gender preferences in the use of technology. lesson plan women in computing: computational reticence...

Gender Preferences in the Use of Technology

Lesson Plan

• Women in Computing: Computational Reticence

• Readings: I/2 (Women in Science)

• Readings: Benston, (Wo)Men’s Voices

• Readings: From Barbie to Mortal Combat (Ch. 1-2)

Computational Reticence “I wanted to work in worlds where languages had moods and

connected you with people.”

“With programming, whatever you think of--and you are always thinking of something--it can be immediately translated into a

challenge. That same night. You can set yourself up to do it some really esoteric, unusual way. And you can make a deal with

yourself that you won’t be satisfied, that you won’t eat or go out or do anything until you get it right. And then you can just do it. It’s like a fix. I couldn’t get that kind of fix with the violin. I could be

obsessed, but I couldn’t get the high.”

Computational Reticence

“I used to get into relationships that usually led me to getting burned in some way .… With computers you have

confidence in yourself and that is enough. With social interactions you have to have confidence that the rest of the world will be nice to you. You can’t control how the

rest of the world is going to react to you. But with computers you are in complete control.”


“Wait a minute, a machine doesn’t go through things; going through things is a very emotional way of talking. But it is

hard to keep it straight. It seems to you that they are experiencing something that you once experienced. That they are learning something and you lose sight of the fact

that this whole ability … I don’t even want to say the computer’s ability. I don’t like anthropomorphizing; I fight very hard against attributing emotions to that machine.”


“I saw people being really compulsive but really enjoying it. I saw that these guys sort of related to their terminals the way I relate to the

piano and I thought, maybe I can do that too. I saw all these people running around with the same intensity as I have with the piano and they tell me that I’ll probably be good at computers. These are the

guys who are helping me do this course. And they keep telling me, yes, you’re going to be real good at it. Don’t worry about it, but you’re

going about it in the wrong way. They tell me I’m ‘not establishing a relationship with the computer.’ And to me that sounds gross. It is

gross to me, the way these guys are. I don’t like establishing relationships with machines. I don’t like putting it that way.

Relationships are for people.”

computer has no gender bias

but

computer culture is not gender neutral

Computational Reticenceissue:why women opt to not engage with computers

(women & computerphobia?)

• Turkle’s research of computers and people uses ethnographic method (1976+); looks at how people interact with computers; explains social worlds that grow around these interactions

• Sherry Turkle, “Computational Reticence: Why Women Fear the Intimate Machine” (1988)

• study of 25 Harvard and MIT women successful in computer programming courses


• analysis of how social construction of the computer as a male domain affects how women relate to computers (part of broader issue of how women are socialized traditionally into relationships with technical objects)

• computer culture traditionally dominated by images of competition, sports and violence

Computational Reticence• Turkle concludes: problem with women in computing

is not computerphobia, but computer reticence

• computerphobia: needing to stay away because of fear and panic; lack of ability

• computer reticence: deciding / wanting to stay away because the computer becomes a personal and cultural symbol of what a woman is not; reticence to become more deeply involved with an object experienced as threatening

Computational ReticenceComputational reticence explained by Turkle

(1988) as women’s behaviors of:

• Rejecting the intimate machine (microworlds)

• (rejecting) The negative image of the hacker (industry, educational institutions, media, lifestyle required for success)

Computational ReticenceComputational reticence explained by Turkle

(1988) as women’s behaviors of:

• Fighting against computer holding power

• (restraint from) Romantic reactions to the anthropomorphized machine

• Reticence about formal systems

Computational ReticenceRejecting the intimate machine

• Social world of the ‘hacker’ a culture of computer virtuosos dominates the culture of computing

• women look at computers and see more than machines: culture grown up around them and ask themselves whether they belong


• computer is a medium that supports a powerful sense of mastery [of things, not relational skills with people]

• mastery of things provides security

• relationships with people are always characterized by ambiguity, sexual tension, possibilities for closeness and dependency


• pattern of using formal microworlds as protective worlds not exclusive to computers (chess, sports, cars, literature, music, dance, mathematical expertise)

• connected to psychological development in adolescence (12+)

• protective worlds can become places of escape and safe platforms for exploring turbulent adolescence


• males more likely to master anxieties about people by turning to the world of things and formal systems

• females reject an imaginary friend in a machine; reject computer as a partner in a ‘close encounter,’ prefer to define themselves as relational women


• microworlds are things they [adolescents] can control

• ‘hacker culture’ • born in elementary schools and junior high schools as result of

this developmental process

• predominantly male

• although minority, shapes the computer cultures of educational institutions

Computational ReticenceThe negative image of the hacker

• hacker’s relationship with computer: violent form of risk taking

• psychological intensity, turbulence, aggression

• pleasures of flirting with destruction

• challenging themselves: constantly walking the fine line between ‘winning’ and ‘losing’

• ‘sport death’(MIT hackers’ jargon)=“pushing mind and body beyond limits, punishing the body until it can barely support the mind and then demanding more of the mind that you believe it could possibly deliver”


• hackers’ culture characterized as:• macho

• preoccupied with winning and subjecting themselves through violent tests (risk-taking)

• flight from relationships with people to the machine as defense mechanism

• burnout common

• few women hackers


• risk taking: form of learning different in males and females

• females do not respond to challenge by risk-taking; they see challenges as hurdles imposed from the ‘outside’; females are more willing to accept responsibility for risks in relationships


• female (students’) response to computer culture in universities (shaped by computational ‘intuition’ attributed to male risk taking) is to see themselves as lesser, competent but not creative

• recognition that these are distinct learning styles would prevent (self-)exclusion of women

Computational ReticenceFighting against computer holding power

• anthropomophization of computer as a ‘psychological machine’ with intellectual and aesthetic personality invites relational encounter with a formal system

• gender differences in the anthropomorphization of computer


• relational computational style of programming preferred by women

• ‘to identify with computational objects in an artistic, tactile style

• desire to play with them as though they are physical objects in a collage’

• but fight against the computer as psychologically gripping (not an intimate machine)

• computer is ‘just a tool’ approach


• roots of rejection of computer as intimate machine in psychological development of men and women in the process of identity formation (4-5 years of age)

• men need to undergo a radical break from their mothers (as other) to define their sexual identity women are encouraged to maintain a close relationship with mother


• boys define identity through separation (Chodorow 1978), an experience that is traumatic; girls grow up defining identity through social interactions

• male differentiation from others is about differentiation but also about autonomy, in which they aim to gain control over material world


• men want to be alone at the top; fear others getting too close; women want to be at the center of connection; they fear being out on the edge

• women perceive technology as demanding separation, and experience it as alien and dangerous; success with computers means a process of alientaion, depersonalization, being involved with ‘a thing’


• metaphors for the social worlds of men and women: the hierarchy and the web (Carol Gilligan 1982, 46)

men women

Computational ReticenceRomantic reactions

• romantic reaction to computer as anthropomorphized ‘psychological being’ (with unlimited rationality similar to human mind)

• response of women to subjective computer is conflicted: the more they anthropomorphize the machine, the more they express anxiety about its dangers

Computational ReticenceReticence about formal systems

• women reject anthropomorphization of formal systems because they rupture the web of connectedness:

• ‘formal systems don’t bring people together’

• ‘formal systems allow for only one way of doing things’

• ‘there is either right or wrong and that’s it’

• these systems are regimented, they feel unfamiliar and threatening, provoking


• women develop reticence (hesitation) to interacting with formal systems


• solutions • create computer-rich environments, supported by

flexible and powerful programming languages

• encourage use of computers as expressive material

• provide venues for different forms of relating (technical and mathematical thinking as well as the process of creation, allowing computational objects to be experienced as tactile and physical)

gender preferences in the use of technology. lesson plan women in computing: computational reticence...

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