Every year the internet and its associated technologies seem to have a bigger place in our world, in our lives; it sometimes seems that screen life is life. That's as true for women as it is for men. And you'd think if you were a young person thinking about setting out on a career, or an older person thinking about a new one, it would be a logical place to look. Yet the percentage of women employed in what is inelegantly called ICT (information and communication technology) is actually going down, a study of seven states across the European Union has found.
The figures are reported in the first paper of a new book, The Gender Politics of ICT, edited by Jacqueline Archibald, Judy Emms, Frances Grundy, Janet Payne and Eva Turner. It consists of the papers from the 6th International Women into Computing Conference and, commendably, was published within weeks of the gathering. (One of the great problems of most books on the sociology of the wired world is that by the time they've been through the whole publishing mill they're hopelessly out of date.)
But this is as up-to-date as it could possibly be, and also wide-ranging. Often books about the technological world are US-centric, with perhaps a token nod to Britain, Australia and Canada, but this text ranges widely across Europe, "old" and "new" and even extends to Japan and Nigeria.
Eva Turner goes looking to see how women in computing is regarded in the Czech Republic, her country of origin. It is not a pretty picture. Turner says:
"...when I requested an interview with the Minister for Infomatics and explained that I am interested in questions of Gender and Computing, the minister's secretary said to me 'I can already envisage what you look like'. (tak to us Vas dovedu predstavit). I did not ask what his image of me actually was.
As that passage suggests, while there are plenty of dry, but necessary, statistics and theoretical analyses in this text, it also has the immediacy and freshness of a good personal presentation. It is uneven, as you'd expect, but it is I'd suggest it is essential for anyone interested not just in "gender and computers", but anyone seeking up-to-date information on the computer industry in general.
Article comments
1 - John Daniel
Natalie,
First a question, then a couple of notes.
What do you mean by "The paper is by Tess Pierce who takes a heavily theoretical approach in trying to 'cybergrrls' and 'cyberfeminists'"? I'm guessing that is a typo, but I'm puzzled. What are you trying to say here?
I did not find Ms. Pierce's selection of blogs to be odd at all. The web is awash in blogs right now and you really have to search to find one with any substance. These three blogs are quite unusual and substantial. They were picked specifically to illustrate women using blogs to get around restrictive societies.
You are going to get a lot of of dry, theoretical analyses in papers like these. This was a peer-reviewed conference and if they weren't written the way they were, they wouldn't have been published at all. Eventually these papers will show up in books and articles meant for the general public. Until then, you have to keep an eye on the authors and papers that sound promising.
Unfortunately, you are wrong about the next conference having a lot more papers on blogs. This conference was the last one. A conference about women is always going to be hard to maintain. Combine that with the downturn in IT and you get no more money for conferences like this one. Welcome to Women's Studies.
2 - Natalie Bennett
First, not a typo: "cybergrrl" is part of a whole movement that has been around for decades, see for example here.
I'd agree these are excellent examples of "women using blogs to get around restrictive societies", they just seemed to sit rather poorly with frankly rather undigested discussion of Donna Haraway's cyborgs. (A theory that I find very interesting, as you'll see from my thesis on the realities of the wired world.)
And I have no objection to "dry, theoretical" analyses (indeed you'll find I'm an enthusiast for Pierre Bourdieu, among others), if they have something to say, and I'm afraid this didn't really go anywhere.
Nonetheless, as I think the review makes clear, I think there is a lot of valuable material in this book. And while its primary audience is undoubtedly meant to be academic, there's plenty of academically rigorous but entirely accessible material there.
And I'm very sorry to hear about the demise of the conference - any benefactors with a bit of spare cash around out there?
3 - John Daniel
I was referring to the phrase "in trying to". I do a lot of editing and that stuck out at me. I ignore stuff in quotes. In a related note, you should review your thesis and add unicode tags where appropriate. I promise I'll read it for content next :)
Thanks for the link to Pierre Bourdieu. He sounds interesting.
I guess academic writing is here to stay. It hasn't changed much over the years, except in quantity, and that isn't likely to change. The blog phenomena, however, is still a work in progress. I'm very interested in substantial analysis of blogs - something more than: Cool! I'll start my own.
The blog Notes from an Iranian Girl, referenced by Ms. Pierce, is one of my favorites. She said what she wanted to say and then she stopped. Brilliant.
4 - Natalie Bennett
Apologies John, you are right there is a missing word: it should be "in trying to _link_. I'll go in and fix it now. As for my thesis, you caught me in the middle of a total revamp of the website. The front and some other pages have been done but the thesis hasn't - I'll do it tonight so you can try again tomorrow!
And I think academia does have a problem with what I call the "wired world" - the rate of working in each is totally disproportionate. The answer, really, is to develop an academic world of blogging, or similar technologies, but given the conservatism of academia, that is likely to be, again, a slow process.
5 - Natalie Bennett
Actually, make that missing word "compare", as I have now done.