Gender & Computing

My favourite quote of the day. From Denise Riley, who points out that collective identity, like women or any other group identity, are impermanent and alternating: “While you might choose to take on being a disabled person … as a political position, you might not elect to make a politics of other designations. As you do not live your life fully defined as a shop assistant …. and you can always refute such identifications in the name of another description … Or, most commonly, you will skate across the several identities, which will take your weight, relying on the most useful for your purpose of the moment; like Hanif Kureishi’s suave character in the film My Beautiful Laundrette, who says impatiently, ‘I’m a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani’” (Riley 1996:31).

Riley, Denise. 1996. Does A Sex Have A History? In Feminism & History, edited by J. W. Scott. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 17-33.

Even though I’ve been doing research on gender / gender identity for nearly two decades, the task of understanding and defining gender seems to be never ending. What is gender? What makes us gender? And why/if are we more gender than other things? I really appreaciated a comment from an NPC in Dragon Age, saying:
“I suppose you are mage first, and elf or human second…”

One of the trends in the historical material I’ve been working with for the past years is that men are not “gendered” the same way as women are. Men are simply computer users or experts, while women are “female” users or experts.
Is it possible to be computer engineer first and woman second?

The recently published article MRI assessment of cortical thickness and functional activity changes in adolescent girls following three months of practice on a visual-spatial task documents that playing simple computer games, like Tetris, have effects on the brain. Which is interesting, but not the main issue here. The design of this study is even more interesting, on the background of another article I read yesterday, discussing an increasing gap between natural sciences and the humanities: While the world needs interpretation, according to the humanities, it is simply out there to be studied, according to natural sciences. The subjectivity of humanist research is one of the reasons that (some) natural scientists object to it. Back to the MRI study. The researchers chose adolescents “Because developing brains are most likely to show potential changes”. Sounds good. And they chose girls, “to minimize bias based on previous video game experience”. Sounds problematic and not as “objective” as expected, based on the natural sciences/humanities debate. There are no natural link between boys and computer games. More and more girls play computer games, and - if you asked a social scientist or a humanist you would also know that - many girls downplay or even hide the fact that they play computer games. Thus, the real question is: Why didn’t the researchers choose “adolescents who do not play computer games” instead of “girls” with the implicit assumption “girls do not play computer games”? Even if the research method (MRI scan in this case) might give a precise result, the research design is still relying on an interpretation of the world (assumptions about girls and boys- in this case).

Move back to start. Read Haraway before you roll the dice to proceed.

Jessica Enevold and Charlotte Hagström started a research project last year: Gaming Moms - Time, Play and Everyday Life, where they explore gaming practices in the everyday life of families where the mother is a gamer. And they have a blog.

They already have a paper available: “My Momma Shoots Better Than You”, and I can’t wait to read more about Gaming Moms!

According to a new evaluation of countries’ level of gender equality from World Economic Forum, Norway is best with 82,39% gender equality on a scale where 100% means full gender equality. (from bt.no)

You can download the whole report from WCF as a PDF.

Dagbladet.no can report that “Feminists are best in bed” today: Men with a feminist girl friend have a better relationship and better sex, according to a new study. That’s good news, if at all news… Although the most interesting part about the article is not the journalist’s text, but all the comments from readers, rejecting the claim.

In the face of strong myths, like the one about feminists being ugly, unsexy, not having sex (at least not with somebody else) etc. research simply isn’t enough. The comments to this article are good examples on how people reject research and instead rely on their own stereotypical common knowledge as a “true” story about the world. The same happened when Nielsen Entertainment claimed that more women than men played online games earlier this year, and comments on blogs and forums made clear that people found that to be “bullshit”. There are no comments to this on Slashdot, but the tags “yeahright, nielsensucks, lies, females, yougogirl” get the message through… Helen Gansmo has earlier claimed that even those responsible for gender (equality) strategies in relation to ICT in Norwegian schools prefer to use their own (stereotypical) “knowlege” rather than research.

You Are 100% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

Women in Science - Resource bank for gender mainstreaming

Or in Norwegian: Kvinner i forskning - Ressursbank for likestilling i Akademia

The researchers Matthias R. Mehl, Simine Vazire, Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Richard B. Slatcher, and James W. Pennebaker have studied conversational behavior among men and women. “The stereotype of female talkativeness is deeply engrained in Western folklore and often considered a scientific fact”, they write, originating from neuropsychiatrist Brizendine’s study, where she claimed that women use 20.000 words per day, while men only use 7.000. Brizendine’s numbers have become a cultural myth that has been repeated over and over again the last 15 years. Mehl et al however claim that “no study has systematically recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended periods of time”. Mehl et al have developed a technology for recording spoken words - a electronically activated recorder (EAR). In their study of 186 men and 210 women, they found that: “Women and men both use on average about 16,000 words per day, with very large individual differences around this mean.”

And they conclude: “We therefore conclude, on the basis of available empirical evidence, that the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded.^“

Makes me want to quote Connell again:
So, the overwhelming conclusion from a hundred years of ’sex difference’ research is that men and women are not very different at all […] The psychological similarity of men and women might be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences. (2002:42)

The hardest thing about teaching (or preaching) gender theory is that everyone ‘knows’ what gender is. Everyone has experience in ‘being’ and ’seeing’ gender. We are used to think about people divided in two groups; (biological) men and women. Often we tend to use the biological difference between men and women as an explanation to social differences (Even today? you might add). This basic male-female distinction is also a common way of presenting research results in popular versions, which is another source of ‘knowledge’ about gender that reaches people before they attend a gender theory class. Which means that many students attend the class both with their own ‘experience-knowledge’ and this popular gender-knowledge, both in sharp contrast to today’s gender research and its emphasise on gender as a social construction, as well as variation and diversity between women as well as between men. The challenge in teaching (preaching) gender theory then seems to be that (some of) the students’ (firm) knowledge about gender has to be exchanged for another knowledge about gender, almost as if they have to change their belief system (that’s the preaching part…).
Maybe I will use Connell’s book Gender in the gender and ICT class next year. He explains gender as a social construction in a very direct and easily understood way, and he does so by addressing a number of ‘normal’ (mis)understandings of sex/gender. He is for instance addressing the main body of what he calls ’sex difference research’ within socio-biology and psychology - that is, the research that has had as its main goal to document gender as a dualistic difference based on (essentialised) bodily/biological differences. His conclusion is that this ’sex difference research’ mainly documents similarities (92%) and should rather be called ’sex similarity research’:

So, the overwhelming conclusion from a hundred years of ’sex difference’ research is that men and women are not very different at all […] The psychological similarity of men and women might be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences. (42)

Another problematic way of dealing with gender that he addresses is the way heterosexuality often is described as ‘natural’, as opposed to homosexuality � in particular in debates about partnership/marriage:

� homosexuality is declared ‘unnatural’ and bad’ [and illegal in some countries]. [�] But if having sex with another man is unnatural, why have a law against it? We don’t provide penalties for violating the third law of thermodynamics. (4)

I haven’t read all of it yet, but so far I can definitely recommend it as an introduction to gender research - easy to read, well written and with a number of interesting examples.