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FemTech: Broadening Participation to Digital Technology Development

Published: 15 October 2019 Publication History

Abstract

In the digital age, the fields and professions related to computing are having an unprecedent impact on our lives, and on societies. As computing becomes integrated in fundamental ways in healthcare [10,11], labor markets [2,4], and political processes [3,6], questions about who participates and takes decisions in developing digital technologies are becoming increasingly crucial and unavoidable [7].
A bottom line is that, if a rather homogeneous group develops most of the digital technologies, there is a risk that these technologies only consider a part of the population, and therefore unwillingly introduce biases or trigger exclusion. There are many intersectional characteristics - such as race, gender, or class - by which people can be part of an excluded minority. This keynote focuses on women as a gender minority in computing.
In Western societies, the percentage of women participating in computing is low. According to a recent report for the European Commission, there are four times more men than women in Europe in studies related to Information and Communication Technologies [12]. Similarly, a study by the Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that only 26% of computing jobs in USA were held by women [13].

References

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Bardzell, S., & Bardzell, J. (2011). Towards a feminist HCI methodology: social science, feminism, and HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 675--684). ACM.
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Glöss, M., McGregor, M., & Brown, B. (2016). Designing for labour: uber and the on-demand mobile workforce. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1632--1643). ACM.
[3]
Issenberg, S. (2013). The victory lab: The secret science of winning campaigns. Broadway Books.
[4]
Langhoff, T. O., M. H. Amstrup, P. Mørck and P. Bjørn (2018). "Infrastructures for healthcare: From synergy to reverse synergy." Health Informatic Journal 24(1): 43--54.
[5]
Margolis, J., & Fisher, A. (2003). Unlocking the clubhouse: Women in computing. MIT press.
[6]
Menéndez, M., P. Bjørn and A. D. Angeli (2017). Critical design artefacts: Enacting alternative political agendas. ACM CSCW Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Portland, USA, ACM.
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Menendez-Blanco, M. and P. Bjørn (2019). "Makerspaces on Social Media: Shaping access to Open Design." Human computer interaction SI.
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Menendez-Blanco, M., Bjørn, P., Holten Møller, N. M., Bruun, J., Dybkjær, H., & Lorentzen, K. (2018). GRACE: Broadening narratives of computing through history, craft and technology. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork (pp. 397--400). ACM.
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Mumford, E. (2006). The story of socio?technical design: Reflections on its successes, failures and potential. Information systems journal, 16(4), 317--342.
[10]
Møller, N. H. and P. Bjørn (2011). "Layers in Sorting Practices: Sorting out Patients with Potential Cancer." Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal 20: 123--153.
[11]
Pine, K. H., Bossen, C., Chen, Y., Ellingsen, G., Grisot, M., Mazmanian, M., & Møller, N. H. (2018). Data work in healthcare: Challenges for patients, clinicians and administrators. In Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 433--439). ACM.
[12]
Women in the Digital Age https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/women-ict (last accessed: 12th August 2019)
[13]
Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm (last accessed: 12th August 2019)

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    MM '19: Proceedings of the 27th ACM International Conference on Multimedia
    October 2019
    2794 pages
    ISBN:9781450368896
    DOI:10.1145/3343031
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 15 October 2019

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    Author Tags

    1. action research
    2. computer science
    3. computing
    4. diversity
    5. gender
    6. inclusion

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