STEM = Science Technology Education Mathematics
HCI = Human Computer Interaction
STS = Science and Technology Studies
Gender Studies = a field of interdisciplinary study which analyzes the phenomenon of gender. Gender studies is sometimes related to studies of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and location.
This is from a paper i'm working on. It's a more comprehensive lit review than I usually do. It's also a rough draft. Enjoy!
It’s been nearly 15 years since Susan Herring (1996) discussed the unbalanced participation in online communication between men and women. Because of that unbalanced participation, men are overrepresented online. The resulting overrepresentation means that when women do try and participate, they are often ignored or are delegitimized by men. Due to gender socialization and male dominance of online communication, discussions tend to have a direct, confrontational manner associated with male communication patterns. This conversational style often intimidates female participants into nonparticipation or lurking (Herring 1996). Another fact of interest is that white males dominate all positions involved in the creation and research of new technology in the United States (Broyles 2009). Bruno Latour tells us that people tend to think, “…that the only goal of technology is technology itself and its own further development” (Latour 1996: 32). He continues by saying that a piece of technology is the answer to a question that an engineer asks of society. What Latour does not ask is: what does it mean when the only ones asking and answering these questions are white males? This question has not been answered. In fact, it may be impossible to answer given the large amount of time only white males have been addressing these questions.
Perhaps in response to feminist activity or social science research, Congress created the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development in 1999 (Broyles 2009). The creation of this commission was to be holistic in its approach to recruiting female and minority groups into these fields while at the same time trying to reinforce the proliferation of a central component of education, the computer (Gal-Ezer, et al. 2008). Research has shown that being pushed to use a computer early in life can lead to more technology-minded academic fields later (Washburn and Miller 2007). For the purposes of this paper, technology represents the myriad of human and computer interactions that digitize content that is then used online (cameras, computers, modems, etc). While different aspects of technology can include biology, chemistry, and other natural sciences I am concerned with online communication. Particularly, I am interested in the knowledge of technology that is needed to communicate online; how early educational patterns introduce this technology; and the gendered behavior that comes from those educational patterns later in life. This paper is split into three parts and will move from the macro to the micro. The first is a brief note on gender and the social construction of technology. The second is a brief history of the impact of Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics (STEM) education. Third, I will associate STEM education and the social construction of technology with male dominance in human computer interaction. Finally, I will introduce a means through which to study this association concurrently by focusing on gender boundary maintenance on video game blog aggregation sites.
Social Construction of Technology Through Feminism
The history of the study of the social construction of technology is loosely referred to as science and technology studies (STS). This field of study emerged during the formative years of current feminism from the 1960s through the 1990s (Wajcman 2007). The gist of what STS is can be difficult to define succinctly. Bruno Latour (1998) describes the basic premise of STS in an article entitled, “One More Turn After the Social Turn…” Essentially, STS individuals examine science and scientists as they produce knowledge or technology. At their core, STS researchers are interested in the paradox of science: subjective researchers producing objective research competitively (Latour 1998). In a different article, he states that science, being funded by interested parties, must produce knowledge based on what society wants. The production of this knowledge often leads researchers, fueled by this collective need, to construct experiments and to create technology to keep the attention of society (Latour 1983). As such, all technology, all science, is fundamentally and socially constructed yet remains seen as an objective and rational tool of exploration of the “natural” world (Latour 1998). This paradox is discussed in most methods courses couched in scientific method but is quickly discarded as an unavoidable yet necessary evil that all researchers must be mindful of. For feminism, this has developed in a very different way.
There is a saying in STS: “Technology is Society made durable” (Latour 1991). Technology is a portion of society that has been given tangible form as a technical object. While this sentiment came to be much later than second wave feminism, early second wave feminist scholars reacted toward technology as yet another means through which patriarchy is reinforced or reified (Wajcman 2007). For example, technology of the home, products like washers, dryers, sinks, toilets, plates, and dishes are created with the female consumer in mind. The creation of these objects reifies the gendered norms of the home and because women could not enter the design world, these objects were a direct form through which men interpreted women (Wajcman 2007). Feminist scholars sought to rectify the lack of engineering and scientific influence by pushing for equity in the design process by achieving gender equality in the labor force that produced and designed (Wajcman 2010). After fighting for equity for nearly twenty years, feminist scholars, realizing scientific careers were not as open to female entry as most careers, switched gears from workplace equality to the educational process (Wajcman 2007). These scholars saw gendered norms present in socialization during adolescence as the major source of the lack of equal representation in the design process of new technology (Wajcman 2010).
Science Technology Education Mathematics (STEM)
STEM education is the result of a moral panic from the beginning of the Cold War. The origin of this moral panic begins with the Russian launch of Sputnik in the 1950s. The launching of the Russian Satellite was a terrible blow to American pride (Laugksch 2000). Paul Hurd, in his piece entitled “Science Literacy: Its Meaning for American Schools” outlined the importance of a focus on science if America wanted to maintain its lead on scientific progress during the Cold War (Hurd 1958). Translated by societal norms at the time, this meant that male schoolchildren would be pushed toward technology (Washburn and Miller 2007). This also entered adult society through blue and white collar working stereotypes. Blue-collar workers made the technology that the white collar designed; both sides were men (Wajcman 2010). This continued well into the 1980s until new feminist based research began to appear about sex differences in education. Male school children were pushed toward technology, toward science and mathematics, while female school children were pushed into home economics, teaching, and other feminine gendered occupations (Cassell 2002). In the 1990s, directly after the Cold War, this new research caused a paradigm shift that refocused on female participation in science early on in the educational process (Wajcman 2010).
A major reason for this paradigm shift was due, in part, to a series of works that outlined the way in which women, particularly young girls, were not funneled toward studying science and mathematics (Wajcman 2007; Cassell 2002). It became impossible for women to fight for complete and total equity in employment due to these educational trends. Within this trend is another more difficult trend to discern that is only now appearing in public discourse. Through this course of thinking, technology follows a masculine mode of reasoning, logic, and hard science. Technology, a major product of STEM, is fundamentally seen as a product of enlightenment thinking: a product of male dominance over nature (Wajcman 2010; Latour 2002). Even as females have attained careers in and status within the social sciences, they are most often associated with the qualitative, or the “passionate construction” part of social science (Haraway 1988). Studies that employ these modes of reasoning are still misrepresented in popular male academic journals.
So, in an effort to correct this misrepresentation, STEM education was refocused on female recruitment to STEM related fields (Broyles 2009). While this recruitment focused on both minorities and females, I will be focusing on female-targeted recruitment practices. These programs have not been as successful as they should be. In fact, some would argue that they have not had any success at all (Wacjman 2010). Research shows that there are several reasons to account for the continued lack of female participation in technology related fields. For the most part, women who enter college in STEM fields tend to succeed (Gal-Ezer, et al. 2008). However, if these women enter the workforce with their male counterparts, they tend to be paid less. This is true of almost all professions but it is extremely marked in STEM fields (Broyles 2009). Despite years of focus on STEM education, the prestige associated with these fields is as such that females often associate negative beliefs about those fields out of high school and often actively avoid them (Consalvo 2008). While this is simply a matter of money, there is another factor to consider within education that can further explain the differences, that of Human Computer Interaction.
Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is just as its name suggests – a term referring to the act of interacting with a computer. When computers began to grow in ubiquity throughout society and gained the ability to talk to one another, this was hailed as the liberation of racial and gendered bias (Wajcman 2007). It was seen as a digital utopia through which all could participate on equal footing with one another (Herring 1996). However, almost immediately, this began to be challenged. Susan C. Herring is perhaps the most cited example of how Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) does not liberate these things. She states that if one looks at the sheer number of participants in CMC, it does not seem like it is that different. In general, there is a proper representation of both women and men online. However, looking at actual participation provides a far different story. Men almost always participate more over women and women, if they challenge men, are often intimidated into not participating (Herring 1996). Since Herring discussed participation as opposed to representation, other studies have presented more detail on the origin of this issue.
Aside from research on how boys and girls learn, there have been a growing number of studies concerned with how males and females use technology, especially computers. Justine Cassell, writing in 2002, found that in their formative years, boys are, “…at least three times more likely than girls to use a computer at home…” (Cassell 2002: 2). Further, when looking at teacher’s perceptions of students, even when girls performed better at computer exams than boys, the teachers gave more attention to boys because most teachers viewed boys as perceiving computers to be more than a simple tool. This view was reinforced in a 2004 study by Rodes, et al. who found that there was a trend with reference to male versus female perceptions of general household appliances. Males, they found, were more interested or comfortable with technology and saw it as entertainment. Females were more concerned with what they called, “domestic control” (Rodes, et al 2004: 167). Domestic control is an application of the general idea that created STEM education. In designing software, designers tended to design software meant to be tools for girls, while designing games for boys.
When asked to design educational software for generic students, designers almost always make games (Cassell 2002). This is a complicated, multi-faceted issue. If most educational tools are created for the generic student, then most educational tools are for boys. Moving outside of the educational realm, public perception of video games is usually that it is good that girls don’t play them. They are viewed as distractions and the gateway to a lazy life (Cassell 2002). Because of that view, video games are often not taken seriously despite the fact that in education, they are used to teach interaction with computers, to foster interest in technology, and to help drive ideas about science into the minds of those who play them (Cassell 2002). This idea flows into the video game industry as much as it is given form by society. Video games are the cultural ideas about computer interaction made durable.
Video Games
The video game began to exist shortly after the invention of display technology for guided missiles in the 1960s (Kent 2001). Brenda Laurel states in her discussion of the failure of a video game she created for young girls to play that video games “…consolidated very quickly around a young male demographic – all the way from the game-play design to the arcade environment to the retail world…” (Laurel 2001: 23). Video games, like all technology, followed the societal development by masculine engineers. Demonstration of display technology that used wartime situations like Missile Command or played on fears like Asteroids became popular (Kent 2001). By the 1980s, video games in America passed out of the spotlight because of a deluge of content; too many consumer choices and a loss of public favor. Due to those things, the act of ignoring video games solidified even as the industry was redefined and made successful by a non-American developer, Nintendo (Aoyama and Izushi 2002).
It is this act of ignoring that allowed for the silent male dominance of technology to remain silent for so long (Wacjman 2010). In the 1990s, when video games were growing as American-developed objects again, a demand for female oriented video games began to appear (Cassell 2002). However, because of the perception that the video game industry was for men, and that most women preferred to think of computers as tools, video games for girls were a puzzling concept. Cassell points out that video games created for girls – unlike the games created for boys that often contain a moderate amount of math, science and logic exercises – emphasized narrative decisions (Cassell 2002). These games do not contain the same types of skills that men gain from playing video games but involve stereotypical feminine situations like cliques in high school, modeling fashions, how to get a boyfriend, or simulations of dating (John 2009). When asked why companies did this, they felt they had to try something to assuage public discontent that video games were only male. Unfortunately, these games did not sell well.
Quite often, game makers state they, like education software engineers, are making games that are for everyone to enjoy. In an interview by Justine Cassell, Lee McEnany Caraher, a Vice President of communication for the video game maker Sega Entertainment, Inc. says that her company does not create games for girls because they don’t sell well. She believes that what needs to happen is that video game makers simply need to put more female characters in game. As things are now, Caraher goes on saying, Sega does not advertise to women simply because it would be too expensive. Women, she says, are “…more discerning than men” (Cassell 1997: 194). Ironically, Caraher finishes her interview saying she views computers as a tool (Cassell 1997). While education about technology is still primarily aimed at men through video games, there are women who enjoy both technology and video games. It is understood that these women mostly reject traditional femininity (Cassell 2000)
So, we see an even more complicated issue. Video games are a masculine product produced by a masculine industry, created by masculine oriented engineers and innovators. The educational process translates this masculinity by perpetuating the idea that computers, a means through which video games are played, are for boys to use for entertainment and learning while girls must use it as they would any tool. Computers, an obviously vital part of computer-mediated-communication (CMC), are integral to reaching hundreds of millions of people each and every day. Because men are taught to use computers as entertainment, to not shy away from figuring them out, men often dominate CMC. Because men dominate CMC, men are often seen as a legitimate source of information and often use that legitimacy to delegitimize female participants, intimidating non-use of CMC in female groups (Herring 1996). An example of this CMC behavior is that of web journals, web logs, or blogs.
The Blogosphere and Video Games
A blog, or weblog, is a perpetual online journal that often contains links to other web pages, pictures, movies, or other objects relevant to either the author, or the topic of that blog (Ali-Hasan and Ademic 2007). The definition of blog has rarely changed. In 2005, Susan Herring, et al., found that most blogospheres are a series of reciprocal links to each other’s blogs and are directly correlated to their list location (or popularity) (2006). Recently, this reciprocal relationship has taken on the form of aggregator blogs. Like all technology, different translations of social issues within the blogging population were given different technological fixes. These fixes for blog issues took the form of different tools or blog software to give the circular nature of reciprocal linking and blog community formation structure. One of these tools is simply another blog run by one person or a group of persons that aggregates what they deem to be pertinent community links (e.g. DIGG, Reddit). Aggregation blogs are quickly becoming gateways to larger and larger blog communities. Due to this re-organization and reification of community in groups of blogs, it is quickly becoming easier for curious parties to examine how different groups of blogs interact. The means through which these blogs aggregate is often an attempt to define a community as a central source of information that community identifies itself with. These aggregation sites give meaning, borders, and credence to members by making a leader board out of community members.
Whether it is knitting, video games, cooking, politics, technology or celebrity gossip, these aggregate blogs are given further legitimacy by sites that aggregate aggregator feeds (DIGG, Stubleupon, Reddit, etc). For example, in the blog lists as shown by the aggregation and technology blog, Technorati, technology blogs dominate single category blogs with almost 9000 entries; business blogs are next with 7778 blogs, Politics comes in 3rd with 6279 ranked blogs, and Sports rounds up the bottom at 4592. In a separate category are blogs that are mostly run by females in the “living” category. This category contains all stereotypical feminine entries including: food, family, home, fashion, arts, and health. While this category dominates all with 14943 blogs, it is a combination of a vast array of topics (http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/). Male dominated topics are given their own categories because Technorati pays attention to them simply because more males are blogging than females. As of 2009, over 60% of all blogs Technorati ranks are run by men (Sussman 2009). However, for the most part, gendered blogs are in separate communities.
Because of the proliferation of technology, the education process, and the general belief that women see computers as tools for information and not as an exploratory device, blog participation is a primarily male orientation. Most male blog communities might contain a modicum of female participants, but these participants are typically, as Cassell notes, standing against the traditional femininity. The women who play video games are further removed from femininity in that they must give up female gendered norms to actively compete with men (Cassell 2002). This is a curious circumstance as it is nearly impossible to imagine a world in which females participate equally in the engineering of technology. It has not ever existed and therefore, lacks the form needed for empirical research. However, there are groups of female oriented bloggers that have not rejected the traditional female orientation and still play video games.
The male majority still mostly ignores these female players. It is evident when looking at reciprocal linking, or community linking. These links allow users, once they arrive at a specific blog, to see other blogs the reader might be interested in. Reciprocal linking is a primary means through which blog communities, with exception of aggregation sites, create a sense of community. While the nature of reciprocal links has changed, Herring’s findings from fifteen years ago still stand; women are still discouraged from participating by not being acknowledged as a possible participant in computer mediated conversation (Herring 1996). In order to glimpse particular aspects of boundary maintenance performed by males when females clash with them, I propose to study women who have not rejected the tenets of traditional femininity engaged in activities performed predominantly by men. These activities will include the act of blogging about video games. In studying this conflict, researchers will gain valuable information that will offer us a means through which to begin to construct more apt measures and policies to engage females with technology; to bring technology to females as something more than a tool stage.
References
Aoyama, Yuko and Izushi, Hiro. 2002. “Hardware Gimmick or Cultural Innovation? Technological, Cultural, and Social Foundations of the Japanese Video Game Industry.” Research Policy 32: 423-444.
N. Ali-Hasan and L. Adamic. 2007. “Expressing social relationships on the blog through links and comments.” In Proc. of International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.
Blanchard, A. 2004. Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community and Culture. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere
Cassell, Justine. 1997. “An Interview with Lee McEnany Caraher (SEGA).” Pp. 192-212 in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by J. Cassell and H. Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cassell, Justine. 2000. “Chess for Girls? Feminism and Computer Games.” Pp. 2-45 in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by J. Cassell and H. Jenkins. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cassell, J. 2002. Genderizing HCI. In J. Jacko & A. Sears (Eds.), The Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 402-411). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Retrieved March 20, 2010 from http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/justine/publications/gender.hci.just.pdf
Chartrand, James. “Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants.” Copyblogger Original: 12-14-09. Accessed: 01-15-10. http://www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants
Consalvo, Mia. 2008. “Games and Technological Desire: Another Decade” Pp. 32-46 in Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming edited by Y.B. Kafai, C. Heeter, J. Denner, and J.Y. Sun. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Daniels, Jessie. 2009. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Gal-Ezer, Juding, Vilner, Tamar, and Zur, Ela. 2008. “Once She Makes it, She’s There!: A Case Study.” Computer Science Education, 18:1:17-29.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Pp. 172-188 in The Science Studies Reader edited by Mario Biagioli. New York: Routledge.
Herring, Susan C. 1996. “Gender and Democracy in Computer-Mediated Communication.” Pp.476-489 in Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, 2nd Edition, edited by Rob Kling. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.
Herring, S. C., Scheidt, L. A., Kouper, I., & Wright, E. (2006). Longitudinal content analysis of weblogs: 2003-2004. In M. Tremayne (Ed.), Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media (pp. 3-20). London: Routledge.
Herring, Susan C., Inna Kouper, Lois Ann Scheidt, and Elijah L. Wright. 2005. “Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs.” Into the Blogosphere Retrieved March 20, 2010 from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html
Herring, Susan C., Inna Kouper, John C. Paolillo, Lois Ann Scheidt, Michael Tyworth, Peter Welsch, Elija Wright, and Ning Yu. 2005. “Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis From the Bottom Up.” Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences – Track 4.
Hurd, Paul. 1958. Science literacy: Its meaning for American schools. Educational Leadership, 16, 13–16, 52.
Iskold, Alex. 2007. “The Digg Effect.” ReadWriteWeb December 6. Retrieved on April 27, 2010. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_digg_effect.php
John, Tracey. 2009. “Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games.” Wired. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/games-for-tweens/ Retrieved September 15, 2009.
Kent, Steven L. 2001. The Ultimate History of Video Games. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1996. Aramis or the Love of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1983. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World.” Pp. 258-275 in The Science Studies Reader edited by Mario Biagioli. New York: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 1992. “One More Turn After the Social Turn.” Pp. 276-289 in The Science Studies Reader edited by Mario Biagioli. New York: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 1991. “Technology is Society Made Durable.” pp. 103-31: A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by John Law. London: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno. 2002. War of the Worlds: What About Peace? Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Laugksch, Rudiger. 2000. “Scientific Literacy: A Conceptual Overview.” Science and Education 84: 71-94.
Laurel, Brenda. 2001. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
McGuffey, C. Shawn and Rich, Lindsay. 1999. “Playing in the Gender Transgression Zone: Race, Class, and Hegemonic Masculinity in Middle Childhood.” Gender and Society 13: 608-627.
Rode, Jennifer A., Toye, Eleanor F., and Alan Blackwell. 2004. “The Fuzzy Felt Ethnography–Understanding the Programming Patterns of Domestic Appliances.” Personal Ubiquitous Computing 8: 161-176.
Sussman, Matt. 2009. “Day 1: Who Are The Bloggers? State of the Blogosphere 2009” Technorati October 19. Accessed: April 23, 2010. http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-1-who-are-the-bloggers1/
Wajcman, Judy. 2007. “From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience.” Information, Communication and Society 10(3): 287-298.
Wajcman, Judy. 2010. “Feminist Theories of Technology.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34: 143-152.
Wasburn, Mara H. and Miller, Susan G. 2007. “Keeping Women Students in Technology: Preliminary Evaluation of an Intervention.” J. College Student Retention 9(2): 205-219.
Wei, Carolyn. 2004. “Formation of Norms in a Blog Community.” In Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman, eds. Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community and Culture of Weblogs http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/ Retrieved: September 7, 2010.
Williams, Dimitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games.” New Media Society 11: 815-43
