For a nuanced understanding of the reasons and mechanisms underlying the perceptions of new technologies in different individuals, more knowledge about perceptions of technology usage, particularly in relation to age and gender stereotypes, is needed.

In their recent paper, Alina Gales and Dr. Sylvia Hubner investigate how gender, age, and technology stereotypes relate to one another and how this relationship reinforces or questions stereotypes. Based on intersectionality, stereotyping, and sense-making literature, the study explores how older women perceive their own interest in and competence with technology and that of their peers. The authors conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with women between 65 and 75 years of age in Germany. 

The findings indicate that their evaluations of others are age and gender stereotyped. When explaining their own interest in technology, they refer to their individual preferences, and for explaining their own competence of technology, they refer to social categories. Plus, assumptions of technology usage seem to be gendered. On the basis of these findings, the authors discuss the need for taking social categories into account when evaluating inclusiveness with new technologies.

Gales, A., & Hubner, S. V. (2020). Perceptions of the self versus one’s own social group: (Mis)conceptions of older women’s interest in and competence with technology. Frontiers in Psychology, 11(848), 1–15. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00848