The definitive linkspam of this decade (1st January, 2010)

• Scientific American claims, “Gal Gamers Geekier Than Guys.” In particular, the study found that the people who were playing the most everquest were older women, not the stereotypical teenaged boy. They claim that “when it comes to dominating the virtual world, women are actually more hardcore than men.”
• Johanna Rothman discusses problematic terminology for referring to the human beings who make up project teams in A Rant on People, Resources, Men and Women
• Technical and building toys and child gender came up a few times late December on Sociological Images:
  • Judging from the Toys ‘R Us website boys build technology, and girls use it.
  • Again from Toys ‘R Us, in their marketing girls use pink telescopes and microscopes, and the pink ones have less powerful magnification. There’s also comment at Phrayngula and The Consumerist.
• GirlTalk Radio: “GirlTalk Radio is [a program] of the Girls, Math & Science Partnership… GirlTalk Radio consists of a series of interviews with women scientists, conducted by girls ages 11 – 16, making their debuts as Pittsburgh radio hosts!” (also on Boing Boing, about which one of our submitters notes “Dammit, BoingBoing, you took a good thing and painted it sexist as hell. Stop that. I know you know better.”)
• Making Video Games for Little Girls: “In this video, Brenda Laurel discusses her successful computer game for girls. Detailing extensive research on what girls want, Laurel then shows us a some interviews with girls and a bit of the resulting video game, Rocket…”
• Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. And so is Power.: on questioning rather than accepting power imbalance in gendered interactions.

If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if you’re a delicious user, tag them “geekfeminism” to bring them to our attention. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links in comments and on delicious.