Gender & Computing

CFP for Gender, Bodies and Technology: (Dis)Integrating Frames, 26-28 April 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia.

From the CFP: “We invite proposals from scholars in the humanities, social and natural sciences, visual and performing arts, engineering and technology for papers, panels, new media art and performance pieces that explore the intersections of gender, bodies and technology in contexts ranging from classrooms to workplaces to the internet. In keeping with the conference theme, we are asking contributors to include specific reference to the ways in which their own particular disciplinary frameworks shape their approach to their sites of research.”

Deadline September 15.

Keynote speakers include Judith Halberstam, Judy Wajcman, and Allucquere Rosanne Stone.

Call for papers for a conference co-hosted by the Onscenity Research Network and the School of Arts and the School of Social Sciences at Brunel University, to be held April 20-22 at Brunel University, London, UK.

Interesting themes, among them “Sex and technology”, and a list of very interesting keynote speakers.

Deadline October 31.

Read the full CFP

Before the screening of Top Secret Rosies tomorrow I will give a Crash Course in Computer History.

After the film we’ll have the producer, LeAnn Erickson, with us on Skype!

Girl Geeks in Bergen will arrange a screening of the film Top Secret Rosies on Tuesday, and I will introduce the film.

Open for everybody at the Public Library:
http://bergenbibliotek.no/kalender/dokumentarfilm-top-secret-rosies.-the-female-computers-of-world-war-ii 

Tuesday 10. May, 18.00, Bergen offentlige bibliotek

IADIS International Conference: ICT, Society and Human Beings 2011
Rome, Italy, 24 - 26 July 2011

The conference sounds interesting - and who wouldn’t want to go to Rome!?

Deadline: 28 February

A friend pointed me to this blog post about Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII - a new documentary about women working on code breaking and ballistic calculations during World War II.

Top Secret Rosies Trailer from LeAnn Erickson on Vimeo.

Top Secret Rosies website

A brilliant idea to have a surprise seminar/workshop/party and a book - a Festschrift to celebrate Christina.

She was definitely surprised!

Nearly 30 of us had found our way to Umeå, waiting for Christina to arrive, preparing the champaign (which, by the way, is a great way to start a seminar!)

Appart from champaign we also had presentations from the new book - the Festschrift, with a long list of chapters inspired by Chirstina’s work in some way.

And we had a workshop on networking. And of course, a great party!

All well worth going to Umeå for!

There are two h.D. Research Fellowships available at Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies, Faculty of Humanities, where Digital culture is one of the groups.

Further information and who to contact:
http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=70652

Application deadline: 11.12.2010

The favorite quote of today: on “knowmads”, by John Moravec:

“A knowmad is what I term a nomadic knowledge worker –that is, a creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere.”

I definitely qualify for the last two requirements: anytime and anywhere. My knowmadic life has provided me with this view at the moment, suffering from several days of fog down by the lake, while the sun is shining just a few meters above. It’s the cold wether that makes the fog, and it will be gone once the lake is frozen. Hopefully soon.

At the moment I’m working with questions of how/when/whether femininity and technical skills are, or seem to be, incompatible. Adam et al. have a number of interesting examples in their article “You don’t have to be male to work here, but it helps!” (2005), reporting on “the state of gender and the UK IT labour market”.

They “were hoping to find more optimistic signs” than they did, and their conclusion is rather pessimistic. They found women in IT expressing job satisfaction, but they also they found both open and indirect discrimination, making it “remarkable that any women at all persevere with an IT career.” Thus despite finding women who enjoyed their job, they also found “highly technically skilled women” who played down their technical knowledge, and women who “downplayed” their femininity, “becoming a genderless ‘it’.” The problematic link between masculinity and technical skills and the binary of gender makes femininity and technical skills an impossible combination: “A woman feels she is not meant to be technical because she is a woman whilst she cannot be a woman if she presents herself as technical. She cannot really be a woman with social skills if she is also a woman with technical skills since these are (supposedly) mutually exclusive as the former are deemed feminine and the latter masculine.”

They find that IT is still a “man’s world”, and quote one of their interviewees suggesting that “It’s the ideal career for women who have grown up with lots of brothers”.