January 10, 2005
New gender roles in digital world
Genevive Bell, a cultural anthropologist who works for chipmaker Intel, says women tend to use technology in ways that make busy days more manageable, which is why cell phones, laptops and wireless Internet access are popular, reports SignOnSanDiego
"Wireless Internet is not the only technology that women have embraced faster than men, said Mizuko Ito, a University of Southern California cultural anthropologist studying technology use in the United States and Japan.
"The adoption of mobile phones and text messaging has been driven primarily by teenage girls," Ito said. "They were the first, particularly in Japan, to adopt text messaging and mobile phone images as communication tools."
Studies on the use of instant messaging have found that teenage girls write more and longer messages, so it is not surprising that mobile text messaging would be a popular technology for that demographic, the researcher said.
Slightly more women, 39 percent, said they used text messaging, compared with 37 percent of men who use cell phones.
Men downloaded more content, such as logos and wallpaper, according to Enpocket, with 11 percent of men and 8 percent of women downloading images for their phones.
"Women tend to have more interest in communicating, so it makes sense that they would tend to be heavier users of mobile communications features such as text messaging," Enpocket President Mike Baker said.
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