Guest editorial

Citation

(2002), "Guest editorial", Information Technology & People, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2002.16115baa.001

Guest editorial

About the guest editorsAlison Adam is a Reader in the Information Systems Research Centre, University of Salford, UK. Her research interests are in gender and technology, computer ethics and critical information systems. Recent books include Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine (Routledge, 1998) and Virtual Gender (with Eileen Green, Routledge, 2001).Debra Howcroft is a Senior Lecturer at the IS Institute and Deputy Director of the IS Research Centre. She has a mixture of both industrial and academic experience which includes a number of years as a systems developer. Her research interests fall into two broad categories: firstly, concerning the adoption of a critical perspective which opts for a broad approach that considers the social and political factors surrounding technology development and use; secondly, combining IS literature with social studies of technology literature as a means for conceptualising the social context and content of systems development.Helen Richardson is a Lecturer in Information Systems at the University of Salford. She worked in the public sector for a number of years and then in the field of research and training, promoting positive action for women at work. Her main research interests are critical research in information systems, gender and e-commerce and the gender impacts of on-line learning.

This special issue of Information Technology & People is concerned with "gender and IS". The focus of the issue is motivated by a number of factors. First, as the field of information systems (IS) has attached increasing importance to the social context and content of systems development, the issue of gender has remained a largely neglected social and political concern within research forums. Whilst interest in gender has begun to permeate and influence other disciplines, the domain of IS has remained fairly watertight against incursions from gender analysis, aside from a few notable exceptions. We believe that as the topic of gender is just beginning to surface in IS, it is both timely and important that we understand how the gender dimension is being considered in current research. Second, the little research on gender and IS that does exist – from both the qualitative and quantitative traditions – is largely under-theorised. In many of these studies both gender and technology are taken as fixed categories and viewed in "essentialist" terms. The majority of statistical studies concerning gender dichotomise male and female in searching for differences and rely on stereotypical characteristics. No doubt, there are a number of valuable research projects which highlight the low proportion of women in IT and the problems they face, yet these studies tend to concentrate on the goal of "adding-more-women" whilst neglecting to problematise why so many women are disinclined to enter the arena of computing and IT.

With these elements in mind we sought papers which incorporated a strongly theorised conception of gender against a balanced empirical study to help frame our understanding of gender relations in the context of the dynamics of technological and organisational change. We received a good response to this call, but chose not to publish some studies, interesting as they were, that focused primarily on illustrating the low participation rates of women within the IT/IS profession. Instead we have selected papers with a strongly theoretical focus that are complemented by substantive empirical studies. The papers are diverse and focus on different aspects of gender and IS, yet they all share strong commonalities in that they see gender as a social rather than a biological construction. They also avoid dualist dichotomies that see men and women in terms of a simple binary relationship, preferring instead to recognise the role of women's agency in shaping their position and resisting stereotypical assumptions about their behaviour. Women are not assumed to represent a cohesive social group and differences and similarities are noted by taking into account other aspects of their lives such as ethnicity, class position, and family circumstances. One of the common themes that we see is that of contradiction and the differences between espoused theory/beliefs and practice resulting in stories of women who defy convention – they possess technical competence, they resist, they refuse to comply, they do not conform to type.

Turning now to the papers, we see the first paper, by Eileen Trauth, as providing a strong theoretical contribution on the socio-cultural influences on female IT professionals in Australia and New Zealand. The paper is concerned with women's participation in the IT sector and examines the relationship between social shaping of IT and gender identity. Based on a qualitative empirical study an argument is proposed for the primacy of sociological and structural/institutional influences over biological and psychological ones. The author summarises the two dominant perspectives on gender and IT, namely that of essentialism and social constructivism, and highlights the limitations of both positions in that they operate, albeit differently, at the group level. The author notes the limitations of these two conceptualisations of gender in terms of the recommendations that they would proffer for addressing the gender gap within the IT profession.

Having discussed the limitations of essentialism and social constructivism, the author outlines her perspective which prefers to look at social shaping of gender and the IT profession at the individual level – inhabiting the middle ground between social constructivism and essentialism. And so we see an emerging theory of individual differences which looks at the manner in which individual women experience the social shaping of both gender and IT and its social construction at the individual level. It is hoped that this theoretical framework will provide greater awareness and understanding of the various elements of the gender gap in the IT profession which could then ignite proactive responses for change. This perspective marks an interesting contribution to the gender and IT literature, arguing that gender identity is neither fixed nor monolithic, but complex and subject to considerable variation. It highlights the fluidity of the relationship between gender identity and participation in the IT profession. The study offers an interesting combination of theorising common experiences as a means of highlighting the social shaping elements, yet also notes the subtle influences in operation at the individual level where women defy their gendered stereotype and become the "odd girls out".

The following paper by Ruth Woodfield also focuses on the IT profession. It reflects on the problematic nature of the "add more women" goal by posing the question as to whether a shift in quantitative terms will necessarily generate a shift in qualitative terms. Put simply, would an increase in the number of women working in the IT profession generate an attendant shift in the nature of systems development work. Woodfield goes on to pose the question that if we assume women do bring a different approach to IS work, is this approach expressed within the everyday working context, does this approach carry any influence, and what recognition and rewards arise for women as a result of their contribution. Woodfield considers these issues in the context of an empirical study within two large, global computing organisations focusing specifically on the identifiable commonalties amongst the dominant discourses within these organizations. She examines the "discursive practices" which are described as "systematic and consistent ways of speaking about phenomena that characterize these phenomena in particular ways and that limit descriptions in other ways; the perception of the phenomena is thus shaped by the discourse" and this is therefore connected to issues of power, ideology and social change.

Two related issues emerged from the study. The first concerns the status of the discourses that comment upon the differing skills (social and technical) of men and women and the kinds of skills that are necessary for IS development. Relating to this is the issue of whether these discourses had any consequence on the work experiences of male and female workers and if this had any implications for the labour process. The study showed that whilst women were commended for their hybrid skills, they were then presented with less opportunities for using such skills. The second issue focuses upon the relationship between discourse and practice and considers how such contradictory accounts can exist simultaneously. Woodfield goes on to discuss why the increased recognition that has been accorded to social/communication skills in systems development work has not given women some kind of "automatic advantage". This leads to the conclusion that systems development work is not dissimilar to many other occupations whereby occupational skills are ascribed in a manner that privileges male workers regardless of the skill set of their female counterparts. Thus it seems unlikely that "adding more women" will necessarily alter existing perceptions of worth and result in a radically different occupational culture.

The third paper by Melanie Wilson provides a theorisation that offers a framework of analysis combining feminist theory and social studies of technology (SST). This paper is also situated within the work environment, but the spotlight now turns on to users rather than developers of information systems. The empirical study centres upon an automated care planning system that was used and resisted by nurses in a UK National Health Service hospital. It is especially interesting given the gendered nature of the nursing profession which is associated with the archetypal female role of caring and servicing of others.

The paper draws upon the notion of the script from SST that analyses the construction of user roles and their competencies. Inscription considers the ways in which systems developers make implicit and explicit assumptions and predict the future world in which the users employ and manipulate the system. In keeping with some of the issues raised in the previous two papers, the case study highlights contradictions as ultimately the nurse users resist the script of the technology and reject the system. Here gender plays a crucial role, albeit in an implicit manner: the nurses opt for the archetypal female role of caring for patients rather than take on the role of the ideal computer user who prioritises the importance of updating electronic records. The inscribed patterns of use fail to succeed as nurse users deviate and use (or fail to use) the system in an unanticipated way. Once again, we see evidence of women who defy convention.

The final paper shifts the focus from the workplace to the home and investigates the integration of the computer into the domestic sphere, drawing upon the notions of domesticity and domestication. Given the strongly gendered nature of domestic technology and the increasing use of information and communication technologies in the home the domestication of this type of technology means this study is both timely and significant. The paper offers a rich ethnographic study that analyses the computer as an element amongst an intricate web of values, relationships, symbols and routines that comprise family life. It poses the question "what does the computer mean for families and family life?"

In order to address this, the paper sets the scene with the provision of an overview of domesticity and domestic technology, noting the domestic arena as a predominantly female environment. Moving on to the empirical study we see that the authors note a range of potentially gender-related issues but avoid the provision of causal explanations linking gender and computer use. No simple general pattern emerges from the study. Rather, a number of interrelated factors such as cultural norms, personal experiences, environment and personality weave together to tell the story. The authors argue that this range of intersecting ideas and influences complete the picture rather than focus upon gender as a prior analytical category that is elevated above all others. Their study avoids the stereotypical and often essentialist view of male love/female fear of technology, illustrating the computer and family members as part of a domestication process which in turn has a gendered dynamic. In this sense the argument within the paper resonates with the individual differences perspective suggested in the first paper by Trauth which looks at the ways in which individuals, situated within a given socio-cultural context, both shape and are shaped by the technology in question.

Finally, we believe that the papers that have been selected for this special issue provide a sophisticated analysis of gender and IS in a variety of different contexts. They also provide a rich understanding of gender since they go beyond simply dichotomising male-female relations, preferring instead to highlight the complexity of gendered relations. No doubt, the insights provided from these papers relate to inequalities generally, including class, race, and sexuality and although the focus here has been specifically on gender we would encourage investigation of other similarly neglected issues. Given the resistance within many disciplines to new perspectives that perhaps challenge the orthodoxy, we are delighted that this journal has provided an opportunity to present research that questions many of these mainstream assumptions. This has given us an opportunity to engage with others so that hopefully over time the relevance of this neglected area will be acknowledged. Enjoy the papers