Use the details on the slides to help you choose a feminist approach to construct your mindmap!

2. Q: What have the experts asked and said about gender and technology?
Does technology liberate Men care about
women and encourage establishing a hierarchy
equality, or are the new whereas women care
technologies reinforcing about connecting with
sexual divisions in others…
society?
Women's reluctance to
Does the problem lie in judge is...a recognition of
men’s monopoly of the intricacies of real-
technology, or is world situations, and the
technology itself in some uniqueness of individuals'
sense patriarchal? experiences.
- Judy Wajcman - Carol Gilligan
A cyborg is a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of
social reality as well as a creature of fiction….
Liberation rests on the construction of the
consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of
oppression, and so of possibility.
- Donna Haraway

3. What are the roles How does
of technology affect
you:
in technology?

4. Q: HOW CAN WE EXPLORE GENDER AND
TECHNOLOGY?

5.  Grint and Gill (1995) state that there is a cultural
association of technology with masculinity,
 Feminism interrogates the gendered process of
exclusion and segregation of technology creation
and use
 Webster (1995) argues that feminist analyses of
technology mainly use:
o liberal feminism
o ecofeminism
o socialist feminism

6. FOR EXPLORING GENDER & TECHNOLOGY

7. • Perceives technology as inherently neutral
• Women's pure relationship to technology has been
made problematic
• Technology itself is not submitted to critical
analysis, and women themselves become the
problem
• Gender is significant yet irrelevant to technology
creation and practice (Grint & Gill, 1995)
A patriarchal society establishes the How does this
relationship between sexes and IT relate to the
by: “gendering of
a) assigning women with technology”?
tedious, eye-straining electronic
assembly
b) allowing men to predominate in
the decision-making and design
(Cockburn, 1983)

8. • 20th century - capitalism
favours interests of the • The focus: place
dominant class gender and class
on equal stance in
• This Marxist social shaping
theory influences which technology.
is later referred to as
“the social shaping of • Reinforces sexual
technology” division of labour
(Rosser, 2006). and wage labour.
• Technology is not only
a social product but
also comprises of Yet social shaping of technology
human activities has often been contextualised in
terms of males but excluding
females at all levels.

9. Women of colour are
disproportionately African American
distributed in the lowest feminism uncovers
paying and highest the role of race in
health-risk related parts the distribution of
of the technology the technology
workforce
labour market.
(Rosser, 2006).
What benefits can
female engineers
As knowledge and consideration of
from other races users are central to the technology
bring to the design, a design team consisting
design and of mixed gender and racial
production of diversity are essential in creating
technologies? diversity in technology design.

10. Females are united by
biology, including • Eco-feminism
gender differences in represents one
spatial and verbal strand of essentialist
abilities and other feminism
behaviours • Used to explain
(Rosser, 2006). either superiority or
inferiority of females
to males, based on
biological differences
Males’ inability to
conceive make them
shift their intention to
control the right of The behavioural variable of
developing aggression and its associated
technologies and to competitive nature of
dominate the natural engineering and computer
world and females science explain why females
(Easlea, 1983). have not entered these fields in
great numbers.

11. Existentialist feminism Females’ roles as the
suggests the value that predominant
society assigns to caretakers of babies
biological differences and children result in
between males and more technologies
females make women invented for childcare
the “other” by females than
(Tong, 1980). males.
Males who spend Can you think of
less time doing gender specific
tasks which most technologies
females fulfil create produced by the
a language which is opposite sex?
male-exclusive Why?
only.

12. • Based on the Freudian • Male computer
theory scientists design
technologies using a
• Biological differences
“hard-systems”
lead to different ways
approach
for young males and
females • Encouraged to be
independent, autonomo
• Male dominance is
us and distant
examined during the
construction of gender • Reflect characteristics
and sexuality in the of masculinity
oedipal stage of
psychosexual
Females as users of technology:
development
• find technologies fails to deliver
(Rosser, 2006)
the results they need,
• the design does not include
their views, priorities and needs.

13. Beliefs:
• patriarchy dominates • Believes in
all connection and
institutions, ideologies conception of the
and technologies world as an organic
whole
• females experience
difficulties in placing • Refuses
their dualistic, hierarchic
experiences, lives and al approaches and
needs in everyday life
dichotomies which
and environments.
fragment the
organic whole of
reality
How do men
• Practically no alternative limit women’s
feminist technologies power/positio
n in
• Masculinity and patriarchy technology?
have become so deeply
rooted in contemporary
technologies

14. Rejects the idea
Females can no
that all females
longer be seen as
speak in a unified
homogenous due to
voice or they
specific
should be
national, class and
universally
cultural identities
addressed.
(Rosser, 2006).
Simplistic assumptions in
technology designs:
• ignore females’ needs and
priorities
• assume females are uniform
across all social
classes, nationalities and cultures

15. Central beliefs:
• patriarchy dominates
throughout the
postcolonial and Females from
neo-colonial periods developing countries
are preferred for:
• culture, science and
• high technical &
technology of the
English proficiency
coloniser or former
• relatively high
colonising countries
productivity
may still remain
• low labour costs
superior
(Rosser, 2006)
What do you
know of the
technology
Due to new technologies taking place
transcending boundaries between the
of space and time, they former colonies
and the
were able to exploit colonisers?
sexual and racial
divisions of labour.

16. • The theory that overtly
fuses technology with Believes in the potential of
gender the Internet and
technologies as allowing
• Explores ways IT new opportunities for jobs
provide venues to and creativity for women
liberate or oppress (Millar, 1998).
females
This theory may be an end to male superiority
because it:
• offers a route for reconstructing feminist politics
• focuses on the implications of new technologies
rather than divisive factors (Paterson, 1994)

18. Research Problem
• Limited numbers of females studying information technology (IT)
• Only 20% of commencing students were female in 2004
• Lack of female participation in Australian IT tertiary education
Research Question
What are the factors influencing female undergraduates’
participation in CS degrees in Australia?
Postmodern feminist approach examines:
• the constructions of gender in a socially constructed, hegemonic
male space
• the qualities which females may need to bring into a male world to
succeed
• the learning approaches by gender
• Males prefer a formal, hierarchical planning approach

19. 1. Go to http://www.text2mindmap.com/
2. Create a mindmap by typing in in the left column.
3. List ideas into branches by indenting using the
“Tab” key or hold “Shift” + “Tab” together.
4. Change colours or font sizes (if you like) using the
“Controls” column on the right.
5. Finish the mindmap by clicking
button on the left.
6. Click once you have finished creating
your mindmap.
7. Upload your mindmap as an attachment in the
“Mindmapping Activity” discussion forum.

21. Cockburn, C. (1983). Brothers: Male dominance and technological change.
London: Pluto Press.
Easlea, B. (1983). Fathering the unthinkable: Masculinity, scientists and the
nuclear arms race. London: Pluto Press.
Grint, K., & Gill, R. (1995). The gender-technology relation: Contemporary
theory and research. London: Taylor and Francis.
Heeks, R. B. (1993). Software contracting to the third world. In P. Quintas
(Ed.), Social dimensions of systems engineering:
People, processes, policies and software development (pp. 236-250).
Elmsford, New York: Pergamon Press.
Millar, M. S. (1998). Cracking the gender code: Who rules the wired world?
Toronto: Second Story Press.
Paterson, N. (1994). Cyberfeminism. Retrieved March, 29, 2010, from
http://internetfrauen.w4w.net/archiv/cyberfem.txt
Rosser, S. V. (2006). Using the lenses of feminist theories to focus on women
and technology. In M. F. Fox, D. G. Johnson & S. V. Rosser
(Eds.), Women, gender and technology (pp. 13-46). Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
Tong, R. (1980). Feminist thought: A comprehensive introduction.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Webster, J. (1995). Shaping women's work: Gender, employment and
information technology. New York: Longman.