Challenging the "normal" gender order in society

By Ann-Christin Nyberg, gender and innovation researcher.

I bought my first Macintosh in the 1980s when I was an engineering student. It was radically different from all other computers I had seen: user friendly with an appealing design but also very expensive for a student like me. I really desired and loved it, as I later have come to desire and love other inventions brought to the world by Steve Jobs and others. Inventions that many of us now take for granted and use almost every day, innovations that have made an impact on society. That technology, intertwined with society as it is today, is often made by men for other men is problematic for many reasons. For instance, the shaping of society is not very democratic when women in general have so little influence.

What if Steve Jobs had been a woman? Would it have made a difference? When it comes to technology, women's talent has often been overlooked in society, and it still is sometimes. Men are often, on the other hand, expected to know technology by nature rather than by training and experience. Discriminating norms and practises concerning gender and technology still persist. Hence, probably none of Steve Jobs' brilliant ideas would have come to exist if he had been a woman. She would have encountered many additional obstacles that Steve probably never even would have imagined existed.

«The shaping of society is not very democratic when women in general have so little influence»

There are of course always exceptions to the rule. Some women have indeed succeeded in extremely male dominated contexts, despite opposition and structural barriers. Hence, there is a slight chance that Apple’s brilliant inventor and charismatic business leader could have been a woman. Today there are some women at high levels in the ICT industry, for example Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, President and CEO of Yahoo. Women in technology are important since they challenge to some extent the “normal” gender order in society where technology is considered to be a men’s thing. They bring hope that discrimination can be brought to an end and a more egalitarian and meritocratic society can be formed.

There is a lot to gain for society, its organizations and individuals from making the ICT industry more inclusive. Due to their marginalised position women may well be “the rebels” who see things differently today. As Steve Jobs put it: “The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” With access to technology on equal terms, the Steve Jobs of tomorrow may just as well be women as men. Let’s make it happen! “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

An overview on women in tech (and on this blog)

By Judith Astelarra, emeritus professor, Department of Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona.

I must say that when I was invited to participate in this debate several months ago I did not like the question. Now I think that it was a provocative question that lead to very interesting answers. However, I still have doubts about the question because I feel that if what we want is to analyze the absence of women in the sector of technology, do we need to play this provocative game of making a transvestite of Steve Jobs?

Steve Jobs was an outstanding creator, everybody has agreed on that. Traditionally the creators in any field, had been considered beings who had an exceptional individual talent that was emphasized in its work. However, individual genius can only be put into practise and recognized in social and cultural contexts. It is society that allows the creative talent to be developed and, what is equally important, is responsible for the recognition of the value of the creation. Gender is part of this social context related to creation, but there are other factors as well.

«We can look at the women that are now in these fields, even if they are a minority, to see if they make a difference»

Most of the answers to the question about Steve Job have spoken about how the gendered dimension of society and culture, characterized by inequality for women, have been an impediment for women’s incorporation in the technological field in terms of creation, production and recognition (the “icon”).

Others answers have stressed the individual characteristics of technological creation be it men or women. Only a few have dealt with Steve Jobs as a creator and tried to relate it to gender. In this sense, I liked very much the analysis made by Gillian Marcelle. In describing Steve Jobs as a woman most of the answers either spoke generally of the situation of women, or plainly admitted that they did not know whether it would make such a difference. Henry Jenkins spoke about Bill Gates, what was very interesting because here we deal with two men, in the same field and time, who shared gender but were different.

All these answers could have been just the same if Steve Jobs had not been in the question and all we were dealing was with the issue of women and technological creations. What makes me uneasy about it is that, even if it is not the intention, the proposal of replacing Steve Jobs by a woman leads to a sort of confrontation between men and women.

«Finding places in which both genders can collaborate is also part of the feminist proposal of creating new realities»

I have been a feminist from the late 1960 and early 1970 when I was doing my PhD at Cornell University. When we started, women’s inequality was not even a social, cultural and political issue. We needed to be loud and confrontation was part of it. But now, the situation is different. Obviously inequality still exists and we need lobbies and political movement to deal with it. But the problem is now recognized and there are women now in the fields from where they were excluded. We can evaluate what we have done to correct inequality and look for new things to do. But, we can also look at the women that are now in these fields, even if they are a minority like in the technological field, to see if they make a difference. Not just give hypotheses of “what if” that cannot have rigorous answers.

I liked very much the answers that stated the need of social innovation in technology, no matter what the person’s gender is. I think that finding places in which both genders can collaborate is also part of the feminist proposal of creating new realities. Here we can play the game “what if”, not changing the past but looking at the future, because in this case imagination can be used. Starting from the problems that the TIC have today and the new lines that should be developed in the future, we can think of a woman (even if imaginary) that can play the role that men like Steve Jobs played in the past. We would not be using a man as a reference, we would be using women’s experiences and realities today. An endeavor that can be shared between this new outstanding woman and the men of her time. A pluralist proposal that does not discriminate anybody.

But in spite of my doubts with the question I really think that the debate has been very interesting.

Women can have a family and at the same time excel in the sphere of innovation

By Rebecca Chiao, co-founder and director, HarassMap

As manager of an organisation that uses technology to help changing the social acceptance of a terrible situation like sexual harassment in Egypt, Rebecca Chiao kindly agreed to put herself in front of the camera and give us her reflections on the main question of this blog. Chiao was one of the featured speakers at TEDxBarcelona Women event. We deeply thank the organisers for this contribution.

«When it comes to financial decisions from investors and partnerships, a lot of people tend to consider that women are entrepreneurs as a hobby»

ICTs are not synonymous with knowledge society and woman is not synonymous with gender

By Gloria Bonder, Director, Gender, Society and Policies Area, FLACSO Argentina

Women, in Latin America and in most regions, are a minority in technology production, and this is one of the most significant digital gender divides. The research we have carried out from the UNESCO Chair in Women, Science and Technology in Latin America confirms this. However, the results enable us to state that gender inequalities in this field do not only concentrate on this issue. Age, ethnicity, educational and socio-economic level and area of residence (urban/rural) are some of the determinants that have a significant influence on the construction of this techno-cultural environment.

Only an uninformed view would lead us to state that the first step has to be increasing the number of women in technological production. Looking more closely, we realize that change does not start there.

«Creating technology with gender awareness is a first step towards a society that is more receptive to both women and men's ways of thinking and innovating»

Encouraging the interest of more women in technology careers, reversing the stereotypes that associate ICTs with the male world, promoting the full participation of women in technology-based enterprises and encouraging strategic appropriation of ICTs by both women and men, are some of the links of this chain that must be strengthened.

Having (more) women in technological production does not ensure an information/knowledge society that is more inclusive, diverse and attentive to their needs, desires and interests. However, if the person who creates technology (either male or female) does so with gender awareness, we will have taken a first step in overcoming inequalities, and in the construction of an information/knowledge society that is more receptive to everyone's ways of thinking, innovating and transforming, both men and women.

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, perhaps the only difference would be the Apple logo.

ICTs and a new opportunity for women's empowerment

By Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, founder and managing director of Women's WorldWide Web (W4)

During her recent visit to Barcelona (Spain), Nefesh-Clarke kindly agreed to answer live and in front of the camera the heading question of this blog. She was one of the guest speakers at TEDxBarcelonaWomen event, celebrated on December 1^st 2012. We would like to thank the organisers for this contribution.

«We have an unprecedented opportunity to make a new wave of women's empowerment: a strong movement of community-driven collaborative change»

Genius is gendered: what would happen if Steve Jobs had been a woman?

By Gillian Marcelle, Associate Professor, Wits Business School

The invitation to write this blog on what would happen or have been different if Steve Jobs had been a woman proved to be too enticing to turn down. This despite the fact that I had left off my serious work on gender and ICTs for nearly a decade. Different themes emerged as I played with the idea of gender transformation and Steve Jobs. I am not sure whether I can cover all these themes here and so perhaps this invitation will lead to future work on the subject.

From the point of view of development studies, I would argue that we need more people like Steve Jobs, and it really does not matter if they are male or female, except if there are biases, whether structural, institutional or psychosocial that stand in the way of the emergence of female Jobs like figures. The point is that Steve Jobs stands at one level as a standard bearer for successful entrepreneurship and transformation and he has become the touchstone for success.

«A woman with a similar balance of negative and positive personality traits was very unlikely to have succeeded in formal business settings»

This then leads to my take on Jobs from a management science perspective. Steve Jobs’s approach to steering a company and its innovative process includes: single-minded dedication to “specification”, ruthlessness, setting standards very high and not compromising about how these were achieved, being unaccepting of industry standards and setting out to be disruptive. He is characterised by enormous self belief, arrogance and a spectacular willingness to take risks. Steve on all accounts is legendary for is attention to detail, keen observational skills and an ability to improve new possibility outside what currently exists. This latter feature has been hailed as him having a reality-distorting ability and this applied to the product features and design of Apple products and services.

From all accounts these “positive” qualities and characteristics were wrapped up in personal attitude that made Steve Jobs an exceptionally challenging human being, in both his personal and professional lives. It is his personality and human characteristics that have meant that he is revered and loathed with great intensity. Before his death, the negative and challenging aspects of his personality were spoken of in hushed whispers. Jobs the mythical path breaker occupied much more airtime than the man who insisted on a paternity test for his first child, refused to reconcile with his biological father, and regularly reduced managers and employees meeting with him at Apple to tears and even attempted suicide. Since his death, the accounts and reports have become more revealing and dare I say insightful. There have been many analyses attempting to reconcile the positive and negative aspects of his personality and to understand the implications for practice.

This is where the gender issues are stark. My sense is that a woman with a similar balance of negative and positive personality traits was very unlikely to have succeeded in formal business settings, let alone to have been celebrated and venerated as a management icon. She would be more likely to have been burnt at the stake! Reality-distorting women who buck traditions, set their own standards and insist on dragging followers on the path they have set out for them and have that confidence of conviction more on grounds of personal self belief and branding that norms and moral standards.

«Is society reproducing female and male Steve Jobs clones rather than developing alternatives?»

I don’t know whether we will even be able to test the hypothesis that a female Steve Jobs would not have been allowed to survive as against the counter hypothesis that a female leader in the ICT sector world is unlikely to have the same balance of “offensive” and positive personality traits. I certainly cannot think of a female powerful figure who is associated with single handedly setting new benchmarks for an industry, hero worshipped and venerated. These are some reflections on Steve the man.

As far as the products produced by Steve Jobs and Apple, I wonder about whether a woman of a similar age, cultural, racial and political background would have produced a set of technologies that had the same characteristics.

Industry domination, lock-in effects, propriety standards are central to the Apple success story. This is a technological leader model per excellence. If we are to separate out particular personality traits, we still have to ask the question whether the propensity to adopt strategies with these features is gendered. Do female leaders eschew strategies with these characteristics and do they have a high propensity to adopt alternatives? We don’t have any evidence to answer this question. Are female leaders, whether they pursue paths of business diversification and growth that differ from that pursued by Apple likely to be as successful? This would also need to be answered in the future. In considering these issues, it may be helpful to ask whether female executives operating in these settings actually have definitions of success and power that are fundamentally different from their male counterparts. Do put this differently, would a white, educated, middle class female in a wealthy country have either the option or desire to manage success and power in a way that differed significantly from Steve Jobs. Do we have processes of selection in place that effectively means that a female computer science or business student hoping to catch the eye of a mentor or to climb the ladder of success is more likely to perform management in a Steve Jobs like fashion than not. Is society then reproducing female and male Steve Jobs clones rather than developing alternatives? The recent opting-out and missing generation debates in the US suggest that these issues and questions are not that farfetched.

I want to also make some comments relating to design and functionality. If a Steve Jobs like character in female form were to emerge and survive would she make design and be successful by products that sought to have seamless integration across data from personal/private and professional aspects of life. Personally, I find the aspect of the Apple i-range of products quite irritating and somewhat disturbing. While I love the convenience of the i-Pad and the i-Phone for network connectivity, posh email features, I resist quite strongly the possibility and practice of blending/merging any aspect of life in one device. I am not certain that this is inherently female, especially since we are supposed to be so much better off multitasking than men but I do not regard that blurring of boundaries as healthy and/or desirable.

«Steve as icon not only sets the standard but has probably set back feminist advocacy in this field for many decades to come»

Finally, I want to tackle the politics of the situation. In my work as a gender equality advocate with a focus on the ICT sector, I argued that unless a critical political analysis was made of the integration of social, political, institutional and structural processes that led to patterns of gender inequality, the situation would continue. The advocacy positions of the groups with which I was associated called for concerted efforts within the ICT sector and in the policy space to end exclusion and inequitable access to and control of ICT systems and industries on a gendered basis.

Several years on, although I am not as familiar with the academic, policy or civil society work in this area, I certainly have the impression that there has been no major breakthrough in terms of wrestling into these issues and making transformational changes.

And in that sense, Steve Jobs’s success at Pixar and Apple, his wealth creation, his bad behaviour, and hyper-masculinity means that he is the robber baronesque figure of the 21st century. Steve as icon not only sets the standard but has probably set back feminist advocacy in this field for many decades to come. By contrast, Bill Gates is a mild-mannered, happily married, philanthropy inclined, not particularly macho man, who is very wealthy. But he has not attracted the same love-hate reaction (except in Open Source circles).

If there was a level playing field and the world had really become a fundamentally different place, perhaps a warm-hearted, fuzzy, female leader with a heart of gold and on her best behaviour would have emerged to lead a firm that was concerned about triple bottom line issues, making useful ICT product and services in collaboration with users and competitors that addressed human needs as well as advanced private motives.

Until then we have Steve...

How to promote female 'geek' vocations

By Cristina Ribas, Associate Professor, Pompeu Fabra University

Could Linux, Facebook, Apple and Google have been created by women? I think they could, but the fact is that the most visible faces on the internet right now are still men. Does this have anything to do with women's reluctance to consider themselves, and indeed refer to themselves, as brilliant or ‘genius’? Or is that geek culture is too distant from the prevailing sexist education? I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to the reasons, though I'm sure that both of these have an influence. What is clear is that the consequences of the fact that very few women are creating and influencing technology are very negative, both for women themselves and for society as a whole. As is the case in so many other fields, not only is it unfair to limit decision-making powers and participation by relegating women to simple consumer status, but also shutting women entails a huge waste of talent which could be focused in new and innovative directions. What can we do to make the culture and vocation of technology more appealing to women?

«It is unfair to limit decision-making powers and participation by relegating women to simple consumer status, but also shutting women entails a huge waste of talent which could be focused in new and innovative directions»

First of all, greater visibility needs to be given to the female protagonists of the history of technology to shatter the image of their presence as unusual or impossible: Ada Lovelace, the mathematician daughter of Lord Byron, regarded as the first female programmer; Betty Jean Jennings and Fran Bilas who, amongst other things, programmed the first ENIAC computer in the 1950s; plus all those anonymous women who worked tirelessly at Bletchley Park deciphering codes during the Second World War, who cyberfeminist Sadie Plant paid tribute to in her book Zeros and Ones. In the same way that the industrial revolution was woven by the hands of women in the textile factories, so digital workers were also women, according to Plant.

We can also find women in senior management positions in many iconic internet companies, such as Marissa Mayer, who shone at Google and since July has been president and CEO at Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg one of the most successful executives in the digital business, currently at Facebook. It is also worth pointing out that even though there has been a drop in the number of engineers and computer technicians in the United States, we are seeing innovative start-ups led by young entrepreneurs, as explained by this article in USA Today.

«Something is not working in the educational system because there are very few girls with a geek vocation, who want to become programmers»

Who knows what we might be losing if there are fewer women programmers and entrepreneurs, as we need new strategies to help us transform the world, society and the economy, with the help of ICTs. This happened in the field of primatology, which had a before and an after, when three women introduced a new study method by sharing the habitats of groups of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The "trimates" —Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birutë Galdikas― managed to understand the behaviour of these simians which are most closely related to humans as never before. One of the keys to this was that they considered human integration in the group of animals, a method that had not occurred to any male researchers.

There are many more examples of women's input in traditionally masculine sectors. For example, many years ago the sociologist Carme Alemany found that the washing machines designed mainly by men had numerous wash programmes, of which only two or three were ever used, while solutions to practical problems, such as how to make a wash stop if the colours start running —which are technologically simple to resolve― were dreamt up by women designers. Some engineers, such as the Colombian Inés Restrepo often think along different lines in order to tackle the same problem. Restrepo dreamt up a system of harvesting water in local communities using small gutters built in a network by each inhabitant, without the need for huge, costly and environmentally-damaging dams, which had been put forward as the only solution by the (male) engineers in her country. All of us benefit from new solutions from fresh perspectives. Another contribution might be a change of leadership, from the purely transactional short-term and predominantly masculine perspective to a transformational type of leadership with other goals that focus more on creating long-term value, as explained by doctor Sara Berbel on the subject of women's leadership.

Caption from the EU video campaign Science: it's a girl thing!

Furthermore, we need to move away from the stereotypes featured in campaigns such as the European Union initiative to promote scientific vocations among young people. This controversial video, which ended up being withdrawn, showed women among make-up and microscopes, as if they had to trivialize research to make it appealing to women. Psychologist Gemma Altell, on analysing this case, highlights two important questions. On the one hand, what do we need to change in the educational system to make girls more interested in science and technology? It is obvious that something is not working because there are very few girls with a geek vocation, who want to become programmers. And, furthermore, how can we stop fuelling the prejudices that make us judge women —and not men— by their appearance, and how do we reinvent what it means to be a man or a woman in the 21st century, casting aside the androcentric models generated thousands of years ago.

Different genders, different worlds

By Joanne McGrath Cohoon, Associate Professor, University of Virginia.

Gender inequality persists. Both data and personal reports from transgendered people make this reality clear. For example, transgendered men received more workplace respect and more opportunities to speak than they had as women. Their observations illustrate how subtly and profoundly gender affects our lives, even the lives of exceptional people.

Culturally, gendered expectations of others and ourselves interact with race and class to shape our language, our interrelations, and our beliefs about what we might achieve and where we belong. Organizations in our immediate environment also affect us at each stage of our lives —schools; businesses; churches, temples, mosques; etc. Each has its own set of policies, practices, and local cultures that differentiate more or less between men and women. So, if Steve Jobs had been a woman, he would have lived in a different world than the world he knew as a man.

«Jobs lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light»

Steve Jobs, the man, lived in a world where technical interests, technical education, and aggressive business behavior were appropriate. Investors saw potential for his success, because Jobs fit their expectations for technical business genius. Employees tolerated his eccentricities because they saw him as a successful leader. Had Jobs been a woman, his behavior may not have been interpreted in such a positive light.

Stephanie Jobs, the woman, could have behaved in the same ways, but her behavior would have been interpreted differently. By violating expected behavior for women, she would have incurred harsh judgments about her likability, even if people thought her competent. And being thought competent would require performance several times better than Steve would have needed.

Stephanie would have had less opportunity than Steve to develop skills that contribute to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She might have been explicitly discouraged from taking elective STEM courses. Had she taken the courses anyway, she would have experienced isolation, stereotype threat, and less encouragement than her male classmates. Investors would likely have failed to see beyond her femininity to recognize her vision and ability to carry it out. Employees might have labeled her a crazy bitch and refused to contribute their passion in fulfillment of her dreams.

«Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame»

Stephanie Jobs might have been wildly successful as a high tech entrepreneur and innovator, but she would have had to overcome many more barriers than Steve overcame. An astonishing achievement would have been even more spectacular, unless of course, the world changed at the same time Steve’s gender changed. 

It is difficult to know whether we are moving toward a world where Steve and Stephanie have equal chance of success. Obviously, women are advancing in education and economic independence in many countries. Yet, even in those countries where women seem to have the most parity with men, occupational gender segregation persists: women, more than men, are in fields with fewer economic rewards, less autonomy, and lower job satisfaction.

Imagining Sarah Jobs: An Exploration of Gender Roles and Technology

By Carolyn Danckaert, co-founder, A Mighty Girl.

If Steve Jobs had been born female, for instance as Sarah Jobs, his experience would have been very different right from the start. As Sarah, it’s quite likely that her parents would have discouraged risk-taking behaviors from a very early age. One study found that mothers of 11-month old babies thought girl babies would be less capable of crawling down a carpeted slope than boy babies when, in reality, the girl babies were actually more daring than their male counterparts.¹ These types of perceptions encourage parents to intervene more quickly when their daughters are engaged in “risky” behaviors leading, over time, to girls’ decreasing confidence in their own abilities and willingness to take risks.

As Sarah grew, she would have discovered a significant difference in the types of toys offered to her versus boys. A 2009 study from the psychology journal Sex Roles found that 31% of toys marketed towards girls were focused on a girl’s appearance whereas 46% of those marketed towards boy were focused on activities.² As a result, Sarah would have begun to internalize a message that girls are passive and defined by their looks while boys are defined by their actions.

«Starting from Sarah's inculcation for risk aversion as a baby to the lack of female technology mentors at her university, the odds would have been heavily stacked against her»

Once Sarah went to college, it would have been highly unlikely that she would have chosen to major in computer science. While women in the US now receive 57% of bachelor’s degrees, less than 14% of computer science degrees are awarded to women.³ This disparity continues into the workforce where, according to a US Department of Commerce report, women hold half of the jobs in the US but less than a quarter of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) positions. Of course, this would not bode well for Sarah’s future earnings as women with STEM jobs earn 33% more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs. In this same report, the authors cite a few of the possible factors behind this discrepancy between women and men in STEM fields as being attributable to: “a lack of female role models, gender stereotyping, and less family-friendly flexibility in the STEM fields.”

Given that all of these facts and figures are focused on the current reality for girls and women, it’s logical to assume that these types of disparities would be all the more extreme when Steve Jobs was a child fifty years ago. So then, to answer the central question, if Steve has been born Sarah would she have emerged as the great technology innovator and business leader that Steve became? Starting from her inculcation for risk aversion as a baby to the lack of female technology mentors at her university, the odds would have been heavily stacked against her.

«Countless girls and women do not fully realize their potential as technology innovators and that loss is not just their own but society’s as well»

Of course, exceptional people beat the odds all the time and Sarah Jobs may have been one of those exceptional individuals. Even so, countless girls and women do not fully realize their potential as technology innovators and that loss is not just their own but society’s as well. Encouraging and enabling more women to follow Steve Jobs’ path will require widespread changes ranging from decreasing the gender stereotyping that girls encounter from a very young age to creating more mentorship programs for female high school and college students. There’s no doubt that the opportunities for girls and women today are far beyond what they were in Steve Jobs’ youth but, for the sake of all the current and future Sarah Jobs, we’re got a long way yet to go.

Technological artefacts are always socially shaped

By Eduard Aibar, Associate Professor, Department of Arts and Humanities, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Over the last three decades a vast amount of studies within the interdisciplinary field of Science & Technology Studies (STS) have analysed, in great detail, the processes by which many different technologies are designed, built, and implemented. One of the most common outcomes of those case studies is the claim that moral values, class prejudices or political principles, are usually embedded in the very design of technical artefacts, whether computers or ballistic missiles. This goes against the standard image of technology as a neutral application of scientific knowledge, where social or political issues are only relevant when considering a posteriori how a given technology should be used or not used. On the contrary, technology mirrors the particular social context where it is created, designed and implemented: different values or beliefs often result in very different artefacts. Technical artefacts could always have been different, or as historian of technology Thomas Hughes put it: “There is no one best way to paint the Virgin; nor is there one best way to build a dynamo.”

«Technology mirrors the particular social context where it is created, designed and implemented: different values or beliefs often result in very different artefacts»

This social construction thesis has been proved for many diverse technological fields: from coastal engineering or bicycles to information technologies, from hardware to software. Open source software, for instance, differs greatly from proprietary software, not only because the former allows free access and modification of the source code, but also because it is intrinsically different: its structure, modularity and working show a different style clearly anchored in a particular set of values and norms.

«According to a Netherlands experience, women's actively participation in the design of some public housing projects usually ends up with what experts call a more "flexible" style»

The thesis has also been proved for many different kinds of values and normative stands, among them, gender issues. Just to mention one single example, since 1946 there is in the Netherlands a tradition of Women Advisory Committees on Housing (Vrouwen Adviescommissies voor de Woningbouw), where women actively participate in the design of some public housing projects – since then a male-dominated task. The resulting designs are certainly different. Among other things, they favour what experts call a "flexible" design style. As researchers Wiebe Bijker and Karin Bijsterveld have put it: “The introduction of flexible housing […] created more space for women to arrange a life outside the standard family structure with its fixed gender roles.”

We do not know how Apple’s products would look like if Steve Jobs and a greater proportion of his engineers and designers had been women. But we are pretty sure they would have been different.