A lot of people would say yes immediately based on nothing more than general opinion and simple observation in their every day lives, but what’s the reality?
Well yes it is true; there are differences between men and women when it comes to technology according to the results of a survey by a UK company called Gadget Helpline.
“There is evidence of a gender divide in technology, although a lot of it comes down to interpretation,” Joanna Bawa, chartered psychologist and editor of the Usability News website, told the BBC.
Interpretation is what it’s all about isn’t it, the figures can say a lot but you can make anything out of it that you want really.
Gadget Helpline analysed 75,000 calls over a period of one month from 25th September to 23rd October 2009.
What the survey discovered was the 64 percent of male callers hadn’t even bothered to read the instruction manual before making a call whereas more than 75 percent of female callers had.
So how do we interpret that? No surprise here really, does this mean that males tend to be in more of a hurry to get the gadget up and running? Probably!
Shockingly, 12 percent of males had simply to turn the gadget on in order to get it to work compared to only 7 percent of females.
Imagine the embarrassment of calling a helpline because your gadget doesn’t work only to be told that switching the thing on first might be a good idea.
Women apparently spent 32 percent longer on the helpline phone than men did but most of the helpline staff preferred speaking to women. Wonder why?
I imagine that it could possibly be because most of the helpline staff just happened to be male but that wasn’t made clear.
It’s also interesting that the average age of the helpline staff was only 21 whereas most of the callers to the helpline are over 35.
Does this suggest that younger people are just more familiar with technology? Again I would have to say probably!
Regardless, what does the survey actually say about actual gender differences?
Nothing really as it happens, as it depends how you interpret the data but according to Joanna Bawa, it would appear that generally speaking, men treat technology as something that they need to understand and conquer whereas women want technology to benefit them and improve their lives.
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