“You Sound Like a Good Program Manager”: An Analysis of Gender in Women’s Computing Life Histories

Through the eyes of professional women in computing, we can better understand the impact of workplace structures, higher education pathways, and the particular closed nature of the tech industry. This study of women’s life histories contributes to the work of in-depth qualitative examinations of CS learning contexts and psychological studies investigating phenomena such stereotype threat which contextualize the experience of women in computing environments. Drawing inspiration from Margolis and Fisher’s work drawing the “blueprints” of the “boy’s clubhouse” of computing education [20], as well as McDermott and Webber’s analysis of when math learning occurs [22], we ask when, where, and how is gender being invoked and created, as a way to unpack the places, events, and interactions that shape women’s participation in the Silicon Valley workforce. This qualitative analysis of 13 life history interviews with professional women in computing shows that gender becomes salient for women in public settings, particularly in early adulthood when women enter male-dominated classrooms, teams, and workplaces that foster “brogramming” culture. CS educators, hiring managers, and recruiters all need to be aware that the effects of gender go beyond just including more women in classrooms and on teams. The learning environment, incentives for participation, and the goal of diversity all need to be better aligned in order to foster an equitable workforce

Gendered work culture in free/libre open source software development

This article adopts a feminist perspective to examine masculine work culture in the development of free/libre open source software. The authors draw on a case study of ‘the Heidi Bug’ discovered during the development of the Mozilla Firefox web browser to examine how 'gendered talk' was (en)-acted to facilitate 'bricolage' in an online work environment. Such gendered talks contain cultural references familiar to male developers. Though seemingly innocuous, such acts could be seen as a performance of gender that simply reflects the hegemonic heterosexual masculine culture manifested in online virtual work space. The virtual work space therefore can be exclusive to those who shared the cultural references. Although it may not necessarily be ignorance or insensitivity of male developers, a more gender-balanced, women-friendly and inclusive work place certainly would benefit from a more diverse environment. This paper highlights the gendered aspect of software development through examining the language use and mainstream 'bricolage' practice, and establishes a compelling ground for enlarging the talent pool to include more women and integrating gender ethics (e.g., raising awareness of sensitive languages and design approaches) into computer ethics education

Confronting Sexism in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM): What Are the Consequences?

Disparaging remarks that female scientists are ‘Distractingly Sexy’ (Waxman, 2015) and ‘Too Pretty to Do Math’ t-shirts (Amazon.com) highlight the common belief that women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) violate perceived gender norms. However, by confronting these beliefs, women may incur a ‘double-dose’ of hostility; once for being present in science, and again because of the confrontation itself (Kaiser & Miller, 2001). Across three studies, this research tested how women confronting sexism in STEM contexts would elicit and anticipate social costs. Study 1 showed that male participants rated a hypothetical female confronter in STEM higher in bossiness and stupidity than did female participants. Study 2 showed that female STEM majors who imagined themselves confronting (vs. ignoring) sexism in science anticipated being labelled as bossier, and perceived science as more difficult. Thus, across two studies, social and personal costs of confronting sexism were more strongly elicited and anticipated in STEM versus arts. Study 3 assessed how different sexism types and styles of confrontation influenced social and personal costs among women in STEM. As predicted, those who imagined confronting sexism with anger (vs. education, indirect, or a no confrontation control condition) anticipated the greatest social costs, while those who imagined confronting with education anticipated fewer costs than those imagining anger, but greater costs than those imagining an indirect response or inaction. Those imagining an indirect confrontation anticipated greater social costs than those who imagined ignoring sexism, but lower personal costs such as less STEM difficulty and greater STEM efficacy and identity. Findings suggest the complex nature of women’s responses to sexism, extending previous social costs literature into a scientific context

Confronting Sexism in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM): What Are the Consequences?

Disparaging remarks that female scientists are ‘Distractingly Sexy’ (Waxman, 2015) and ‘Too Pretty to Do Math’ t-shirts (Amazon.com) highlight the common belief that women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) violate perceived gender norms. However, by confronting these beliefs, women may incur a ‘double-dose’ of hostility; once for being present in science, and again because of the confrontation itself (Kaiser & Miller, 2001). Across three studies, this research tested how women confronting sexism in STEM contexts would elicit and anticipate social costs. Study 1 showed that male participants rated a hypothetical female confronter in STEM higher in bossiness and stupidity than did female participants. Study 2 showed that female STEM majors who imagined themselves confronting (vs. ignoring) sexism in science anticipated being labelled as bossier, and perceived science as more difficult. Thus, across two studies, social and personal costs of confronting sexism were more strongly elicited and anticipated in STEM versus arts. Study 3 assessed how different sexism types and styles of confrontation influenced social and personal costs among women in STEM. As predicted, those who imagined confronting sexism with anger (vs. education, indirect, or a no confrontation control condition) anticipated the greatest social costs, while those who imagined confronting with education anticipated fewer costs than those imagining anger, but greater costs than those imagining an indirect response or inaction. Those imagining an indirect confrontation anticipated greater social costs than those who imagined ignoring sexism, but lower personal costs such as less STEM difficulty and greater STEM efficacy and identity. Findings suggest the complex nature of women’s responses to sexism, extending previous social costs literature into a scientific context

An Autoethnography of T9hacks: "Designing a Welcoming Hackathon for Women and Non-Binary Students to Learn and Explore Computing"

Student hackathons are a type of demographic-specific event that are aimed at college students. Students may attend hackathons because they provide an opportunity for informal learning, networking, and building products for social change Hackathons are usually designed to give their participants opportunities to learn or expand their technical skill sets. During the process of building a project, participants learn about project management, task delegation, and the organization and production of a hack with a working demo within the limited time span. Hackathons are great at giving their participants informal and incidental learning opportunities. Participants may have different goals or motivations for attending a hackathon that can change how they participate in the event. Student hackathons have been growing in popularity over the last decade and are only becoming more popular as the computing field grows in size and demand. In the 2017-2018 school year, over 71,000 students in North America and Europe and over participated in a student hackathon. In 2017, every US university with a top-ranked computer science department hosted at least one student hackathon. However, despite their popularity with students, research about student hackathons is sparse and little work has been done studying student experiences at these events. There are also fewer women attending hackathons than men, on average, only 23\% of the participants are women. This dissertation is situated within the existing hackathon literature and complements the work showing hackathons as places of informal and situated learning.This dissertation focuses on the design of a women and non-binary hackathon, T9Hacks. I founded T9Hacks in the Fall of 2015 and, with a team of undergraduate students, we hosted our first hackathon event in late-February 2016. T9Hacks is open to all students, but specifically encourages women and non-binary students to attend through marketing, structure, and strategic use of competition. Our mission has always been to create a welcoming and safe environment where women and non-binary students can learn and explore with computing. I was drawn to autoethnography as a way to analyze, interpret, and attach meaning to the design of T9Hacks. Autoethnography is a form of self reflection on one's personal experiences within a cultural context to look deeper at social interactions. Articulating the design choices that the team and I made created a list of design principles and lessons learned (listed below) and can give insight into the inclusive practices of student hackathons. This autoethnography discusses the design of T9Hacks, a women and non-binary hackathon, in regards to its branding, design of competition, and structures that supported our participants. I discuss the name of the event, the graphic design, and the labels and the ideologies and values associated with those choices; how the nature, value of prizes, and framing of the contests were impactful to students; how the professional development and technical resources we provided to the students satisfied their personal goals for attending the event. These elements of the hackathon changed multiple times through the most change and give insight into the challenges our team faced when trying to design an inclusive and welcoming hackathon. The decisions the T9Hacks team was faced with can help inform other hackathon designs as well

Masculinity in two reddit men’s communities: Feminism is foul, privilege is precarious, and being beta is bad.

TL;DR Work, social lives, and leisure practices are increasingly digitally mediated, and as more and more of our interactions move online, we seek out platforms and communities where we can share ideas and interact with others. Social networking sites, forums, and other socially oriented digitally networked spaces have created opportunities for communities of shared interest to come together, permitting even the smallest of interest groups to feel as though they have a home and meeting place. One location where this kind of community formation happens readily is reddit.com, a website designed to aggregate content from users and other websites into interest-based collections. Users can join and follow communities about nearly any topic, and curate their experience to show only content that aligns with their beliefs, ideologies, or desires. Along with social groups like fan fiction writers or bird watchers, the ease of gathering and sharing ideas on social platforms like reddit has allowed other niche groups with anti-equity, far-right, and prejudicial views to find community as well. In the case of men’s advocacy and male supremacist groups, this has led to reddit communities in the online manosphere. The manosphere is a loose collection of anti-feminist groups that share a focus on aspects of men’s rights, Western gender traditionalist, or male supremacist ideology. As a set, manosphere group ideologies are less of a continuum from mundane to militant, but rather like a loose collection of affiliated groups. Each manosphere group carries its own understandings about men and masculinities, and these are reflected in the ways these groups welcome (or do not welcome) men representing different versions of masculinity, and accept them as group members and/or as men. With a complicated history, growing numbers, and in some cases feminist roots, the manosphere and its popular constituent groups require examination. The purpose of this research was to explore the discourses of masculinity in two different sub-groups of the manosphere, to compare them, and gain insight into how those discourses influence community ideology. Using digital ethnographic methods, this research examines the discourses of masculinity in the /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill sub-communities of the website reddit.com this research engages the following research questions: What discourses of masculinity are embedded in the reddit manosphere spaces of /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, how do they compare, and how are these discourses disseminated and monitored to maintain collective group ideologies? And What role might reddit play, through /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, in connecting manosphere communities, and pushing users toward more radical viewpoints about gender and power? The ongoing act of conducting this research in a digital setting also generated a third question: What indicators or guideposts would have been useful as a novice digital qualitative researcher to help me better plan, develop, conduct, and theorise my digital ethnographic research? The introductory chapters introduce the area of study, reddit, and the men’s rights movement, as well as share the theoretical perspectives and methodological approach that frame the project. These chapters are followed by three manuscripts that present empirical refractions based on my research, as well as the development of a digital ethnographic theory-method. The first manuscript chapter, “Entitled to everything responsible for nothing:” Gendered Discourses of Antifeminism, Biological Determinism, and Violence in Reddit’s Manosphere, explores how the three mainstays of antifeminism, biological determinism, and violence provide covert and overt support for men’s rights and supremacist rhetorics on reddit. In this chapter I examine how these discourses are gendered to contrast ‘natural’ male superiority with the perception of male subordination in a feminist society. The second manuscript, “A Positive Identity for Men”? Pathways to far-right participation through /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill, positions reddit’s affordances as important contributors to community proliferation. Using the shared ideological commitment to gendered traditionalism of these two reddit communities, and Francisco Bobbio’s (1996) explication of the left-right political spectrum, this manuscript positions /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill as far-right communities. Touching on the hard and soft misogyny of these communities as entry points into ideological pipelines, it locates reddit as a perpetuating force for far-right conversion and progression. The third manuscript is a refraction of my methodological struggles in collection of empirical materials, and the theoretical development of a way to think through the complexity of doing research in digitally mediated contexts. Application of a Digital Ethnographic Assemblage Theory-Method – the Research Technoassemblage explores the challenges of using ethnographic methods in online-only communities and the messy intersections of technological systems, people behind the users, the person behind the researcher, and our (presumed) willful ignorance of that complexity. It concludes with a call for research that recognizes and better addresses the need to see and understand these complexities in all research with digitally mediated components. I conclude with a reflection on where to go from here, stepping forward with this research into continued exploration of digital complexity and how it affects gender, masculinities, and men’s rights groups. The final chapter brings together the introductory chapters and manuscripts, and reviews their contributions to the study of men’s rights, far-right, and manosphere communities, as well as leisure and leisure research. It re-situates the importance of studying contentious groups like those studied here, and re-positions me as a researcher relative to the groups that I study. It concludes with reflections for leisure researchers to consider, as well as avenues for future inquiry that were illuminated by the findings from this study, including: the need for more Canadian-focused study of manosphere and far-right groups; the need to better study and map masculinities within the manosphere; the need to interrogate and work with empathy as a researcher of contentious worldviews; and a call to be more thorough and considered when conducting research in and on online communities