Disciplinary Discourses: A case study of gender in information technology and design courses

Abstract

The article considers the ways in which gender continues to influence the pattern of recruitment onto both information technology (IT) and design courses. Fewer women are attracted to product and industrial design, and there has been a decline in the proportion of women on IT courses. While there has been work that has looked at gender inequalities in single discipline areas, little work has looked across subjects. We propose a theoretical reformulation away from an equal opportunities approach which identifies women as the 'problem. The article attempts to characterise the discourses of design and computing, and in particular, gendered notions of technology. We report on data from a small-scale case study in one higher education institution where new students were interviewed about their choices of course. These data provided rich descriptions of how both male and female students viewed both design and IT. There was a widespread commitment to individual creativity on the part of both women and men in design, while computing was not experienced in this way. On both courses it was clear that technical competency was still defined in highly gendered terms. In design the hammer and the workshop are still experienced by women as naturalised male tools and spaces. Computing space and skills are also gendered. Our interviews suggest that instrumental reasons for choosing courses are balanced by intrinsic satisfaction, but that pleasure was more to the fore in design. We conclude by arguing that both design and IT are gendered discourses, and that a case study approach can provide insights into the ways these discourses are perceived.