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> And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. They give two piddly links to commercials aimed at boys. Explain these ads, then: http://minot

> And these toys were marketed almost entirely to men and boys. They give two piddly links to commercials aimed at boys. Explain these ads, then: http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342 http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=342 Or Commodore ads like this one: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1325832/commodore-765.jpg In the 80s, computers were marketed to the whole family, boys and girls included.

guyzero 12y ago
Were you there? I was. Computers were marketed to boys and families for whatever reason reinforced this as well. It may not explain everything, but it explains the genesis of the situation.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - guyzero 12y ago
    Edit: uh, something happened with comment parenting, but anyway, yes, not every ad was mono-gendered, but in practice boys monopolized the C64s and TI-99/4As of the world. It's chicken and egg situation - it was perceived as a "boy thing" so was marketed at boys. The 80's in the US & Canada weren't exactly Saudi Arabia, but toys were as gendered if not more so than they are today. And people marketing computers had no social agenda, they just took the path of least resistance. It is, on some level, similar to the tragedy of the commons. Everyone made a decision that worked well for them and in the end the net effect was one that had a lot of negative impact.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  I was born in the 1970s so yeah, I was there. The article implies that, in the 80s, home computers were considered nothing more than glorified pong machines and girls were never seen in any of the ads, which is simply incorrect. There are countless ads featuring Commodores, Apples, and Trash 80s displaying spreadsheets, and quite a few with girls at the keyboard. Is there an exhaustive study of computer marketing from that time? I ask in all seriousness, because two links and hazy memories from NPR isn't very convincing.
- kstenerud 12y ago
  I was there. Home computers were a new thing, so the marketing was a little clunky, but print advertisement usually had both boys and girls in them, as did the Atari 2600 commercials. "Bits and Bytes" was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. In it, the male actor played someone approaching a computer for the first time, and the female actor played the mentor who showed him how to do things with it, including programming.
DanBC 12y ago
That Commodore ad is brilliant. It features "Magic Desk" http://toastytech.com/guis/magdesk.html http://toastytech.com/guis/magdesk.html > Notice the door, calculator, phone, card file, and dollar bill graphics. Trying to select these does absolutely, completely, and totally nothing. That's right, they don't do anything. At all. This leaves one to speculate if these were supposed to be features of "Magic Desk II", parallel release versions to the "Type and File" cart, or future disk based utilities.
chipotle_coyote 12y ago
So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links? Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.) Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  > So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links? My first link includes more than one ad featuring girls. They cited two advertisements and interviews with "hundreds" of students trying to recall why their parents bought computers. If you're going to make the bold claim that computers "were marketed almost entirely to men and boys," then you've got to present some data on the marketing of the time. Especially when there are counter examples to the claim. Even something like, "here are ten thousand computer ads from the 80s and boys outnumber girls by a significant margin" would work.

guyzero 12y ago

Were you there? I was. Computers were marketed to boys and families for whatever reason reinforced this as well. It may not explain everything, but it explains the genesis of the situation.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- guyzero 12y ago
  Edit: uh, something happened with comment parenting, but anyway, yes, not every ad was mono-gendered, but in practice boys monopolized the C64s and TI-99/4As of the world. It's chicken and egg situation - it was perceived as a "boy thing" so was marketed at boys. The 80's in the US & Canada weren't exactly Saudi Arabia, but toys were as gendered if not more so than they are today. And people marketing computers had no social agenda, they just took the path of least resistance. It is, on some level, similar to the tragedy of the commons. Everyone made a decision that worked well for them and in the end the net effect was one that had a lot of negative impact.
brandonmenc 12y ago
I was born in the 1970s so yeah, I was there. The article implies that, in the 80s, home computers were considered nothing more than glorified pong machines and girls were never seen in any of the ads, which is simply incorrect. There are countless ads featuring Commodores, Apples, and Trash 80s displaying spreadsheets, and quite a few with girls at the keyboard. Is there an exhaustive study of computer marketing from that time? I ask in all seriousness, because two links and hazy memories from NPR isn't very convincing.
kstenerud 12y ago
I was there. Home computers were a new thing, so the marketing was a little clunky, but print advertisement usually had both boys and girls in them, as did the Atari 2600 commercials. "Bits and Bytes" was one of my favorite TV shows as a kid. In it, the male actor played someone approaching a computer for the first time, and the female actor played the mentor who showed him how to do things with it, including programming.

DanBC 12y ago

That Commodore ad is brilliant. It features "Magic Desk" http://toastytech.com/guis/magdesk.html http://toastytech.com/guis/magdesk.html > Notice the door, calculator, phone, card file, and dollar bill graphics. Trying to select these does absolutely, completely, and totally nothing. That's right, they don't do anything. At all. This leaves one to speculate if these were supposed to be features of "Magic Desk II", parallel release versions to the "Type and File" cart, or future disk based utilities.

chipotle_coyote 12y ago

So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links? Less flippantly, the larger point they were making rings true to me -- speaking as someone who, like one of the interviewees, got the initial push toward computers by hanging out at Radio Shack in the late '70s. Hobbyist electronics was mostly guys, and companies knew that. Microcomputers, back in the day we actually called them "microcomputers," came out of the hobbyist movement. And as for the part video games played, which was also a big point they made, well. If you grew up going to arcades in the early '80s, then you probably don't remember them as having a particularly balanced gender distribution. I sure don't. From very early on the basic plot of most video games was "shoot all the bad things," and that's a kind of play that boys engaged in far more often than girls. (Girls had dolls, boys had action figures, don't you know.) Sure, computer companies occasionally put out ads trying to demonstrate that computers were for more than just playing video games and doing business work, and that they were Fun For The Whole Family! (tm). But I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that this disproves their whole thesis. They didn't just "link to two piddly commercials," they talked to men and women who went to school at the time and researchers studying this, and noted that when Carnegie Mellon added a class which was more or less "Basic Computer 101" -- teaching the stuff that they theorized boys were getting before they got to college and girls weren't -- the number of women who stayed with their CS program rose dramatically. This would seem to be fairly compelling evidence that there's something to this thesis.

brandonmenc 12y ago
> So your two piddly links trump their two piddly links? My first link includes more than one ad featuring girls. They cited two advertisements and interviews with "hundreds" of students trying to recall why their parents bought computers. If you're going to make the bold claim that computers "were marketed almost entirely to men and boys," then you've got to present some data on the marketing of the time. Especially when there are counter examples to the claim. Even something like, "here are ten thousand computer ads from the 80s and boys outnumber girls by a significant margin" would work.