Gender & Computing

Gender Codes: Why Women Are Leaving Computing, Thomas J. Misa (ed.), Wiley, July 2010.
- soon in a bookstore near you!

13 chapters on gender and computer history, among them, mine on “Cultural Perceptions of Computers in Norway 1980-2007″

Blurb:
A fresh, constructive examination of the gender imbalance in computer education and technologyThe computing profession is facing a serious gender crisis. Women are abandoning the computing field at an alarming rate. Fewer are entering the profession than anytime in the past twenty-five years, while too many are leaving the field in mid-career. With a maximum of insight and a minimum of jargon, Gender Codes explains the complex social and cultural processes at work in gender and computing today. Edited by Thomas Misa and featuring a Foreword by Linda Shafer, Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Press, this insightful collection of essays explores the persisting gender imbalance in computing and presents a clear course of action for turning things around.

Through engaging historical accounts, Gender Codes tells the stories of women programmers, systems analysts, managers, and IT executives who flooded this initially attractive field in the 1960s and ’70s. It celebrates their notable successes in all segments of the industry. The book then examines why, while most other science and technology fields have seen steady growth in the number of female participants, the computing field experienced just the opposite.

Providing a unique international perspective, the contributors to this unprecedented volume reveal how computing has become male-coded, highlighting the struggles women have faced in the office, the media, and in culture at large. The book assesses the existing intervention strategies and pinpoints why they are not working and what can—and must—be done to stall the exodus.

Gender Codes will resonate with female professionals in computing, engineering, and the sciences; with scholars and educators in history, gender/women’s studies, and science and technology; with deans, department chairs, center directors, and those in industry and government with hiring responsibilities; and with staff and executives at foundations and funding agencies.

International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, “aimed at bringing
together the wide and diverse community of people and organisations who
have an interest in gender, science and technology in their broadest sense”, as editor Clem Herman writes in the introduction to Vol 1, No 1 (2009).

And CFP for next issue

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Published in American Sexuality, March 2009.

Torill’s new book is out!

Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games

Congratulations!

The 5th European Symposium on Gender & ICT will be in Bremen later this week, and I’ll present a paper: Disrupting the Impression of Stability in the Gender-Technology Relation (short version here).

Abstract:

Technology researchers have emphasized changes caused by ICT during the last decades. Recent gender research emphasizes that both gender and technology are flexible categories. However, a recurring argument in feminist literature is that the situation of women in ICT “still” haven’t changed, despite three decades of continuous efforts, thus producing an impression of stability in the gender-technology relation. We still criticize mainstream research for being gender blind, but have we become blind to changes in the gender-ICT relation? This presentation invites to a thought-experiment, asking what we can learn from focusing on change, and exploring what seems to be a gap between the theoretical and empirical level of gender research.

I just returned after spending a week walking in the forests in Yorkshire. It’s amazing how far away from work a week like that can bring you! Good for health, bad for preparing conference presentations…

It arrived yesterday. And it feels great to see the result of several years of work!

Digital Culture, Play, and Identity
A World of Warcraft^® Reader
Edited by Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg

Contributors:
Espen Aarseth, Hilde G. Corneliussen, Charlotte Hagström, Lisbeth Klastrup, Tanya Krzywinska, Jessica Langer, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Torill Elvira Mortensen, Justin Parsler, Jill Walker Rettberg, Scott Rettberg, T. L. Taylor, Ragnhild Tronstad.

Table of contents

Sample chapter.

I guess it will still be a few days before it’s out in the bookstores, but it might already be available from amazon or MIT Press.

Jill was on TV yesterday, talking about our book!

It starts about 5,40 min.  into the show.

In Norwegian in the university paper På Høyden.

The journalist also interviewed our research assistant : a 14-15 year old boy who spent his work experience week with us, assisting with World of Warcraft research. We expect to see him back here as a student in a few years!

MIT Press has put out table of contents and a sample chapter from our book. You can download it here.

Our WoW book, Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader edited by Jill Walker Rettberg and me, will soon be published by MIT Press. And you can even pre-order it at Amazon.com already!

You can find the list of content in an earlier post, and the most attentive of you might have noticed that the title have changed several times, but this time it is hopefully not going to change anymore.

So just start sending your orders to Amazon!