Output details

Gender differences in website production and preference aesthetics: preliminary implications for ICT in education and beyond

The article breaks new ground in performing preference tests amongst men and women of front-end website content ascertained as having male or female-typical aesthetic/ linguistic features. The methodology required 64 respondents to review six websites exemplifying the male and female web design paradigms. Results proposed that there was an overall preference by male and female respondents for the website exemplifying the aesthetic associated with their gender. This is the first study to test gender preferences for web site content in relation to the gender of the producer and to establish statistically significant gender differences in preferences for landing ‘home’ page content including the use of language, imagery, shapes, layout and typography colours. The research also evidenced a highly significant tendency for preferences to follow the design paradigm associated with the respondent’s gender. In respect of particular elements, there was a highly significant statistical tendency for female respondents to prefer the female-designed web sites on all five of the elements and a corresponding tendency for male respondents to prefer male elements with the two exceptions of ‘imagery’, where the female-produced imagery was preferred, and ‘shapes’ where men were indifferent between male and female-produced websites. The authors conclude that these results are suggestive of the operation of gendered success criteria, leaving the door open to indirectly discriminatory practices by one gender towards the other. In a positive sense, the results assist in a process of matching websites to preferences.