Moving towards Accommodating Women with ICT: Paying Attention to Self-inclusion Mechanisms

Recent developments of new information and communication technologies, as well as feminisms, are essential for understanding the major changes in our societies today. Feminist research of technology, traditionally, has been focused on explaining the exclusion of women from technologies. However, a move towards inclusion is already being carried out intensively. This involves investigating the experiences of women in ICT and thereby making visible their trajectories and mechanisms towards inclusion, as well as the challenges and opportunities that are generated thereby. In this article I aim to explore the processes of self-inclusion of women in ICT and specifically to show the main mechanisms that they have followed and activated to self-include in ICT. To do this I have relied on shared experiences of a purposive sample of artistic technologists and computer technologists in Barcelona, by conducting interviews and focus groups. As a result I show a series of mechanisms that women follow and activate to access, remain in, advance, and even transform ICT. These mechanisms go beyond learning and include not only doing gender but also undoing it as well as ICT. Thus, Women in ICT seek to access and progress in ICT adapting to certain circumstances but also changing them to generate and regenerate ICT in order not just to be assimilated but better to accommodate with ICT.

[1]  Elisabeth K. Kelan,et al.  Towards a Topology of ‘Doing Gender’: An Analysis of Empirical Research and Its Challenges , 2014 .

[2]  Elisabeth K. Kelan.  Performing Gender at Work , 2009 .

[3]  David Tuffley,et al.  The Gender Digital Divide in Developing Countries , 2014, Future Internet.

[4]  Gert-Jan Hospers,et al.  Creative cities: Breeding places in the knowledge economy , 2003 .

[5]  Malin Sveningsson Elm,et al.  Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Digital Media and Gender in a Nordic Context , 2007 .

[6]  Laurie A. Rudman,et al.  Disruptions in Women's Self-Promotion: The Backlash Avoidance Model 1 , 2010 .

[7]  Leah Buechley,et al.  LilyPad in the wild: how hardware's long tail is supporting new engineering and design communities , 2010, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[8]  Jeria L. Quesenberry.  Reconfiguring the Firewall: Recruiting Women to Information Technology across Cultures and Continents , 2008 .

[9]  Helen McQuillan.  Technicians, Tacticians and Tattlers: Women as Innovators and Change Agents in Community Technology Projects , 2009, J. Community Informatics.

[10]  J. Wajcman.  Feminist Theories of Technology , 2010 .

[11]  Sadie Plant.  Zeros + ones : digital women + the new technoculture , 1997 .

[12]  U. Flick.  An introduction to qualitative research, 4th ed. , 2009 .

[13]  E. Bartra.  Debates en torno a una metodología feminista , 2002 .

[14]  A. Haché.  Under the Radar: the Contribution of Civil Society and Third Sector Organisations to EU eInclusion Policy , 2011 .

[15]  Eulalia Pérez Sedeño,et al.  Ciencia, Tecnología y Género , 2002 .

[16]  Adriana Gil-Juarez,et al.  Brecha digital de género: Una revisión y una propuesta , 2011 .

[17]  Els Rommes.  Websites for women: New routes to digital inclusion , 2011 .

[18]  Alex Haché,et al.  INDAGANDO EN LA RELEVANCIA DE INTERNET EN EL ACCESO, USO Y DESEOS DE LAS TIC POR PARTE DE LAS MUJERES EN LAS TIC , 2011 .

[19]  Juliet Webster,et al.  Understanding Women’s Presence in ICT: the Life Course Perspective , 2011 .

[20]  Wendy Faulkner,et al.  Doing gender in engineering workplace cultures. I. Observations from the field , 2009 .

[21]  Eileen M. Trauth,et al.  Exploring the Importance of Social Networks in the IT Workforce: Experiences with the "Boy's Club" , 2004, AMCIS.

[22]  H. Edmunds.  The Focus Group Research Handbook , 1999 .

[23]  V. Lagesen.  Gender and Technology: From Exclusion to Inclusion? , 2015 .

[24]  D. Haraway.  Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective , 1988 .

[25]  Eileen M. Trauth,et al.  Critical empirical research in IS: an example of gender and the IT workforce , 2006, Inf. Technol. People.

[26]  Patrick Werquin.  recognition of non-formal and informal learning in OECd countries : a very good idea in jeopardy ? , 2008 .

[27]  S. Turkle.  Computational reticence: why women fear the intimate machine , 2004 .

[28]  B. Ackerly,et al.  Doing Feminist Research in Political and Social Science , 2010 .

[29]  Krista Scott-Dixon.  Doing IT: Women Working In Information Technology , 2004 .

[30]  Wendy Faulkner,et al.  Gender in the Information Society: Strategies of Inclusion , 2007 .

[31]  Anastasia Kitsantas,et al.  The Hidden Dimension of Personal Competence: Self-Regulated Learning and Practice. , 2005 .

[32]  Rosalind Gill.  Cool, Creative and Egalitarian? Exploring Gender in Project-Based New Media Work in Euro , 2002 .

[33]  H. Corneliussen.  Technologies of inclusion. Gender in the Information Society , 2014 .

[34]  Allan Fisher,et al.  Unlocking the Clubhouse : Women in Computing by Allan Fisher , 2015 .

[35]  N. Bosch,et al.  Moving for What? International Mobility Strategies of Women in ICT Careers , 2011 .

[36]  Ian Alexander,et al.  An introduction to qualitative research , 2000, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[37]  Cecilia Castaño Collado.  La segunda brecha digital , 2008 .

[38]  Wendy Faulkner,et al.  Doing gender in engineering workplace cultures. II. Gender in/authenticity and the in/visibility paradox , 2009 .

[39]  Bente Rasmussen,et al.  Excluding women from the technologies of the future , 1991 .

[40]  Marie Griffiths,et al.  CELEBRATING HETEROGENEITY?: A survey of female ICT professionals in England , 2007 .

[41]  Elisabeth K. Kelan.  Gender Logic and (Un)doing Gender at Work , 2010 .

[42]  Jennifer S. Light,et al.  When Computers Were Women , 1999 .

[43]  N. Bosch.  De la exclusión a la autoinclusión de las mujeres en las TIC. Motivaciones, posibilitadores y mecanismos de autoinclusión From exclusion to self-inclusion of women in ICT. Motivations, enablers and mechanisms of self-inclusion , 2012 .

[44]  P. Werquin.  Moving Mountains: will qualifications systems promote lifelong learning? , 2007 .

[45]  Siri Øyslebø Sørensen.  Sørensen, Faulkner and Rommes. Technologies of Inclusion. Gender in the Information Society , 2011 .

[46]  Eileen M. Trauth,et al.  Retaining women in the U.S. IT workforce: theorizing the influence of organizational factors , 2009, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[47]  Nelly E.J. Oudshoorn,et al.  Designing Inclusion; The development of ICT products to include women in the Information Society , 2004 .

[48]  Núria Vergés Bosch,et al.  Doing and Undoing Genders and Information and Communication Technologies , 2014, Interacción '14.

[49]  Nina E. Lerman,et al.  Gender and Technology: a Reader , 2003 .

[50]  Catharina Landström,et al.  Queering feminist technology studies , 2007 .

[51]  FisherAllan,et al.  Unlocking the clubhouse , 2002 .

[52]  Traci Sitzmann,et al.  A meta-analysis of self-regulated learning in work-related training and educational attainment: what we know and where we need to go. , 2011, Psychological bulletin.

[53]  Peggy S. Meszaros.  Reconfiguring the Firewall : Recruiting Women to Information Technology across Cultures and Continents , 2007 .

[54]  Milagros Sáinz,et al.  Parental and Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions of ICT Professionals, Gender Differences and their Role in the Choice of Studies , 2012 .

[55]  William Aspray,et al.  Women and Information Technology : Research on Underrepresentation , 2010 .

[56]  G. Valenduc.  Not a job for life? Women's progression, conversion and dropout in ICT professions , 2011 .