The digital media world has changed dramatically from the 1990's to now, and with it, so has the role that women play in it. From my experience as a Photo Center Technician for two years and going to school to major in Digital Media Technology, I have observed most everything pertaining to photography and the digital media world.
What I have noticed during my time stuck in the Walmart Photo Center, is that most of the local photographers (at least in the Chipley area) are prominently female. I am not exactly sure why that is, or why I even noticed to begin with since there are so many customers that come in. But most of the customers that have businesses and that we receive copyrights from are indeed female. Now, this may be because of the creativity that inhabits female minds or maybe it's just because their husbands buy them Photoshop Elements 9 and a Nikon D40 so that they can go to town on it. Maybe it is that they women have more patience to work on projects that take a lot of time on the computer. I know I get thanked enough by older men as I scan in their pictures for them at the Instant Print kiosks and all they can say is, "Wow, you girls really know what you're doing!" or, "I don't know what we would do without you here." Probably figure it out yourselves, or give up and call management. I might just be noticing since the only other people that work in the Photo Center are four other women besides myself. But, whatever the case may be, females are making more of an appearance in the photography business.
From attending Gulf Coast State College the last two years, I have noticed that there are a lot more female programmers, animators, web designers, etc that are around today. Most of the people that I talk to online that make web pages and whatnot are female. I did not realize that I would have so much competition coming into this career until I stepped into my Photography class and my 3D Animation class. There were only a handful of males in the class and the rest were female. And here I thought that my lazy days of staying up late at fourteen to memorize HTML code so that I could make pretty pages on Gaia or Livejournal would pay off! I am hoping that when I actually get my degree and get out in the world, I will not have to compete with any of my fellow classmates. I have anxiety problems, so they will most likely get the best of me.
I see more females working on computers on the news or on television shows. As in the television show Criminal Minds, there is a woman who works on the computers non-stop analyzing things NAME. Not too long ago, I saw an Art Institute commercial where this woman was talking about how she wished she could "get her dreams for gaming to become reality". Me too. But, it was the fact that a female wanted to go into gaming that was so surprising to me. Not many women enjoy gaming as much as others. I have always been the nerdy girl to stay up late getting lost in the beauty of a cut scene from the Final Fantasy games or falling in love with one of the Dynasty Warrior characters while I read up on their history. It is not movies or books that do that for me (I never even cried when I watched the Notebook), it is video games. Except for Disney movies, which, I believe that there must be some kind of all female company that works there to make such cute and adorable movies.
Women's roles have been changing since the dawn of time and will continue to change. Not only in other fields, but in the Digital Media world as well. Who knows, since Steve Jobs left Apple maybe there will be a woman CEO soon to come. Possibly Infinity Ward or Treyarch will lose most of their company and women will be making most of the new Call of Duty games. I know if I were apart of it, there would be nothing but Call of Duty Zombies all the time from then on. But, I am really hoping for the future where there are a lot more women coming into the business of digital media. And possibly, maybe another Naughty Bear game. I know that game had to be mostly female thought, there is no way a man could think of that much cuteness and violence all at once.
Woman Power! Meagan your observations are on target. I am also from Washington County and spend most of my time and money at Walmart. I work in Chipley and know several women with photography businesses and two men, who have a photo businesses. As a fact a professional photography in Jackson County relies on his wife's creativity to and patience with children to photo breath taking print. You might have something there with the creativity and patience! See you when I come in your store.
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