| Abstract |
With the emergence of Information and Communication technologies and third wave feminism, new opportunities for women involved in ICT have been emphasized with critical optimism. Feminists of technology have approached gender and technology from diverse conceptions and feminisms. Nowadays feminist research is moving from the concern of numbers and the digital divide, to focus on inclusion and the presence of women in ICT and analyze their experiences in technological fields. These current feminisms introduce the notions of doing and undoing gender in relation to technology, pointing to a mutually constitutive process of gender and technology that develops in a fluid and dynamic manner. Therefore, gender and ICT relationship is no longer understood in a deterministic manner or with no agency given to women, but in a way that gender and technology become coproduced in a mutable, fluid, dynamic, interactive and performative process where gender is not only being done and undone, but also the technologies and their relationship with gender. Thus, it is considered that both gender and technology may not be fixed concepts, but dynamic and changing over time and situations, making it possible to recognize and open new possibilities for change and transformation through feminist politics. In this sense, we consider that gender is being done when the tendency is to emphasize femininity in contrast to the hegemonic masculinity, resulting in difference. Otherwise, we understand that gender is being undone in those situations that a break with binarisms and / or heteronormativity is produced, producing a different doing gender to that expected from a woman and / or challenging the dual gender binary, even when producing certain degendering. Similarly, we understand that ICT are being done when the discourses and practices on the design and use of ICT are associated with artifacts, occupations and sectors traditionally considered technological. Conversely ICT are being undone, for example, when they become hybridized with other ICT issues and areas less traditionally associated with technology or, somehow, emphasize communication and information. Based on these theoretical positions we explore how gender is being done and undone and, in turn, how ICT is being done and undone in the processes of self-inclusion of women in ICT. We consider the process of self-inclusion to be dynamic and fluid, occurring over time and going beyond access. This is to say that self-inclusion implies accessing ICT, but also remaining, advancing, recognizing it, and being recognized, as well as transforming and contributing to ICT. We depart from the experiences of a sample of women artists and computer technologists based in Barcelona. In order to select them we considered that both the concept of women as well as ICT could be fluid and mutable and therefore could be troubled. Understanding women and ICT in an inclusive and critical sense, we questioned the understanding of the categories imposed from outside, to understand them from the inside, in a way open to alternative interpretations of the same participants. Therefore, the sample included transgender experiences, and also other sexual orientations beyond being heterosexual. Similarly, we troubled ICT, understanding it beyond the studies and ICT occupations traditionally considered ICT and turned our attention to other areas than could capture their hybrid and transversal condition, such as technoart, where women seem to be better represented, at least in numbers. A qualitative analysis was carried out in a way that their experiences were collected through interviews and focus groups. Firstly, 22 episodic interviews, that combined the narrative and the semi-structured interview, were conducted in order to study their ICT trajectories in relation to gender. Secondly, 2 mini focus groups were performed in order to delve into key issues in a collective way. In total then, 28 women participated in our research; half of them were artistic technologists and the other half computer technologists. Those interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analyzed using Atlas.ti software in a bottom up process. In doing so we intended to answer the main question: how, and to what extent, the research participants were doing and undoing gender and ICT in their processes of self-inclusion in ICT? Given the ICT context of the participants, they all shared the experience of being in a qualitatively masculinised environment (referring to culture, understood as masculine norms and values). In the case of computer technologists, quantitatively speaking as well, they all commented on the fact that they were a minority in their courses or working environments. This implies that environment and technology practices are gendered and therefore those women will often be doing and undoing gender in a masculinised context and under a heteronormative gender regime. In this sense the existence of a certain number of women technologists practicing advanced ICT could be considered a form of undoing gender, because their practices are immersed in activities traditionally considered masculine. At the same time, their ICT practice could be seen to be undoing ICT or, at least, the traditional conception of ICT linked to masculinity and certain characteristics and associated ways of doing ICT. Therefore with their advanced ICT practices these women might be undoing gender, but also undoing ICT. In any case, what we show in this article is that the processes of doing and undoing gender and ICT become more complex than this. The analysis of the participants' discourses on their ICT practices show how gender and ICT are being done and undone generating a combined and performative multiplicity of actions of gender and ICT, situated, changing over time and situations and, on occasions, even contradictorily. In addition, we also argue that gender could be done and undone in parallel, at the same time, and even that gender could be done and undone in a changing manner during the course of life, and similarly with ICT in relation to gender. For example, one of the participants commented that when she does the sound check before an electronic music concert she is consciously playing masculine and feminine at the same time. Thus, she incorporates elements of self-promotion and shows herself competent using technical language and doing ICT, as well as very competitive through her attitudes, in a way of undoing gender. However, at the same time, she is doing gender by being open to a soft dialogue and emphasizing feminine communicative forms. Similarly, in relation to doing and undoing ICT when some of the participants were involved in the Caneluntu experience they were doing ICT by installing Ubuntu in their computers. However, they were consciously undoing ICT when relating it to cooking, as well as they were doing gender in a collective way, in a women only group. One of the most interesting issues emerging from the analysis is that what used to be presented as inexplicable, paradoxical and impossible in a previous logic of gender identities, fixed, essential and binary, makes sense when it opens to question gender identities, and thus, to gender performativity and fluidity, and also in relation to ICT. In this regard, the participants were not performing according to the hegemonic masculinity or emphasized femininity, but, above all, they were doing and undoing gender on a continuum of gender and in relation and interacting with the context in a fluid manner. In this sense, they were strengthening the intermediate positions in a gender continuum instead of causing a pendulum motion. This allowed them to move smoothly through the different specific situations they encountered in their ICT trajectories. To understand gender as constructed and fluid implies that this can similarly occur among many men, as the discourses of the participants have shown. Therefore, this situating in the midst becomes reinforced. In the same way, this happens to ICT if the practice is understood as a dynamic and fluid continuum. ICT, a priori, neither impacts positively nor negatively on women, but they are being done and undone in relation to gender and this could also bring transformative changes. Change is possible if we discard essential, immutable and binary concepts of gender. Furthermore, it is feasible if we recognize the importance of the agency in relation and constant interaction within a dynamic environment. Finally, it is possible if the same is applied to ICT. In the process of doing and undoing gender and ICT, especially when reflexive practices beyond binarisms are taking place, women could contribute to critically examining and transforming current gender relations, as well as ICT concepts and practices, breaking the domination of hegemonic masculinity associated with ICT. This process can result in accommodating women in ICT. As the word expresses, rather than integrating women in ICT, women might be accommodating (to) them. That is, women would be changing themselves and the way they are doing gender, but they would also be producing changes in their environments and in the definitions and ICT practices. Therefore, it is necessary that both the research and the measures that are designed to improve gender and technology relations move beyond numbers towards a concern on qualitative issues. Thus, we must recognize the heterogeneity of gender and ICT, as well as its dynamic, fluid and situated practice. This would facilitate the process of self-inclusion of women in ICT and would express how gender and ICT are mutually produced, as well as opening the way to a transformative process of accommodation of women with ICT. |
