When I walked into room 444C for my English class, Writing the Information Superhighway on the first day of class, I was astonished to see only four other females in the room, and approximately seventeen males. I wondered if I had made a mistake in choosing to take this for my English class instead of a more traditional class. I was slightly intimidated by the lack of women in the room, and I was bewildered as to why so many more men would choose an elective that was open to the entire freshman and sophomore classes. Unfortunately, the unequal representation that I encountered that day is a good example of the gender gap that exists in the computer industry. The Internet , for example, is an electronic frontier, and like the fronteir of the west during the time of expansion and exploration, it is dominated by men.
Males create the software and males use the software, for the most part.
Some people argue that the gender gap is fine and that women will eventually find our niche in Cyberspace just as we found our niche in the new frontier west of the Mississippi River. Personally, I feel that we as women need to become involved and interested in the latest computer technology not only to benefit ourselves, but also to benefit the virtual communities that exist in Cyberspace. In order for women to find their place on the Internet, we must first try to understand why we are not equally represented in Cyberspace. One possible explanation for the lack of female representation on the Internet is that young girls do not play video games and computer games as much as young boys do. Perhaps the explanation for this is that most arcade games are aimed more towards boys.