Saturday, March 01, 2008

Old article, good quote

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain

The story explores why there are more girls creating content online than boys, especially textual content, such as blogs (boys still dominate video creation).

Some scholars argue [that] girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

"Girls are trained to make stories about themselves," said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."


The following quote, I think, illuminates not just different modes of online participation, but also why women are in general more verbal than men. Girls score higher on language skills in school than boys; women read more; storytelling plays a greater part in women's lives than men's. Many words had been shed on this subject, yet I've never seen it summed up in a sentence so succinct, so starkly precise.

From a young age they learn that [girls] are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves.

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