The rise of the nerdette? - Building Gender Balanced Business

BY ELISABETH KELAN

Newsweek ran an article on a new breed of nerd: the nerdette. The nerdette is a girl nerd. These nerd girls are a growing group of young women who make the term nerd their own. They subvert the negative stereotype of the nerd either by not seeing it as derogative at all or by creating a new, more feminine version of the nerd.

Instead of being social outsiders, they are social, enjoy networking and are often fashionable and stylish. And counter the stereotype of the nerd, they are not male. The male image of the geek, nerd or hacker seems to be outdated with this young generation of women who have grown up with new technologies. These young women take technology by storm whereas the few women who broke the glass ceiling in the tech industry – like Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina – are slowing exiting as a recent article lamented. However there seem to be many women in the starting blocks to take on leading positions in technology if we are to believe Business Week or USA Today.

“The problem with stereotypes is that it restricts who can count as a certain type of person. Traditional nerds were defined on the idea that they are not women and therefore this definition excluded women from being nerds. The nerdette definition now includes women but only those who fulfil traditional expectations about femininity like being a cheerleader or liking pink heels.”

From academic research we know that what I have called ‘reprogram stereotypes’ is one way of overcoming stereotypes. Reprogramming stereotypes means to give them a different meaning. This meaning should not be a radical departure from the original meaning but a playful reinterpretation. This is exactly what the term “nerdette” does. It uses the stereotype of the nerd giving it a new meaning which is that women can be nerds too. Instead of conforming to the masculine undertones of what it means to be a nerd, being a nerdette gives the individual woman a license to be feminine.

The problem with stereotypes is that it restricts who can count as a certain type of person. Traditional nerds were defined on the idea that they are not women and therefore this definition excluded women from being nerds. The nerdette definition now includes women but only those who fulfil traditional expectations about femininity like being a cheerleader or liking pink heels. Nothing wrong with this per se, but many women might not want to use these classifiers of femininity – and might prefer flat shoes.

I also see another problem with this over-feminisation. This over-feminisation goes hand in hand with certain expectations of being sexy and available to men (this piece seems to suggest that nerd girls are particularly appealing to certain men and their main characteristic it to be beautiful, to wear glasses and to attend Star Trek conventions – Seven of Nine is of course their role model). However we know that if a woman is too sexy in the workplace, she generally is not seen as competent.

However the Newsweek article suggests that most of these nerdettes do not rely on over-feminisation but rather combine being a nerd with being a woman as part of who they feel there are. Being a nerd is now chic. At least to be a female nerd.

Source: This article has been reproduced from an article that first appeared on the women in IT blog Lady Geek with the permission of the author Dr Elisabeth Kelan, also editor of the Women in IT section of WOMEN-omics.