Brunner
Sender: owner-edequity@mail.edc.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: edequity@mail.edc.org
The EDEQUITY dialogue about technology was active from Monday, July 16 to
Friday, July 20. The topics for discussion of the technology section of the
EDEQUITY dialogue were:
1. How can schools recruit women and girls to technology classes
and related careers?
2. How can women in technology education and careers that are
male-dominated receive support so that they are retained?
The opening statements by the two facilitators set the tone for the two
different but related strands of the discussion. On the one hand, there
were
concrete, practical ideas along with suggestions for web sites of
organizations dealing with this issue, and on the other hand, there was a
more philosophical debate or discussion about the meaning of gender and how
it relates to technology.
On the philosophical side, there was some talk, back and forth, about the
difference between the notion of gender and that of biological differences.
Mostly, it was a semantic issue: the words "female," "male" or
"female-friendly" suggest a biological definition of the salient gender
differences when it comes to technology, while words like "feminine" and
"masculine" speak to the issue of socialization and norms rather than
biological differences. A man, in other words, can be feminine in his
thoughts and values and actions, even if he is a biological male, and a
female, woman or girl, can be either feminine or masculine in her attitudes
and interests. This distinction was brought into sharpest relief when
"Barbie" reared her head!
There was some very interesting talk about whether our effort as educators
should go into supporting girls with non-traditional (possibly more
"masculine") interests and skills who gravitate more easily toward
technology as we know it but are often ignored or unsupported in the
male-dominated technology world or whether much of our effort should go
into inviting more traditionally "feminine" girls (who love Barbies) into
this technological universe by making room for them, rather than by asking
them to consider acquiring a new set of skills and interests.
There was some agreement that it would be good to have to power to claim
technology for the feminine side, to rethink it, to change the course of
its
normal development so that someone would actually have to put effort into
making "boy-friendly" technology rather than the current situation where
the
norm is "boy-friendly" and extra effort has to be made to make it
"girl-friendly." There was also some agreement that many educators donıt
really notice this situation, accept the "boy-friendly" bias of much
technology as natural, and have to be taught to see how this short-changes
and dis-invites girls. The consensus seemed to be that we have much work
left to do to alert educators to the problem.
There were interesting discussions about the kinds of skills, from
tinkering
with machines to managing communication, that are needed in this
technological universe, and how both traditionally "feminine" and
"masculine" skills are needed but how the masculine skills are more
visible and more valued than the feminine ones, partly because the latter
seem to have less to do with technology. We mostly agreed that people
skills
are as important in making the technology serve a productive social
function
as technical skills. Coding, making the machine do what you want it to, is
a
wonderful, powerful experience that many girls should have but so is
helping someone figure out how to do something simple but important by
showing them the technology that will serve their need, As a society, we
value programmers a lot more highly than we do technology support staff.
In
the educational realm, we also tend to value content over communication. As
a result, the Internet is used as a wonderful library, but the
communications potential of the medium, the ability to talk with others
about ideas, is less utilized but is the part that girls gravitate to
most
easily.
On the practical side, suggestions were shared about organizations that
have
tried to do both, to encourage girl-only technology programs. There were
some gentle reminders that this issue is wider than gender: there were some
questions about girls with disabilities and how to invite them into the
technological universe and requests for information about African-American
girls and women and their relationship to technology.
The discussion continued well beyond its official closing date. A software
company president reminded us that she managed to be successful at
technology even though she has never shown the slightest interest in or
talent for hands-on tinkering but that her strength is in design, in
imagining what people want and need. Others reminded us that there are
plenty of successful women who adored their Barbies. A teacher asked for
help in educating his peers about the need to be sensitive to gender
issues.
People shared web sites of more programs others might want to check out.
Someone shared her disappointment with the male-dominated world of adult
technology and how hard it is for the women who break through the barriers
and make their way into it to want to stay, to find a real community there.
This conversation could go on for a long time. The upshot is a mixed
feeling: on the one hand, there are many interested and interesting women
and men who are aware of this issue and working hard to address it. On the
other hand, not all that much has changed in the last twenty years, since
the heyday of the last wave of feminism. We have made progress, but we have
a very, very long way to go. Discussions like this can raise our awareness
again of how much there is to be done and how valuable all the different
effort and approaches are, even when they sometimes seem to contradict each
other. Theyıre probably just getting at the problem from different angles
and we need the problem addressed from every possible angle.
Cornelia Brunner
Associate Director
EDC/Center for Children & Technology
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Apr 12 2002 - 15:16:52 EDT