Last night I was invited to the fourth anniversary event for London’s Girl Geek Dinners and it was the first one I had ever been to.
The event, which takes place every few months, looks at and debates how girls and tech can be moved more into the mainstream arena and get advertisers to take us seriously, through questions and situations put to the audience through a discussion panel.
It was set up by Sarah Blow who thought it would be a “few girls based in London having some nice food and a few drinks talking about what they have been up to with their work.”
However, it’s grown massively since then with heads such as Maggie Philbin, science and technology broadcaster and former Tomorrow’s World presenter, taking the stage and really debating how we girls can get our feet firmly into the technology door.
On the debating panel last night was Belinda, who is a consultant at Saatchi and Saatchi and has been campaigning for girls to be recognized as the technology “geeks” we are instead of fluffy fashion victims.
Top of her terrible advertisers list was PC World and Dell, which aired a despicable advert suggesting us girl’s only go for the colour of items and what they look like rather than the specs. If this wasn’t bad enough the advert was also followed through (quite a fitting term) with a ditzy voice over.
“Our research has shown only 9% of women want the Jordan fashion and pink look, and 45% want specs and sophistication,” she told us.
Thankfully, as the audience agreed, the technology gap is closing, but as we all know there is still more to be done to change the pink puff tech image we girl’s have involuntarily fallen into.
I had a great time last night; thanks to all for organising it. Is this where I admit that I chose my car because of its lovely colour? But seriously, some of us have been ‘geeks’ for years and hate it when advertisers presume female=incapable. Boo! we aren’t!