Penny had a bigger influence on my interest in computers at a formative age than any other woman or girl, real or fictional. Full disclosure: I am a web geek, not a computer geek. Happily, I get to do web stuff for my job and combine it with one of my other loves: working for gender justice. And I think I can draw a pretty direct line leading from Penny to computers to the internet to my career. Plus, of course, the privilege of having access to a computer from an early age, and a reasonably tech-enthusiastic dad.

Penny vs Robot Panther

Bitch magazine beat me to it earlier this year with a Pop Pedestal dedicated to Penny, so I won’t reinvent the wheel. Besides, any of you who were children in the 80s will probably remember the set-up anyway. In brief: Penny is the smart, brave, sensible niece of roboClouseau Gadget, possibly the world’s least threatening cyborg. With her dog Brains (a bit of a proto-Gromit) and her entirely badass secret computer disguised as a book, it’s basically Penny that solves all the crimes that her well-meaning but incompetent uncle is tasked with. Here’s a clip of Penny in action, saving her uncle from a robot panther (about 7 mins in):

Needless to say, I thought she was wicked.

While doing my research for this post I discovered that there was a sequel to the original series called Gadget and the Gadgetinis, set a few years down the line when Penny is in her teens.  Penny is still awesome, still rocking the bunches and still in trousers. She now has a laptop rather than a book, and she’s a fully fledged computer wiz and robotics expert: it turns out a ‘Gadgetini’ isn’t a geek cocktail, but rather a tiny droid version of Inspector Gadget that Penny has created to help the now Lieutenant Gadget with his crime fighting and generally keep him out of trouble.

Where are the girl geeks?

Thanks largely to the unstoppable advance of the internet into every aspect of our lives, the idea of computers being a ‘boy thing’ is slowly on the wane. Every child growing up in the UK now will use a computer at school, probably also at home and then at work. That doesn’t mean the stereotype is dead, not by a long shot. There is some good news: since WISE (Women into Science, Engineering and Construction) was created in 1984, the female uptake in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has almost doubled. Which brings it to the truly gargantuan figure of 14%. Oh. Worse still is that this figure has remained constant for the past decade.

One of the big obstacles in changing the gender balance of the IT industry is the lack of role models for girls. This post on the fantastic Sociological Images blog brings home the importance of role models in undermining stereotypes, for girls in particular. There are some brilliant initiatives, groups and campaigns in addition to WISE – Digital Women’s Club, Girl Geek Dinners, Girl Geeks, Girl Geeks Social Enterprise, Women Who Tech – but what I think is crucial is getting techy girls and women in front of children, without comment and as part of the cultural products they consume already. Although Penny was quite a radical character, I was oblivious because I hadn’t learned yet that computers were a ‘boy thing’. Computer Engineer Barbie is a start, but I suspect we’re going to need a few more than that.

Computers and Me

Of course, I didn’t end up working or studying in STEM, I ended up in (lightside) marketing. But working with the web is where I am happiest, and I think I owe a little slice of that happiness to Penny. Because back in 1980something I wasn’t fazed when I first found myself facing an Amstrad. I was entranced. At primary school I loved our BBC micro, even when I had to play maths games on it. And when dad brought home a Mac Classic loaned from work, I was in love. Later, I’d stay up all night at the weekends playing Myst or Civilisation or Lemmings, even after my friends and I had discovered the joys of getting drunk and falling over in fields in the middle of the night.

My friends at that time were all girls (not deliberate, they were just the only group that would have me) and had not the slightest interest in games. After the first round of blank faces I never mentioned them again. Computer games, it turned out, were for our little brothers. It was only when I started going out with a computer geek and hanging out with his friends that games and computers became an acceptable topic of conversation. Then I arrived at university, got my first laptop, discovered the web and never looked back. In my first office job after uni they offered me the chance to do a bit of website editing and I grabbed it with both hands.

Being comfortable with computers, being excited about the possibilities of technology, and being unafraid to jump in and try is what has brought me to my dream job (via some less dreamy bits of helping other people set their Out of Office, of course).

Of course, as a child I never dreamed of managing websites or running social media campaigns. This job didn’t even exist 10 years ago, so how could I have known? And to be honest, ‘Communications and New Media Manager’ would have sat a little oddly beside ‘astronaut’, ‘poet’ and ‘knight of the round table’. But I think what I got from Penny was a curiosity and confidence about technology that meant when the world wide web arrived in my life, I was ready for it.

That Book

Something that made me happy while I was googling away for this post was the number of other women saying ‘oh, I loved Penny, I would have given anything for her computer book!’ I like the idea of so many people’s joy when they got their first laptop tinged with the memory of Inspector Gadget. Someone has made a screensaver to help you pretend that your laptop is the computer book. And best of all is this: a computer book made for a Penny-worshipping daughter by her dad. What? No, I’ve just got something in my eye. *sniff*

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