Venus-1

Angelina Havaris
February 10th, 2021

Angelina Havaris
Februrary 11th, 2021

Marie Hicks’ article A Feature, Not A Bug, details how Silicon Valley has done a disservice to both women workers and workers from other marginalized communities, because of the systems in place that concentrate power to men. Hicks discusses how the prevailing belief that the tech industry in Silicon Valley is founded on meritocracy has been brought into question lately because of media headlines about sexism and racism within the tech industry while also highlighting how the two have been deeply ingrained into the workforce throughout history.

Hicks notes how the historical lack of viewing women in the tech industry through an intersectionality lens. Hicks states that the celebration of figures such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper paradoxically contribute to the problem of the gap between white women and women from marginalized groups because of how the white women focused narrative normalizes masculine stereotypes, male dominance, and existing patterns of privilege along lines of race and class (Hicks 3).

I thought it was interesting to see how it was only when computers became part of the mainstream culture that society’s perceptions of computers and machinery changed and that there wasn’t a collective shift in how society viewed women workers that created change, rather; it was a collective shift in how they viewed technology. However, this shift also calls to mind how the objects and professions stereotyped for a specific gender are constantly changing.

One particular example of this that comes to mind is how pink became recognized as a “feminine” colour while blue became recognized as a “masculine colour”. In the CNN article, The Complicated Gender History of Pink, Leatrice Eiseman, a colour expert and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, talk about how pink historically was a more “masculine” colour due to it being a variation of the colour red, which was a colour associated with passion and aggression (Bhattacharjee 6).

Meanwhile, blue was largely considered a “feminine” and “dainty” colour because it was associated with the Virgin Mary, who became the icon for sexual purity. Throughout European art history, artists depict her wearing blue in artwork of her and baby Jesus. In this painting by Dutch painter Duccio, it’s interesting to note that Mary is wearing blue, and that Jesus is wearing pink.

It wasn’t until the 1980s when the gender associations with blue and pink were reversed. Suddenly pink became representative of femininity, while blue became synonymous with masculinity as a result of marketing strategies intended to magnify age and gender differences within children’s products (Orenstein 33). As a child in the early 2000s, I can recall how much of my childhood toys were a byproduct of this marketing strategy. Almost every product I owned, whether it was doll houses or bedding, were bubblegum pink and plastered with Disney princesses (the fact that characters such as Mulan and Pocahontas were part of the lineup, but seldom ever featured in product merchandising is also concerning to note because it shows how women of racial and ethnic minority backgrounds continue to be looked over even in the 21st century).

Similar to the toy industry, tech companies have a long history of valuing the product over the person. Both industries focus on a narrative that only sees binary gender without considering the capabilities or interests of those directly affected by these businesses. While there has been progress, there is still much more work we can do in order to invert this idea of valuing the product over person and instead, value the person over the product.

References:

Bhattacharjee, Puja. “The Complicated Gender History of Pink.” CNN, Cable News Network, 12 Jan. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/01/12/health/colorscope-pink-boy-girl-gender/index.html.

Orenstein, Peggy. “What's Wrong With Cinderella?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Dec. 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24princess.t.html.

Photos and Media:

Di Buoninsegna, Duccio. Madonna and Child. c. 1300. The Vintage News. Website. Accessed 11 February 2021.

"2000s Disney Princess Promo - 1st". YouTube. Uploaded by Prestissimo Master Station, 29 Feb. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnTG8gRQtHY