From the Nordwit reading group

The Tampere Nordwit team has an on-going reading group on gender in research and innovation. The participants have varied as the work situations and affiliations have changed. However, the group has continuously consisted of 5-6 participants, including the ‘core’ Nordwit members and associates: one doctoral student, one post doc and several senior researchers. The readings have been selected collectively to serve the interests of the participants, and they have covered classics, new texts, texts that have contributed to our conceptual and methodological understanding. Typically, each of the group gatherings discusses two articles that the participants have read beforehand.

In the spring 2020, we read, among others, the article ‘Sheep with five legs’ (Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence, Organization 2011) by Marieke van den Brink and Yvonne Benschop, the latter also a member of the Nordwit International Scientific Advisory Board. The article has been widely acknowledged in the research literature and is one of the ‘classics’ for us.

“It is not a paradox that few girls choose ICT education”

From Nationen: https://www.nationen.no/motkultur/faglig-snakka/ikke-et-paradoks-at-fa-jenter-velger-ikt-utdanning/

That’s the title of a short popular science piece I have in Nationen today discussing the “Nordic Gender Equality Paradox”: this often recognized “absurd” mismatch between the high degree of gender equality in the Nordic countries combined with a high degree of horizontal gender segregation in education and working life.

 

The low proportion of girls choosing ICT is not really a paradox, I claim here, but a result of how “those who should have cheered the girls on to fun, exciting and good paying jobs in ICT, failed them”. For more than two decades I’ve interviewed and talked with not only girls and women in ICT, but also a large number of teachers, parents, ICT companies and others who should have been first in line to encourage girls to engage in ICT contexts and education. Among these groups we have found a widespread distrust in the possibility of making girls interested in ICT. How could we expect girls to choose a career path that our culture does not expect girls to be interested in? The paradox is thus not girls not choosing ICT education, but this distrust and the absence of supporters cheering them on!

That was the short version – read the full piece in Norwegian in Nationen  (or with google translate).

Read more (open access):

• Corneliussen, H. G., & Seddighi, G. (2019). “Må vi egentlig ha flere kvinner i IKT?” Diskursive forhandlinger om likestilling i IKT-arbeid. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, 43(4), 273-287.
  http://kjonnsforskning.no/nb/ma-vi-egentlig-ha-flere-kvinner-i-ikt
• Corneliussen, H. G., Seddighi, G., & Dralega, C. A. (2019). Women’s Experience of Role Models in IT: Landmark women, substitutes, and supporters. In Ø. Helgesen, E. Nesset, G. Mustafa, P. Rice, & R. Glavee-Geo (Eds.), Modeller: Fjordantologien 2019: Universitetsforlaget.
  https://www.idunn.no/modeller/18_womens_experience_of_role_models_in_it_landmark_women
• Corneliussen, H. G., & Tveranger, F. (2018). Programming in Secondary Schools in Norway – a Wasted Opportunity for Inclusion Proceedings of Gender&IT’18, Heilbronn, Germany, May 2018 (Gender&IT’18) (172-182). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
  https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3196839.3196867

Companion Pieces: Technologization, Transhumanism and Questions of the Limits of Innovation

Quite by chance (or was it?), I found myself reading Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine (London: Granta, 2017) and Jeanette Winterson’s recent novel Frankissstein (London: Penguin, 2019), one after the other. They make interesting companion pieces.

O’Connell investigates the transhumanist movement in its various forms. Here humans are viewed as constituting suboptimal systems, imperfect structures that can be enhanced through life extension projects such as cognitive augmentation with the aim of transcending the biological body and mind. O’Connell references certain procedures (e.g. cryopreservation of whole bodies and/or skulls only) and companies (e.g. Alcor in Arizona) that resurface in Winterson’s novel – it is as if they have been on the same trip but take somewhat different narrative approaches to exploring the same phenomenon: how to defeat death (or not) and live longer, ideally forever.

Winterson interweaves the tale of Mary Shelley’s production of Frankenstein into a contemporary narrative of technology-enhanced sociality (the world of sexbots, cryopreservation – again -, technocapitalism) where the issue of man defeating ‘nature’/biology/death through technology is replayed in a significantly more humorous and hence absurdist fashion than O’Connell manages.

Techno-optimism or techno-pessimism – is that the question? O’Connell’s exploration leads him into a world that is, as he repeatedly puts it, overwhelmingly male – men implanting devices into themselves, running cryofacilities, lecturing, or is that preaching, around the western, mainly anglophone world. Winterson’s world is less male-dominated but the fantasies of transcending human-ness through technology are, on the optimistic side, mostly displayed by males, on the pessimistic side queried by females. Different worlds?

Gabriele Griffin

Doing Nordwit research in exceptional times

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

The outbreak of the coronavirus and the disease COVID-19 has not only affected our health and safety but the possibilities and ways of work as well. This also pertains to social scientific research that we engage in Nordwit research teams. While in Nordwit we are quite accustomed to regular meetings in virtual surroundings, remote work has increased the use of communication technologies in my local team. Since our university is in lock-down for the most part and we cannot go to our offices, we are on the fast track of adopting tools for meeting and sharing our current material. Some are taking courses; some are learning by doing. Virtual meetings are important in giving rhythm and sense of direction to the work we’re doing but also for care, we get a chance to check up on each other.

Collecting interview data has changed, too. As a researcher used to meeting interviewees face to face, I am now taking the uneasy path of organizing career interviews online. It raises methodological questions, such as: How will interaction dynamics change in conversing online? Will I miss important clues when I am online? Will the sense of confidentiality be adequate enough for sharing important and sometimes hurtful experiences? Sensitivity to emerging ethical issues is also important when interviewees are working from home, often surrounded by kids who might be needing care and attention in the middle of the interview session.

As it should, such an acute crisis gives us pause. Professionally, these exceptional times with their restrictions raise questions about the world of work our research subjects are experiencing now: Has the virus outbreak and restrictions related to it affected the ways women view their careers technology? How is this situation changing their businesses and research environments? A lot of the women I’ve interviewed have kids and families. If they do remote work, how can they arrange it? Do they struggle with very concretely combining childcare and work?

These are only some of the questions that could be raised. We will see a rise in the need of social scientific knowledge to understand the vastness of effects of the virus outbreak on different levels of our societies.

Minna Leinonen