ePad Femme, Because Tablets Were Too Manly

ArsTechnica has brought back up the favorite topic of tech and gender roles due to the Eurostar ePad Femme, an Android tablet marketed to women. This tablet has been out since October, was promoted circa Valentine’s Day, and is for some reason, just now causing a media firestorm.

No, not that kind of firestorm.
[Image courtesy of Warner Brothers and DC Comics]

The Femme is a fairly unremarkable Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) tablet. Some articles refer to it as “pink”, but every image I have seen shows it as boring black, with pink wallpaper. If that’s all it takes to make a product feminine, that’s a fairly low bar.

The ePad Femme also comes pre-loaded with assorted applications aimed at women. Except, of course, those apps don’t interest all women or even only women. The yoga app in particular sounds interesting, and I’m always game for a new recipes app.

Eurostar argues that the product isn’t sexist, because the company also makes products aimed at gamers. That’s a fascinating argument, as I was unaware that gamers were a minority in culture. While the ePad is trying to target a specific market, it’s failing. What Eurostar is doing is pre-loading a bunch of random “lady apps” and assuming that the majority of women will be into it.

You know what Eurostar should have done? Offer different software packets for different personality types. As an example of some (fake) software to load onto the tablet, there could have been the FashionEista for the lush ladies, the iAmWoman for the female executive, and the PadPad to be used specifically for tracking ovulation and menstruation.

If the last bit there seems silly, that’s because it is. The whole point of having apps available is that I should be able to pick and chose what reflects my personality. My wife and I both had Palm Pres, and we both loaded different applications based on our personality, not if we had internal or external genitalia. The average user fills his or her smartphone or tablet based on personal need/want, not some massive, gender-based hive mind.

Resistance is futile. You will be emasculated.
[Borg Queen care of Paramount Pictures]

The company could have chosen to include an app about women in history or any app aimed at empowering women in any way. The ePad Femme is supposedly aimed for Middle Eastern cultures, where women may not be familiar with technology. This is, of course, a crap argument, because the point of unfamiliar technology is to learn how to use it. By pre-loading a tablet (or smartphone) for anyone, you’re saying “this is your identity to me.” As all of the ePad Femme’s apps are aimed at cooking, making babies, and dressing up, that says a lot. Throw in that Eurostar also makes a tablet aimed at children that follows similar pre-loading guidelines and the condescension is quite clear.

Targeting female customers is pretty smart, but you have to be smart in how you do it. Start with a clean design, then maybe have more color than black or at least market it as obsidian. Maybe include women in your focus group. Failing that, you could assume that your customers are smart enough to put what they want on their tablets.