My office just upgraded to Office 2007 - we didn't go to 2010 because of compatibility issues with other software. And I'll confess up front -- I'm a rut person. Actually, I'm a rut person's rut person. So new technology isn't something I adopt easily. But usually, I don't feel that the technology was designed to make me, as a woman, feel inferior. In fact, that feeling has never happened to me - until Office 2007.
It's all about the ribbon, which is an insidious device that seems designed to serve two evil purposes: (1) to hamper, harm, denigrate and deter women and (2) to drive women backwards in an effort to survive in the workplace.
The ribbon is clearly a man's tool. It's mostly like designed by men for men and it's all about men. Why? Because men are visual. They think in pictures. And what is the ribbon except a long string of pictures?
Women think in words. For women the drop down menus of older versions of Office were easy to understand and navigate. Well, that couldn't continue, could it? Women were already succeeding in terrifying numbers. That had to stop. So the software mogul designed an improvement intended to drive women backwards while men advanced on the work front.
Why does it drive women backwards? I'll bet one of the first acts of every woman who spent more than an hour trying to decode all the idiotic pictures on the ribbon did the same thing I did - a Google search for keyboard shortcut codes for 2010. And I can press control-w all day long to close documents, but every time I do it, I resent the heck out of it.
If Microsoft isn't trying to be a sexist, anti-woman crusader - it should send users one of those updates that gives us the chance to get our menu bar back - and yes, I want "edit" back on that menu. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to take all the editing tools that were under one handy label and scatter them randomly on the ribbon from hell? Whoever it was, I'll tell you who it wasn't - it wasn't a WOMAN. And don't get me started with out the company screwed up the "view" option. The "draft" view is the normal view - or at least it is for WOMEN. Apparently men can't make the mental adjustment to process the words and symbols on the now-draft view.
So Microsoft -- if your goal is to drive women backwards - roughly to the days of DOS - you're succeeding mightily. If your goal isn't to alienate women - who make a heck of a lot of the software decisions in most offices - then you best readjust your thinking. The only thing your current sexist efforts will do is to drive women into the arms of your competitors.
If Microsoft wants to serve the needs of all of its customers -- rather than just the preferences of its male buyers - the company needs to send us an update that caters to women - THE SEGMENT OF THE POPULATION INTELLIGENT ENOUGH TO THINK IN WORDS.