The central theme running through the book is "where are the women?", not just in "computing", but in related areas such as engineering and general science. A number of answers emerge. The most obvious, perhaps, is that many computing jobs demand long hours, to the extreme even of "sleeping at your desk", that make them almost impossible for women with family responsibilities. So even women who enter the industry tend to drop out at this point in their lives.
Then there's the culture issue (with which I can sympathise, since the media is much the same). A group of researchers looking at women in IT in the North West of England found that women "had to distance themselves from their gender in the effort to blend in ... and such an astounding level of fear and loathing towards them that it is remarkable that any women at all persevere with an IT career". Their interviewees spoke of having to drink with the boys, ignore sexual banter and talk about football, just to fit in.
But there's also a bigger problem of identity. Juliet Webster writes about engineering being more "gender authentic" for men. Many of the men she interviews "provided little or no account of their choice - precisely because there is nothing remarkable for a man about choosing to be an engineer. By contrast virtually all of the women I interviewed have a story to tell about why they made the choice: like not having children as a woman, it demands an explanation". Is this the same in IT? I suspect it is.
Answers to these problems are rather thinner on the ground. Rosa Michaelson outlines the European Commission's process of "gender mainstreaming", addressed broadly at the "leaky pipeline of female scientists". (I'm one of those, having done a first science degree then fled in other direction as fast as possible.) Her report is broadly positive, yet this of course is only one area of employment.
In Norway, Hilde Corneliussen studied a group of non-specialist women studying computing, and asked the interesting question: did they get pleasure out of it, and why? The answer was a clear "yes" - mainly because they "discovered they could manage and they could learn", but this was a surprise, because they had internalised a societal belief that computers were not for their gender - this was almost a forbidden pleasure to the women. Corneliussen suggests: "For the future, why not invite women to computer education by telling them that "You might even fall in love with the technology!"
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.