The power of discourse - the freedom of individuals: Gendered positions in the discourse of computing
Hilde Corneliussen, Ph.D. at Department of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway, 2003.

The aim of the research project is to explore how men and women perceive gender as meaningful in relation to computing, and to study how they create their own relations to computers.The empirical material of the project is based on a study among 30 male and female computer students, who were followed over a period of three months through weekly email correspondence, observations, and group interviews. The analysis points to a number of understandings of gender and computing that the informants share. These understandings are discussed as a hegemonic discourse of computing. A central part of the hegemonic discourse about computing is the different expectations it raises to men and women’s relations to the computer; men are expected to have interest in, experience with, and knowledge about computers, while women are expected not to have the same interest, experience or knowledge. The informants’ individual relations to computing, or the individual positions they propose, are analysed in light of the hegemonic discourse. It is possible to point to a pattern of seven different positioning strategies among the informants. A starting point for all the different strategies is the hegemonic discourse, but they depart from each other with regard to the different positions they aim at, and thereby also with regard to the degree of harmony with - or challenge to - the hegemonic discourse that they represent. The theoretical perspective is based on poststructuralist feminist theory, mainly inspired by the historian Joan W. Scott, and on social constructivist theories of technology. The analytical method is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of discourse.