Maybe it was just because I was watching the commercials in a room full of women who had met one of the people featured (and were very excited about it every time, understandably so :) - it was the guy who turned text in to voice) or because I'm so used to the male-dominated tech field, that I didn't have an issue with the fact that every single developer featured was a male. Some people thought that best buy was sending the message that while men can make apps, women can only sell them. While that conclusion can be drawn from the ad, I, somewhat surprisingly, don't have a large issue with the ad, because it is such a male-dominated industry right now and men have created great technological advances. (side note, I hope that guys don't feel like their tech advances are being completely discounted because they are men and not women, in this whole conversation about women in science/tech - that is not my intention. I just want to see women given more opportunities and told that they can succeed in a currently male-dominated industry. It can be quite intimidating to be the only women in a room if you don't have support and encouragement!)
An article on a site called Jezebel pulled together a list of females in the tech industry that the author felt best buy could have included in their ad. Click the link, read the list of women. Quite honestly, Amanda Wixted, the creator of Farmville, is the only women I feel would be well-know enough by the superbowl-watching crowd to merit real consideration by the marketing team at best buy. Would you recognize Emily Chang, the woman who created a company who designs user interfaces - recognizing her product in the 3 seconds she would have been on the screen? I can't even remember the faces of the men who made Words with Friends, but I connected with the ad because I saw the image of the app on the phone screens. Maybe it's because I've been on the flip side as well, as a member of the commercial-producing crew (my uncle makes commercials and I've worked for him in the past) that I understand why the men who appeared were featured. Do any of you know about the women Women are still making great strides in the tech industry, but I'm not ready to quit shopping best buy because of this commercial. Women were not objectified and we got to see some of the faces behind some of the most well-known and useful mobile technology. And anyways, there were both men and women in the mix at the end, I'm just glad the used a female to do the talking, as it easily could have been a male 'manager' - which is the role I mentally put the woman in because she was the spokesperson. (second side note - check out the racial diversity in that group of best buy sales people and note that not all of the male developers are white males.)
I'm curious, though, what my other feminist-minded friends thought of the commercial, did your radar pick up on the all-male developers vs women salesperson when you first saw it?
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