Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/21/survey_many_women_use_mobile_phones/
Women love phone cams, for snapping pics of cute babies
God dammit, some of us just like gadgets!
Posted in Bootnotes, 21st November 2011 12:50 GMT
The précis of a recent survey for AdAge by JWT Intelligence, titled "Always On Women: A Survey of how women are using technology today" will have many women spitting blood.
The advertising industry is not known for being an engine of social progression, but this survey comes across as more than a little patronising. Let's go through some of their top-line findings.
1) "So many women are using digital and mobile tools [that] it’s hard to target all of them"
So out of the 3.5 billion women in the world, it seems that there might be some differences between them, even though they're all female? I mean, we knew that they have different hair colours but seems like they do different things with their phones too.
Would anyone ever write that so many men use digital and mobile tools that it's hard to lump them all together? Probably not, because then you're lumping teenagers with businessmen with students, with graphic designers with grandfathers with bachelors with idiots who work in advertising trends.
2) There are two types of women with mobile phones: mobile warriors and casual, utilitarian users.
Oh there's the difference. Some women are warriors, some are casual.
3) Women like phones with cameras.
This statement is actually based on what the researchers discovered. After being able to call and text on their phones, women were more likely than men to cite the ability to take pictures and videos as an important thing about a phone. Around 37 per cent of them cited it as an important feature in buying a phone, putting it above accessing the internet and emailing.
4) Women like phones with cameras so they can take pictures of babies because all women have babies and that's what they like to use technology for.
OK - so women may be more likely to enjoy taking photos, but why isn't it of business documents, architecture, nights out, leaves... anything other than babies? Apparently, it's because women have babies and their main role is the "family chronicler".
"As the family chroniclers, women have long used cameras to capture memories — birthdays, graduations and other milestones. Now, a camera is always in her pocket. As a result, women are capturing not only the big but the small: a son’s scowl on a car ride, a daughter’s ice cream-covered face."
Give me a break. ®