What? Women Can Use Mobile Phones? By Themselves?

Stupidity

from the me-tarzan-you-jane dept

Those pesky women — first, they start using the Internet, and now, evidently they’re using mobile phones, too. Digital Lifestyles points out one of the most vapid surveys we’ve seen in a long time, with Vodafone Germany determining that “women are informed mobile phone users who know what they want.” Um, just like the rest of us, then? The survey seeks to answer such important questions as “Does [a woman’s phone] have to be pink?” and “Do female users know what UMTS stands for?” It’s hard to imagine a serious attempt at segmentation is behind this, since it’s so patronizing: evidently a third of women “trust in their own judgement and don’t ask for advice” when buying a phone. Yay women! Vodafone didn’t think you had it in you! And the other two-thirds “ask their husband, boyfriend, or a sales assistant” — apparently single women and lesbians are out of luck. Some of the stuff just speaks for itself: “One surprising finding is that the presumed ‘typical female’ criterion of colour was only accorded a priority ranking of eleven out of a total of sixteen criteria.” Right, because everything has to be pink. There’s an implication throughout the press release that it’s surprising that women use what it calls “technical features” like cameras and Bluetooth, and in case you really wanted to know, it says womens’ favorite place for making calls is “on a comfortable sofa.” As Digital Lifestyles points out, there’s no comparative data showing the male response to these questions, but there’s a good chance that the answers would be pretty similar. Evidently Vodafone, or the company it hired to do the survey, forgot women are people too.