Week 9: Women in the Information Society

I teach a 4th year seminar in the School of Communication at SFU entitled CMNS 455: Women and New Information Technology. The following is my synopsis on this week’s readings, grouped together under the vague title “Women in the Information Society.” I wish I’d been blogging the readings all along (as I did with my comprehensive exams) but this blog wasn’t up and running before the start of the semester, and then I sort of got busy, and forgot about it (!). Here goes…

In “Constructing the information society: Women, information technology and design,” Jane E. Fountain (2000) explores the underrepresentation of women in IT. This translates into a human resources shortage, and lowered productivity. Her main argument is that a stronger showing by women as experts, owners and designers of infotech would likely alter and broaden the range of technological apps, standards and practices, contributing to progressive social change.

In CMNS 455 we have encountered the (liberal feminist) idea that increasing the numbers of women in this or that field would help eliminate gender discrimination and bring about equality. Many feminist theorists are critical of this notion posed as a solution, insofar as informal barriers to equality still remain, such as “male culture” in the workplace and sexual division of labour. According to Fountain, however, implementation of IT within organizations has “eroded the importance of hierarchy and command-and-control authority systems that structured power…” (p. 47). She also asserts (somewhat problematically, I think) that the skills required in IT work require “a distinct set of organizational, communication and managerial skills, at which women tend to be proficient” (ibid). In the course readings thus far, we have seen how the “feminization” of labour has occurred by identifying and labeling certain “female qualities” that are required for certain jobs, and then devaluing them to reinforce the ghettoization of women in the paid labour force.

Fountain points out the higher ratio of women to men computer users (using stats for 1997) but portrays user influence as limited. “Designers fashion technology more deeply, pervasively and fundamentally” (p. 47). The “social possibilities” we encounter in ITs are in the main “products of ‘deep’ design, characteristics and properties not readily, or not at all, open to modification by users” (ibid). So much for a Feenbergian (or even constructivist) reading. So, for Fountain, technical design seems to be a black box: designers define the technological needs of users; they create the processes, design the codes, build the systems that structure Web use. In short: “designers affect society through technology in ways that users cannot” (p. 48). True, of course, but I don’t think it’s as stark as all that.

Juliet Webster (1995) begins her chapter entitled “Women in systems design – values, methods and artifacts” by stating that the definition of information technology systems has failed women in workplaces (p. 148). That is to say, there is a disconnect between the world of systems designers and that of women’s work: because women are not represented in the development process, their needs and concerns remain unmet. This is a familiar feminist-constructivist refrain.

But she complexifies Fountain’s liberal-feminist argument, which locates the problem with women themselves and offers simplistic equal opportunity solutions. Rather, Webster suggests that it is more than a numbers game – the problem is more serious than women’s numerical absences from all computing work but the most menial and mundane. The issue also goes beyond the conditions of computing work – long, anti-social hours that are often antithetical to women’s lives and their double burden of paid and (unpaid) domestic labour. And it is more still than a problem of “masculine culture” and values of IT firms.

In addition to all of this but most importantly for Webster, it is the very processes and methods that comprise the development of computer systems – carried out in isolation from the worker/user – that pose the biggest barrier. This is because, according to Webster, computer systems development follows a typically positivist and technicist bent, focalizing on tools – the “killer app” – and techniques, as well as the technical limits and potentials of the machine. Invoking Marcuse’s notion of technological rationality (without acknowledging it, I might add), she describes how information and data are privileged over relationships among people.

More problematic is the ignorance of power and gender issues, which is then projected to the work to be automated. “The failure of computer systems developers to address critically the organization of the work they confront means that they often simply replicate oppressive systems of work organization in automated form.” (p. 149). Computer users are excluded from the design process because they are not “experts” – thought they possess knowledge of the work that the designers could not possibly have. The inherent gender-blindness of the innovation process means women remain objects – voiceless and invisible – rather than empowered subjects. Women also remain the point of origin for the problem, an approach that fails to problematize tech work and refuses to account for power relations.

Indeed, Webster points out that the gendered division of the computing industry is becoming more deeply entrenched, despite liberal feminist “awareness” campaigns and other “solutions.” Women are all too aware, it seems, of the high personal costs: hostile work environment, strained relationships with friends and family, identity challenges. Some feminists have attempted to move beyond the simple equal opportunity formulations, subverting gender relations by placing “women at the centre of development projects, both as the subjects of these projects and as the agents of strategic intervention, with the purpose of creating ‘woman-friendly’ or ‘woman-centred’ technologies” (p. 152).

Webster’s query of whether women technologists have different values that result in different technical artifacts is an intriguing one. Do women bring specifically “female” qualities and values to the process of IT development and do these translate into devices and systems with obviously feminine attributes? The scant literature on the subject seems to indicate that women have “caring values”, a less competitive way of interacting with others, and a greater concern for users and social context of technology. Women in IT are identified as having the interpersonal skills that “are learnt through an apprenticeship in womanhood and which are undervalued because they are possessed by women, deriving from and contributing to their subordination” (p. 161).

Some feminist research acknowledges and celebrates these personal competences that arise out of women’s subordination. Webster cautions that this can be progressive as well as problematic. Progressive because it aims to reverse dominant assumptions about these skills and thus women’s value. Problematic in that it dabbles in essentialism, affirming women’s role as caregivers and supporters. “As long as women continue to be identified with such attributes, even if these are recognized to be the products of socialization, then the attributes will be regarded as unimportant precisely because they are held by women, who are regarded as unimportant” (p. 162). One recommendation is to associate the gender qualities of certain types of work with the labour process itself, rather than with the women who perform it so as to prevent women from being denied skill recognition (p.168). Webster further acknowledges that it is difficult to translate values of any type directly into technology, let alone its design. The most she can say is that female computer scientists might chose different problems and develop different methods.

Webster veers into critical constructivist territory in her discussion of users “interpreting” technology, with the result that “the design process is only fully completed when the computer system is implemented and used” (p. 165). She calls this a “radical reconcpetualization” of computer systems development, one that considers the implementation process as innovative, and that values the “local expertise of users. If women’s “local knowledge” were to be redefined as authorativative, it could then inform the development of computer systems. She invokes Suchman’s (1994) term “artful integrations” of design and use during the implementation process, which is none other than Feenberg’s (1999) “creative appropriation”. Articulating and integrating into systems design the obscured and devalued knowledge and experience of women at work is a key aspect of feminist methods of tech dev. The tool designer thus begins with the work of the user. A radical concept (goddess forbid)!

Tam and Bassett Jr. examine and consider the reasons for the IT gender divide in their chapter in the edited collection, Removing barriers: Women in academic science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Bystydzienski & Bird, 2006). They note that while the gender gap in internet usage has been closing, the gender gap in education – women majoring in computer-related fields – has not. The authors contend that the “gender gap in educational achievement and employment opportunities puts women at a distinct disadvantage in a society that values computer technology” (110). You think?

While Tam and Bassett Jr. seek to understand the nature and causes of this phenomenon (or say they do), little analysis (but much number crunching) is evident). From a large study conducted using statistics from the University of Illinois-Chicago, they demonstrate that math performance is a significant predictor for becoming an IT major – but less so for female students. They also show that the technology gender gap is not due to differences in math performance, because while the math performance gender gap is shrinking, the IT gender gap continues to widen. the authors then consider other factors that influence the choice of university major and occupation, including: negative experience in computer science classes in grad school; less hands-on experience with technology before collage; women’s doubt of their math ability; girls’ perception of computers as “boy stuff”; and finally, lack of role models and the few female IT teachers.

In order to reduce the technology gender gap, the authors say what is needed is a change in societal and parental expectations, plus a concerted effort to encourage women’s participation in technology education. Again, these are the simplistic suggestions we’ve seen posited in liberal feminist accounts. They offer no concrete strategies for achieving these goals, nor any in depth analyses for understanding why the situation has occurred. Really, this chapter is little more than reassertions of the obvious, backed up but not illuminated by statistics. But for those who want empirical “proof” as to the lack of gender equality in our society, Tam and Bassett’s offering is important.

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