COST A4

Directorate-General For Research And Innovation European Commission

Description

Gender, ITCs and everyday life: Mutual shaping processes: Proceedings from COST A4, Granite workshop, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 8 to 11 February, 1996 - Volume 6
Information technology and telecommunications
Social policy
Information - Documentation

Sujets

• Information technology
• Habitability
• Woman

Informations

• Publié par: DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-RESEARCH-AND-INNOVATION-EUROPEAN-COMMISSION
• Nombre de lectures: 28
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

European Commission
social sciences
Gender, ITCs and everyday life
Mutual shaping processes
Proceedings from COST A4, Granite workshop,
in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
8 to 11 February, 1996
Edited by Valerie Frissen * " •
* *
*
* * *
social sciences
COST
A4
Volume 6
Gender, ITCs and everyday life
Mutual shaping processes
Proceedings from COST A4, Granite workshop,
in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
8 to 11 February, 1996
Edited by Valerie Frissen
Bess tímiÊm
European Commission
Directorate-General
Science, Research and Development
1997 CONTENTS
Foreword ν
Valerie Frissen
Introduction: Gender, ICTs and Everyday Life:
Mutual Shaping Processes
THE SHAPING OF GENDER AND ICTs IN EVERYDAYLIFE
Anne-Jorunn Berg
Karoline and the Cyborgs:
The Naturalisation of a Technical Object 7
Leslie Η addon
The Dynamics ofinformation and Communication Technologies
and Gender 36
Valerie Frissen
'Decoding' Telecommunications in Everydaylife 54
THE SHAPING OF GENDER AND ICTs IN THE WORKING PLACE
Juliet Webster
Gendering Information Technologies:
Lessons from Feminist Research 81
Ursula Holtgrewe
Informal Expertise: An Everyday Perspective
on Information Technology and Womens Work 112 THE SHAPING OF GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE HOME
Sibylle Meyer and Eva Schulze
Womens Acceptance of ICTs in the Home.
Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Findings 123
Simone Bergman
Communication Technologies in the Household:
The Gendering of Artefacts and Practices 137
Maria Lohan
The Féminisation of the Domestic Phone Space:
Women and the Domestic Telephone in Ireland 154
Laurence Habib
Researching Information Technology and the Family 172
Maria Carmen Alemany
Do Home Appliances Accelerate the Redistribution of Housework?
A Case Study on the Washing Machine 189
OPENING THE 'GENDER BLACK BOX'
IN TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH
Birgit Jæger
Gender as an Analytical Category in the Study of Online Services
in Denmark? 199
John Willy Bakke
Competition in Mobile Telephony and Gendered Images
of Communication 21
Jörgen Nissen
The Hacker Culture and Masculinity 230
Programme of the Workshop 251
Participants in the Workshop5 INTRODUCTION
GENDER, ICTs AND EVERYDAY LIFE:
MUTUAL SHAPING PROCESSES
Valerie Frissen
The COST A4 project The Domestic Shaping of Information Technology'
is organised as a research network, bringing together scholars from several
European countries who are doing empirical research on the incoiporation
of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life.
This network is a result of efforts to introduce a constructivist or 'social
shaping' perspective to the study of (information) technology and everyday
life. The aim is to develop theoretical insights in the network, by using na­
tional projects as a source of inspiration and as an empirical basis for the
joint work.
The first meeting of this COST A4 network was a workshop in Trond­
heim, in October 1993, cosponsored by the Norwegian Research Council.
The proceedings of this workshop have been published in Berg & Aune
(1994). At this meeting, work in progress was discussed and assumptions
and research questions were formulated about the mutual shaping of infor­
mation technology and everyday life. One of the recurrent issues during the
workshop was the gender issue, which seemed to be very important in the
mutual shaping of technology and everyday life. It was thus a logical step
to make gender the central focus for the next meeting of the network. Both
(inlbrmation)technology and gender can be conceptualised as socio-tech-
nical constructs: gender can be seen as one of the most striking - although
often neglected - social factors shaping technological developments. On
the other hand technological innovation processes shape gender relations
as well, for instance by reproducing cultural sterotypes about masculinity
and feminity.
GRANITE is an international network of researchers, based at SISWO
in Amsterdam. This network aims to stimulate research in the field of gen­
der and information and communication technologies and aims to provide
a platform for academic and policy oriented debates in this field. The net-The Shaping of Gender and ICTs in Every day life
work published a (paper and electronic) newsletter, has a discussion list on
Internet and organises expert meetings. The first meeting was in 1989 in
Amsterdam. The aim of this meeting was to identify the central themes and
issues in the field of gender and information technology, and to develop a
research agenda. One of the recurrent issues at this meeting ('ICTs: For
Business Only?') was the lack of empirical and theoretical understanding
of the domestic uses of information technology and the incorporation of
information technologies in everyday life. This lack of interest, which is
parallelled in a lack of interest for user-oriented research in technology
studies, has resulted in the 'blackboxing' of gender in research on innova
tion processes. A focus on users enables us to give a more complete and
adequate picture of the gendering of ICTs, because particularly women are
more visible as consumers or users of technology than as producers. The
place of' ICTs in the domestic was therefor the central theme of the second
GRANITE meeting in ! 991 in Amsterdam: ( 'NICTs and the Changing Na­
ture of the Domestic'). The proceedings of both GRANITE-meetings have
been published by SIS WO (Frissen et al., 1990; GRANITE, 1992). The aim
of the next meeting was to further explore the 'user perspective', by focus­
sing on the relationship between gender and ICTs in everydaylife.
This sketch of the aims and activities of the COST A4- and GRANITE-
networks illustrates the common grounds of both networks, which has led
to the initiative of organising a joint meeting to share theoretical, empirical
and strategical insights. This meeting took place in February 1996 in Am­
sterdam. In this volume most of the work of members of both networks that
has been discussed at the meeting is brought together. Boths are
more or less working in the constructivist tradition, and therefor the central
theoretical question at this meeting has been how the relation between gen­
der, information technology and everyday life can be conceptualised from
a 'social shaping perspective'. To answer this question several theoretical
issues from technology studies, mediastudics and gender studies have been
discussed at the workshop. Furthermore, the mutual shaping of gender and
ICTs was explored for two domains of everyday life: the work place (part
2 of this volume) and the home, or the domestic (part 3). One of the promi­
nent theoretical concepts that has been debated at the workshop was the
'domestication' concept (sec for instance Silvcrstone and Hirsch, 1992).
This concept has proven to be useful to describe the incorporation of ICTs
in everyday life, a process which changes both the technology and the user.
The term 'domestication' is a term which can be used to refer to the com­
plex social processes through which objects are taken into and find a place Introduction
within the home - or are rejected (which is particularly interesting when
studying gender differences in the acceptance if ICTs). In this volume the
concept is referred to by many contributors and is extensively discussed by
Berg, Bergman, Haddon and Frissen. An alternative theoretical approach
to the incorporation and use of ICTs in the domestic, is offered by Habib.
She applies concepts from the information systems approach to conceptualise
the 'implementation' of ICTs in the social organisation of the family.
Another way of theoretically exploring an everydaylife perspective to
the gender/ICT-relation is demonstrated by Holtgrewe. She looks at the im­
plementation of ICTs and the gendered division of labour in the workplace
by focussing on informal forms of expertise, which offers a quite different
approach to the more traditional approaches to women's work.
In her contribution Webster refers to the concept of 'translation'; the
way gender relations inform and become embedded in the design and de­
velopment of ICTs. She also discusses the merits of feminist interventions
in these processes and by doing so she explores the second important theme
of this workshop: the political or strategical conclusions that can be drawn
from our empirical work in this area.
A theoretical issue related to this, is what is sometimes called the
'user/producer-interface'': to what extent and how are uses of ICTs pre-
structured or 'configured' by the (gendered) views that designers, pro­
ducers or marketeers have of the future users of these technologies? In this
volume Bakke explores how users are represented in images of mobile
communication in advertisements: gender is one of the factors shaping
these representations. Alemany shows ho