I think the common thread I see between @hamarana a @Dimitar 's posts is that women love social networky stuff. Obviously lots of men do to, so as @neo was alluding to in the end we are actually trying to market to a specific niche of interests more then just one gender (even if one is more likely to have those interests.) I think that’s a good group to target some marketing at. Those influencers that are currently owned by the big corps. Get them on board and their followers will follow them as a nice bonus!
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Like I said before about YouTube influencers specifically. I’ll copy theirs content from there to SAFE and give them free accounts 
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What the most gender neutral country did You mean? 
Testosterone is correlated with risk taking (because attacking wild animals with a sharp stick is risky, and raising children involves minimizing risk, and as much as we don’t like it today that’s what the genders where doing when we evolved). Financial speculation is inherently risky and so appeals much more to men. It stands to reason that the gender balance will shift to more neutral territory when there is a product and you are marketing an actual product rather than a speculative financial instrument which is all there is today.
Also men tend to be more interested in things while women are more interested in people (not always of course, but on average there is a tilt in these directions). This is why its so hard to get gender balance in things like engineering no matter how hard they try to force it. So being a tech product its going to appeal more to men, at least until there is enough of a network effect that the reasons to use it are because x and y people are using it and you can do things with them rather than because it has x and y features.
Both of these suggest that there will be more gender balance in the future, and that now might not be the best time to market to women. Market it to men now because they are more likely to be responsive to that marketing, and target women later when there’s a better chance of that marketing being effective.
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I might have agreed with you before I listened to this episode on 99% Invisible:
This is a network designed for both men and women, so it is important that womens point of view and feedback is represented sufficiently for a better user experience.
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Maybe he does his job well, but I think if I was a women I wouldn’t like this guy doing plastic surgery on me.
I entirely agree, I hope I did not say anything above that gave the impression that one gender is more important than another to the network.
I think as a community we are welcoming and respectful to all genders equally .
As for womans feedback, perhaps @JimCollinson can tell us the gender ratio in testing.
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I dislike forcing things like race or gender into areas that have nothing to do with these often arbitrary categorizations. I don’t believe it makes sense to specifically market the network to suit the statistical woman or man, Jew or Gentile, Black or White, Aboriginal or Pygmy, Mulatto or Mestizo. The more developers, and eventually users, the better. Period.
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I believe a couple of folks are missing the point here.
It’s not about forcing anything. It’s neither feminist propaganda nor gender justice war.
More like pointing out we have failed to attract women (developers, thinkers, artists, you name it) and what – if anything – can be done about it.
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Modest.
Society has been “rejecting women” because of the natural order of things. There’s no high priest or secret sect called “society” which is how you make it sound intended or not.
I’ve worked with appliances, plumbing, electrical and trade building sector my whole career. I think I’ve spoken to likely a hundred thousand, maybe more technicians, site managers, maintenance staff, installers, builders and contractors over the years and probably of the lot 3 were women. So. Instead of talking about made up university statistics look at real world data and understand women as much as you try to attract them dont actually want to work in those roles and when they do, they don’t hang around. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
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Btw this just popped up:
And I see that nothing has changed…
Seeing as you were quoting me about the university figures, then you are calling me “mistaken”
I was in the university doing engineering with average of 3 women per 400 engineering students and my bother before me. So I have over 7 years of information to use. And this year figures were also real, I was there.
This sort of thinking only fuels a lack of change for the better.
And attracting women into engineering is not like getting a whip out and telling them they have to or else. Its because society has changed over 50 years and women are actually wanting to do these types of professions. It was by telling the world that girls doing engineering kind of things can be fun and enjoyable, that the parents ALLOW their girls to explore interests in those areas as they grow up. Schools then ALLOW girls to explore science as an educational pathway. It happened over 50 years (actually more) of parents attitudes changing and then their children as parents attitudes changing.
Its not some commie plot to change society overnight. Seriously though using a commie plot as a legit comparison, that is sounding like something out of USA history.
My mother was a microbiologist and only was only allowed to pursue that education because of the war. And she discovered and studied a serious disease just after the war. I read the paper she wrote on it.
To say ALL women don’t want to do these things is just wrong. Many men go into sciences and engineering and either give up or move into other professions later on. Do we say men are not suited for sciences/engineering because some noticeably leave those professions?
Of course some people find out after doing a course or degree that they want other things in their career. You experience one set of experiences which had women preferring not to do that work. But that does not equate to the whole of society with women being whatever version of womankind you think. Imagine in the 19th century roles for women never changing and how would you feel being told that is what women (or men) want?
Times change and women/men desires change too. Men make good single parents too, very good, just like women.
I will leave you and others with one prime example. Look at NASA during the moon missions, there are plenty (1000’s) of photos/film showing the people working for NASA in the 60’s. Seeing a woman in a technical role is almost non-existent. Now looking at NASA films in the last 10 years and its a totally different picture. The number of women in technical roles is huge. And i do not see any of them being unhappy in their work.
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I think “society” here can be taken to mean a set of practices that have gender bias. For example nobody is prohibiting any man to wear a skirt - and some do just because they like it and without any transvestite flavor - but many would feel shameful to walk around in a skirt. It is just not considered
as a normal thing to do. Society is full of this kind of pressures to act in a certain way, even though there is not any spesific intention to cause them.
Some apps, that would be lucrative to women (and many men too) are those that me and my spouse have been using to track the progression of pregnancy and developement of a child. I became a father a few months ago, and boy how easy it is to sell anything to fresh parents with a notion of safety, security, permanence etc. It would be really, really cool to have a pregnancy & child developement tracking app, where you can fill stuff about your health and your childs developement, without having to think about how this might be exploited.
Another notion of becoming a parent is that I like to participate more to a society around me and in all my tiredness feel sympathy for other people in similar situation. For example it feels good to buy used stuff to my kid, as a way to reduce production of waste, even when we could afford new stuff. I think there is a potential for a mindset, that would grasp the idea about farming to support the network. Parents, women and men, could be a really good target group to make the network.
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What I have learned from parenthood is they (we) are interested in what they are interested in and that’s not going to change easily.
Oldest boy is the furthest thing from a stereotypical boy there is and my daughter is by far more interested in building and fixing things with me than both boys put together.
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The last clause above contains an important point. I’m a lousy consumer. A real salesman’s nightmare. I hardly buy anything without thinking it through carefully and often, almost obsessively, studying the product for months or years in advance.
But I’m actually fascinated by the ideas behind Siris and Alexas. I don’t need an activity tracker but it could be sort of fun. Heck, I might even buy a TV set if they went back to entertaining me instead of trying to lure me into an upgrade cycle or even spying on my living room. I may be a bit odd, but I’m pretty sure there are wider business opportunities in non-exploiting products, for both men and women. Child care was just one good example that may or may not speak more to women.
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An app for single parents would be interesting.
It is hard enough for two, and it is incredibly hard to be juggling by yourself work and family if you are by yourself… without nannies or grandmas to help you out.
How could an app help them out in their specific needs?
What about an integral solution like in a dashboard that can address every need of a conscientious parent?
For example:
- Helping to find opportunities to working at home.
- Networking with other parents
- A hotline to professional nannies or developmental psychologists if they need tips to raise their kids more efficiently.
- A daily update of fun activities and events to do with kids indoors or outdoors (maybe automatically updated based on the weather conditions in your location)
- Tracking school performance and suggesting different pedagogical approaches based on the type of difficulties that the kid is having.
- Tracking location of your kids at any time.
- Positive reinforcement of chores (or whatever habits you want to instill) through gamification (parents could provide points or stars when they do well, and once you get enough stars it may be use to exchange for prizes such as more time on video games or more candies)
- Plus everything that @Toivo said
Just some ideas from the top of my head.
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I agree, I understand where people are coming from.
But this thread reminds me of Africa trying to combat racism by hiring more black people.
Edit. And before anyone takes offense, half of my family come from black Caribbean’s and I am certainly not racist.
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All I did was mention a fact. We are 200 million people here on this side of the world. Ok there is a study in a little town in Sweden where women are different, so are their financial, social and way thinking from most countries in the world. I think engineers think too much, most people, not only women, maybe ET´s too, are simple: they don´t think in numbers, equations, algorythms…they only want their day to day business solved. Basic stuff, money, sex and fun. …But I could be wrong, too!
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I started this thread then disappeared cause I got interested in this MILF lol. Now I am super motivated to find ways the SAFE network can help out single moms. Or maybe I actually mean what ways can it help their kids.
Really like these ideas you came up with. If I were to be critical about one thing I would ask how is the SAFE network doing this better then a legacy internet solution? One advantage is obviously privacy. Maybe it’s a thing you could do now, but you would have to ask people to trust data about their children to some central authority. I think we really come back to the fundamental of “control your own data” with this one. Maybe the marketing part is showing them how this is so much less risky then letting someone else control the data.