‘traditional’ gamer, could change mum’s perception and win the Battle of The Living Room. But it won’t happen overnight and is going to take serious commitment from Xbox to understanding a new audience and in particular Mum – the CEO of the household and the ‘gateway to the living room.’ Xbox clearly knows this and as David McCarthy, Xbox General Manager for Kids and Lifestyle Entertainment said “We are listening. We are learning along the way and writing each page as we go.”

Titles like Kinect Sesame Street and Kinect National Geographic TV can let kids learn how to count along with Elmo, explore the wonders of nature as a bear or experience their favorite book from within the story itself. To me, that’s incredible. We have entered a new era where my children’s imaginations are augmented by technology, and I can’t help feeling what I saw will revolutionize the way our children learn.

@belindaparmar is the founder of @LadyGeekTV. Please join the Lady Geek campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches towards women in tech and Like us on Facebook.

Image via HTC

Each morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is reach for my smartphone to read my email, look at Twitter and check out the front page of the Guardian. Never does a morning go by where I don’t do these things before breakfast, or really, even sitting up. The HTC Flyer may just replace the smart part of the smartphone as my morning companion, especially on a weekend morning, where this phase of my day lasts at least an hour.

Upon my first impression of the HTC Flyer, I was surprised by it’s weightiness, especially considering the screen is just 7 inches. I’d actually consider the slight weightiness for size a pro, as it is light enough to be incredibly portable, yet feel sturdy. It could be more sleek in design, but the screen is crisp and clear.

I can’t emphasise enough just how portable the Flyer is, although that feature is a bit lost on me. All this talk of being portable, the truth is there is one place that heavily outweighs the rest of the places the Flyer could be used. My bed. I have been able to carry it around everywhere with ease, but I prefer the Flyer with a cup of tea, curled up in bed, comfortably reading my favourite blogs and for pure enjoyment rather that a tool on the go.

If I did want to watch a film on it or more than my usual amount of YouTube videos of baby animals, I’d prefer a larger screen considering the Flyer is more like a roommate than a travelling companion. Unfortunately the speaker is in the back, and when my lazy morning self puts the Flyer down, the sound gets a bit muffled in my duvet. But for an improved web-browsing and life-organising experience, the Flyer could easily replace what I do on my smartphone or on my laptop while lounging around. The reader is also nice, and easier to use than my Kindle, but I am still so committed to the look of the Kindle ink, it’s lightness and all of Amazon’s features.

The Flyer really is a gadget for transition. For me it’s the transition of getting up in the morning and wondering what’s gone on in the world since I fell asleep, and relaxing before bed. Although it’s meant to do as the name implies, and fly around with you wherever you’re headed, I only used it upon landing.

It’s all quite surreal. Here I am in a swanky bar in a central Colchester retail park, rubbing shoulders with 30 local mums and waiting for uber Essex girl Denise Van Outen to make an appearance. Which she duly does, sporting a trademark cheeky grin to go with a personality that turns out to be even bigger and bubblier than can fit on your plasma.

She’s here as the face of the “On The Go” Mum roadshow for mobile network Three, whose innovative grass-roots approach aims to celebrate local mums and show them how to get the most from their phones.  Having formed a less than orderly queue, we finally cornered Denise for a chat about being a mum and the role of technology in her life.

How do you feel being a mum?

Exhausted!  Its physically and mentally very tiring.  I am constantly on the go and trying to juggle things.  Its not easy trying to work and keep a happy calm home.

What is the hardest part of being a mum?

Having to be so many different women.  I have to be a wife, mother, business woman, actress.

What is your Favourite Gadget?

My iPad. It’s a real life-saver with the kids.

What is the role of technology?

It makes everything so simple.  The key thing is to accept technology and embrace it.  The genie is out of the bottle.

Our research has shown women need more reassurance than men when it comes to technology. Why do you think that is?

Because women do not like making mistakes.  We often think that men are more technical but actually mums can benefit more from technology as mums tend to do most of the organisation in their house.

Which 3 pieces of advice would you give to a technology company wanting to connect with mums?

1. Keep your message simple
2. Stress doesn’t make people buy, so keep customers relaxed and talk to mums in an informal way
3. If stress doesn’t sell, smiles do, so get your sales staff to crack the occasional grin!

@belindaparmar is the founder of @ladygeektv.  Please join the Lady Geek’s campaign to end the stereotypes and cliches when talking to women  http://www.facebook.com/LadyGeekTV

(Image via Marta Manso)

In the film Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan’s character Cady is a math whizz. She captures the attention of her math teacher and the high school math team the Mathletes, but the person she really wants to capture the attention of Aaron, the hunky guy that sits behind her in class. Cady decides he won’t be interested in her math interest, and she goes with her “instincts”. She dumbs down and asks him for some rather ill-advised math help. The result? She starts failing…

A recent study “Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women’s Attitudes Toward Math and Science” has uncovered that this has some scientific standing, and that women don’t pursue study and careers in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) because, wait for it…they want boys to like them. *Head hits desk*

Actually, this isn’t quite what the research concludes, but it is how it is being interpreted.

The findings come from a series of studies that were undertaken to determine why women continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM.

The authors found converging support for the idea that when romantic goals are activated, either by environmental cues or personal choice, women—but not men—show less interest in STEM and more interest in “feminine” fields, such as the arts, languages and English.

“When the goal to be romantically desirable is activated, even by subtle situational cues, women report less interest in math and science. One reason why this might be is that pursuing intelligence goals in masculine fields, such as STEM, conflicts with pursuing romantic goals associated with traditional romantic scripts and gender norms.”

In part of the study participants viewed images related to romantic goals such as romantic restaurants, beach sunsets and candles or intelligence goals such as images of libraries, books and eyeglasses.

Are we really that simple? Candles equal romance. Books equal school. What if people were shown a mix of these images? What would happen then?

After exposure to the romantic, intelligence or friendship goal cues, participants completed questionnaires assessing their interest in STEM vs. other fields and their preference for various areas of academia. Results showed women—but not men—exposed to cues related to romantic goals reported less positive attitudes toward STEM and less preference for majoring in math or science fields compared to other disciplines. This did not occur when they were exposed to cues associated with intelligence goals.

But what if I want a romantic partner that is also intelligent?

Overall, the findings suggest women’s romantic goal strivings, triggered by environmental cues or by personal choice, have important implications for gender inequality in STEM.

My problem with the study isn’t really the findings, but how the study was designed. First of all, only 350 people were surveyed. Second, eyeglasses and books are categorised as a “smart” thing—people with glasses who can read, can also be romantic—and beach sunsets and candles are “romantic”. What does it mean to be romantically desirable anyway? Can one really classify romantic activities versus other activities so swiftly? Is that really what gets women going? Personally, I’ve had bad dates at romantic restaurants and great dates at the Imperial War Museum.

The way studies like these are designed aren’t going to benefit women. They are rooted in gender stereotypes and cultural constructions we should be looking to dismantle. What are the real reasons women are underrepresented in these fields? It isn’t because they are out scouting for boyfriends or because they are worried technology isn’t sexy (plus, it totally is). What is the industry and our education system doing to deter women from these fields? Where is the support?

There is a difference between what women want, and what is expected of them. The authors of this study should have tried to answer these questions without submitting to such stereotypes about women, romance and intelligence.