Gender and web design software

Abstract

There are several studies dealing with the differences between sites originated by men and women. However, these references are mainly related to the "output", the final web site. In our research we examined the input side of web designing. We thoroughly analysed a number of randomly selected web designer softwares to see, whether and to what extent the templates they offer determine the final look of an individual's website. We have found that most of them are typical masculine templates, which makes it difficult to any women to design a feminine looking website. It can be one of the reasons of the masculine website hegemony on the web.

Keywords

• web design
• web aesthetics
• gender differences
• Internet
• websites