STEMinist sensibilities in the promotion of STEM and tech participation to women and girls

ABSTRACT

In recent years, organizations aiming to empower women and girls to participate in STEM have proliferated. While the issue of gender inequality in STEM is well documented, little is known about the feminist appeals these organizations make to girls. This study analyses the websites of five Australian ‘women in tech’ organizations to understand how they frame and respond to the problem of gender inequality, and what feminist sentiments they reflect. Combining a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, 2007) with Myers et al. (2019) concept of STEMinism, we propose a ‘STEMinist sensibility’ to interpret the ways in which gender issues and subjects are represented on STEM initiative websites. We identify four themes characterizing a STEMinist sensibility: 1) acknowledging the problem and promoting solutions to gender inequality, 2) a focus on tech girls as problem solvers, 3) cultivating community and connection for success, and 4) playing with girlification. We show how websites acknowledge the structural impediments women and girls face, yet simultaneously represent girls as both problematic and as problem-solvers in a way that renders them individually responsible for resolving the problems arising from gender inequality in their fields. These findings have implications for organizations promoting STEM initiatives to women and girls.

KEYWORDS:

• SDG5: gender equality
• STEM
• postfeminism

Introduction

The issue of low engagement and participation of girls and women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), and especially in tech, in Australia is well documented (Australian Academy of Science, 2019; Department of Industry, Science and Resources [DISR], 2023; Prinsley et al., 2016). In recent years, organizations and initiatives aiming to encourage young women and girls to participate in tech education and careers have proliferated. This study examines five Australian tech initiatives (Code Like a Girl, Girl Geek Academy, Girls in Tech, Robogals and Tech Girls Movement) to understand the ways that they appeal to girls and women through their websites. We ask: 1) how they frame the problem and solutions to gender inequality in STEM, and 2) given the ostensibly feminist nature of gender equity work, what feminist sentiments are reflected and operationalized within the appeals made via their websites? In doing so, we move beyond approaches that evaluate the effectiveness of STEM outreach programmes to address gender inequality (Bogue et al., 2013; McKinnon, 2020; Nash & Moore, 2021; Prieto-Rodriguez et al., 2020), rather, our study is concerned with how these organizations work, through their websites, to promote STEM to women and girls.

We briefly outline the context in which Australian gender equality in tech issues occurs and the conditions under which these organizations have arisen. We then consider the literature pertaining to gender-based STEM outreach initiatives and media representation of girls and women in STEM. Situating our work at the intersection of this scholarship, we introduce STEMinism (Myers et al., 2019) and a ‘postfeminist sensibility’ (Gill, 2007) as frameworks to analyse the organizational promotion of tech to women and girls. We develop the concept of a ‘STEMinist sensibility’ to understand the characteristic features of organizational websites promoting tech initiatives to women and girls and to critically interrogate the operations of this sensibility to appeal to women audiences. In doing so, we highlight the need to understand women in STEM initiatives in relation to the complexities and contradictions of postfeminist ideas about empowerment and choice. We find that while acknowledging the structural obstacles to equitable participation in tech, messaging emphasizes girlfriendliness, community and femininity to conflate friendship with feminist collective action. This messaging is distinctive of the STEMinist sensibility in its deployment of girlfriendly representations to recruit girls to tech, which function to obscure the underlying individualistic ethos of organizational websites and leave structural constraints to participation unresolved.

Girls and tech

In Australia, 48% of girls in secondary school take up STEM subjects, compared with 76% of girls in China and 69% in India (Australian Academy of Science, 2019; DISR, 2023). Girls are even more acutely under-represented compared to boys in information and communication technology (ICT), physics and engineering subjects by their final year of secondary schooling (DISR, 2023). At the tertiary level, this disparity deepens with women constituting 20% of computer science and engineering enrolments (Australian Academy of Science, 2019; DISR 2023). Similar issues of under-representation have been documented in the UK, USA, Canada, the EU and Japan (Department of Education, (UK), 2020; OECD Gender Initiative, 2022; UNESCO, 2017). In response, scholarly research has focused on investigating girls’ lack of engagement in STEM. Research from multiple disciplines, including gender studies, sociology and education, shows that entrenched cultural notions of STEM as a men’s domain negatively impact girls’ exposure and aspirations to careers in STEM fields (Brotman & Moore, 2008; Prinsley et al., 2016). Issues of identity, confidence, parental and classroom bias, unsuitable curriculum and pedagogical approaches alongside perceptions of the nature and culture of STEM disciplines endure (Ceci et al., 2009; Dasgupta & Stout, 2014; Mostafa, 2019). Considerable research has focused on the ‘leaky pipeline’ and women and girls’ experiences of bias, unwelcoming environments, discrimination, inequality and structural disparities within STEM workplaces and education, the situation being more acute for women of colour (Blackburn, 2017; Bystydzienski & Bird, 2006; Dasgupta & Stout, 2014; Sassler et al., 2017). Others highlight how pervasive ideologies of neutrality, meritocracy and individualism within STEM disciplines constrain engagement (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010; Heybach & Pickup, 2017). These studies identify the socio-structural factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in STEM yet tell us little about how STEM initiatives respond to these problems.

Initiatives like the ones examined in this paper, position themselves as an intervention to these problems with the aim of engaging more girls and women in tech education and careers. Outreach initiatives are important because engagement and recruitment practices can impact the likelihood of girls and women taking up subjects like computing (Margolis & Fisher, 2003). Feminist organizational scholars have argued that institutions are gendered (Acker, 1990) and, as such, it is imperative for feminist critique not only to consider why women and girls are excluded but also to examine the extent to which organizational structure and character contribute to, or work to counteract, that exclusion. The perceptions of the causes of inequality that are endorsed or entrenched within an organization’s culture shape their strategic responses and how they may alleviate or reinforce those disparities (Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010; Fox et al., 2011). We therefore suggest that the current literature can be extended by examining the organizational framing of the problems and solutions to gender inequality in tech. In exploring the websites of women in tech initiatives, this paper contributes an understanding of how representations of the problems and solutions of gender inequality in STEM are informed by and produce postfeminist and popular feminist sentiments.

The focus on recruiting women and girls into tech occurs within a cultural context where technology industries are considered ‘the most important fields both of human development and social mobility right now’ and are increasingly centres of power (Penny, 2014); where the media promotes outreach programmes as a solution to gender inequality in computer science fields (Mauk et al., 2020); and where popular feminism demands efforts to include girls and women in these industries, indicating an alignment with broader neoliberal concerns with expanding markets (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Girls, Anita Harris (2004) argues, are considered best placed to activate these new possibilities, resources and opportunities within the risky contemporary and future economy. These ‘future girls’ are the cohort tech outreach organizations are appealing to. It is these appeals that we hope to better understand.

Visualizing tech girls

Another relevant body of the literature considers the mediated representation of women in STEM as role models (Steinke & Tavarez, 2017), news reporting about women and girls in tech programmes (Mauk et al., 2020), and online marketing of tech toys for girls (Blosser, 2021). Collectively, they highlight the reinforcement of gender norms in media depictions of girls’ advancements in STEM. For instance, Blosser (2021), in their examination of a YouTube video series promoting a toy aimed at engaging girls in engineering, found that while the videos challenge some stereotypes, they also produce classed and gendered expectations. These include performing femininity with an emphasis on fun and happiness and associating girls’ participation in engineering with traditionally feminine pursuits like crafting, cooking and fashion. Blosser argues that by presenting girls in engineering this way, the Goldiblocks campaign ignores the diversity of girls’ interests, reinforces gendered notions that women in engineering are creative rather than analytical and produces unrealistic expectations of what engineering is actually like, obscuring the reality of structural issues girls may face.

Some attention has been paid to how outreach organizations portray STEM to women and girls, with research critiquing strategies of feminization or ‘pink-washing’ – the use of pink and pretty images and effects to make STEM appealing to girls (Blosser, 2021; Cech & Blair-Loy, 2010; Fox et al., 2011; Heybach & Pickup, 2017; Mauk et al., 2020; Myers et al., 2019). It has been noted that a pink-washing approach does not necessarily work, with some women expressing a dislike for these tactics that stereotype girls, describing them as ‘unnecessary’ and suggesting that they reinforce gender differences in STEM (Myers et al., 2019, p. 666). Notably, Banet-Weiser (2018), in her examination of US ‘women in tech’ programmes, observes that these initiatives aim to challenge disparities in STEM, yet ‘maintain a commitment to dominant gender norms’ (p. 133). To date, while much of the research on visual portrayals of women in STEM centres on the reinforcement of gender norms, less attention has been paid to the complex and contradictory framing of women and girls as the solution to the gender crisis in tech. Our analysis extends the feminist media research described above by paying attention to the framing of girls and women in organizational responses to gender inequality in tech. It also builds on the aforementioned studies of media portrayals of women in STEM that concentrate on popular film, television and advertising, by shifting the focus to organizational websites.

A STEMinist sensibility

For the basis of our framework, we propose the neologism of a ‘STEMinist sensibility’ that brings together STEMinism, as a ‘STEM-specific-feminism’ (Myers et al., p. 649), and a ‘postfeminist sensibility’ (Gill, 2007) to understand how organizational websites operationalize feminist sentiments in their appeal to girls. What we call a ‘STEMinist sensibility’ seeks to account for the individualistic focus on solutions to gender inequality in STEM, as well as the uptake of this emergent form of feminism within a broader mediated ‘sensibility’ or cultural ideology labelled ‘postfeminist’ (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2004).

The STEM organizations in this study and the representations they make about empowerment and femininity have emerged under cultural conditions that critical feminist scholars designate as postfeminist. Angela McRobbie (2004, p. 255) describes postfeminism as a milieu wherein the previous gains of feminist activism are turned upon themselves to assert that gender equality has been ostensibly achieved and that continuing feminist action is no longer necessary. Expanding on this idea Rosalind Gill (2007) suggests postfeminism is best characterized as a ‘sensibility’ or set of complex and contradictory ideas about gender and femininity that circulate in popular media culture. The postfeminist sensibility is comprised of several themes that include: femininity as a bodily property; a shift from objectification to subjectification; an emphasis on discipline, self-surveillance and monitoring; the foregrounding of individualism, empowerment and choice; the pervasiveness of the makeover paradigm; a revival around notions of natural sexual difference; the sexualization of culture; and a focus on consumerism and the commodification of difference (Gill, 2007). These characteristics and their affective qualities encourage the production of an ‘individualized female’ who is subject to prevailing neoliberal discourses characterized by personal choice and self-improvement that can be disciplining, constraining and produce new forms of injustice (Gill, 2007; Harris, 2004; Kanai, 2017; McRobbie, 2004; Winch, 2013).

Myers et al. (2019) describe ‘STEMinism’ as an individualistic approach to gender inequality in STEM fields that requires women to identify and fix the problems of under-representation and participation themselves. Drawing from interviews with women and men undergraduate STEM students of diverse backgrounds, Myers et al. (2019) argue that STEMinism is informed by feminist strategies to raise awareness about gender disparities in STEM fields, while also influenced by the social values and cultural context of STEM fields that promote individualism and reward merit. Through these dual influences students developed an awareness of structural inequalities in STEM and yet understood solutions to the problem as requiring individual action, and therefore ‘resisted naming sexism and racism as problems’ and ‘interrogating and removing structural barriers to success’ (p. 657). We find Myers et al. (2019) concept of STEMinism useful as we note outreach organizations’ websites reflect STEMinist sentiments; however, we build on it here by situating it alongside critiques of postfeminist media representations within the broader postfeminist media culture in which they are located.

Bringing together STEMinism and the notions around popular feminism and post-feminist sensibilities helps us to understand the messages tech organizational websites make to and about girls, and how they align with STEM values and the feminist cultural milieu. It is at this intersection that we propose a STEMinist sensibility manifests. Constituted by four themes detailed below, a STEMinist sensibility shows the mechanisms by which organizations acknowledge the structural impediments young women and girls face, while simultaneously representing girls as both problematic and as problem-solvers in a way that renders them individually responsible for resolving the issues of gender inequality in STEM.

Methods

Five organizations were selected for this study according to the following criteria: 1) provide initiatives for women and girls; 2) explicitly aim to improve women and girls’ participation or representation in tech; 3) focus on coding and related technology fields as these sectors are considered essential to future workplaces and economies (DISR, 2023); and 4) operate within Australia. Using The Australian Academy of Science’s Women in STEM Decadal Plan appendix ‘Mapping Australian STEM participation initiatives for girls and women’ (2019) catalogue of initiatives as a starting point, we eliminated organizations that patently did not fit the selection criteria (those focused fields like marine or agricultural science rather than technology for example), reducing the list to 24 potential candidates. These were reviewed in more detail and four organizations were identified as meeting the abovementioned criteria, with another included that was previously known to the researchers. Code Like a Girl provides educational coding courses, workshops and events to grow the number of women who use and build tech. Girl Geek Academy offers gaming workshops, hackathons and coding courses and publishes a book series for girls to ‘inspire and encourage their inner geek’. Girls in Tech delivers mentorship, training and networking events that promote diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Robogals is a student-run organization that promotes engineering and technology careers to girls by providing free robotics coding events. The Tech Girls Movement runs STEM design challenges and an entrepreneurship development programme to encourage school-aged girls into STEM.

Websites are the key data source for this research because they are a primary means of communicating information about organizational aims and programmes for women and girls, their parents and teachers, and potential organization sponsors or partners and are a site where little research has been conducted. As ‘unique expressions of contemporary culture’, websites are a productive source of data about ‘contemporary ways of doing and thinking’ (Pauwels, 2012, p. 247), simultaneously reflecting and shaping norms (Reinharz, 1992). Pauwels (2012) multimodal framework was applied to analyse various elements of organization websites to identify significant themes situated within their form and content. This method aims to account for the ‘hybrid’ multimodal aspects of websites as a medium, including the visual, auditory and textual (Pauwels, 2012). Data collection involved: 1) taking screenshots of all web pages – a total of 95 individual web pages across the five websites; 2) following Pauwel’s framework, closely reading each website, noting initial reactions and thoughts, followed by a more structured examination of the content and formal aspects of the websites’ features such as navigation, content categories and products, stylistic and typographic features, compositional aspects of the sites such as layout, branding and colour choices. We collected 119 visual elements (photographs, icons and graphics), which were reviewed following Rose’s (2001) criteria for critical visual analysis, which considers the significance of the visual within the website medium. Functional elements of the website that solicit actions (e.g. ‘join’ or ‘learn more’ buttons) or that direct users to external links (e.g. job boards, videos, partner websites) were noted. Some web pages were updated or removed during the research due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those most affected were around events cancelled, postponed or migrated online. One site, Girls in Tech, did a significant rebranding of their website during this period which has been accounted for within the analysis. Inevitably, changes have since been made to these sites over time; however, a recent review of the web pages indicates that the findings identified within this research remain relevant.

Using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) procedure, we conducted a thematic analysis of the image and text data gathered from the multimodal analysis of the websites to identify significant patterns, similarities and differences within and amongst the organizations’ websites. These were developed into a set of codes to describe elements of those patterns. For example, text references to a lack of capacity, confidence, capability or knowledge were coded as ‘women/girls as problematic’ and those referring to solving the world’s problems and developing problem-solving skills were coded as ‘girls as problem-solvers’. These were then organized into broader themes and sub-themes, including the tech girl as problematic-problem-solver, community, girlfriendliness and femininity. As researchers, we acknowledge that we are active participants in identifying and interpreting significant themes and are mindful of our own perspectives, pre-existing notions and positionalities. Neither author is a woman in STEM, our interest emerges from our curiosity and commitment for examining issues of gender equality and feminist practices within social institutions. Themes were organized and annotated in line with the research questions and interpreted through a feminist critique of STEMinist and postfeminist discourses. Through this process, we developed four themes constituting a STEMinist sensibility:

1. Acknowledging the problem and promoting solutions to gender inequality in STEM;

2. A focus on tech girls as problem solvers;

3. Cultivating community and connection for success;

4. Playing with girlification.

We critically discuss these themes in the findings below.

Findings

Acknowledging the problem and promoting solutions to gender inequality in STEM

Reflecting the first theme of the STEMinist sensibility, each organization makes explicit statements about the problems of and solutions to gender inequality in STEM on their websites. For example, Robogals (n.d) detail gender disparity through statistics showing women’s low participation rates, while Girl Geek Academy (2020) describes the ‘leaky pipeline’ problem and gender stereotyping that limits girls’ career choices and aspirations. These inclusions, typically located under the ‘About’ tab, demonstrate an organizational awareness of the structural problems of gender inequality in tech. However, these descriptions of the problem are secondary to the promotion of solutions, which take centre stage on the homepage. For instance, Code Like a Girl (2020) proclaims in bold lettering ‘WE EMPOWER AND ENABLE WOMEN AND GIRLS TO BE EQUAL CREATORS IN BUILDING THE FUTURE’, accompanied by a gif of a smiling girl pointing at her branded ‘code like a girl’ t-shirt. The conspicuous message being promoted is that building the capacity of individual girls is the solution to the structural constraints the programmes identify. Through language and positioning, organizational websites take the focus away from the structure and place it on the individual girls who lack empowerment or skills.

Since the 1990s, a discourse of ‘girls in crisis’ has emerged in Western media and culture, concerned with girls’ diminished self-esteem and confidence, particularly in connection with girls’ lack of engagement and participation in STEM fields (Banet-Weiser, 2015; Harris, 2004). This persists in how Women in STEM outreach organizations describe the problem of gender inequality in tech on their websites. For example, The Code like a Girl (2020) homepage states that they provide girls with ‘confidence, tools, knowledge and support to enter, and flourish, in the world of coding’. Robogals (n.d.) ‘aims to inspire and empower young women to consider studying engineering and related fields’. They run workshops for girls ‘who lack confidence in STEM’, who don’t think they will like it or be good at it ‘because they are girls’ so that they ‘will feel more comfortable speaking out, taking the lead, and exploring their interests’ (Robogals n.d). By framing their programmes in these terms, organizations establish the hurdles to gender inequality in STEM as residing within girls themselves – personal qualities they lack, namely confidence, inspiration, capacity and skills. Framing girls and young women in terms of what they lack constructs them as problematic and in need of empowerment, intervention and self-improvement (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Having reframed the problem as being one the of girls’ personal deficiencies, organizations are well positioned to sell individual development and attitude change as the solution to gender disparities in STEM. The organizational websites imply that through participation in their programmes, girls can ‘make-over’ their limiting attitudes and aim to ‘better themselves’. In doing so they also position girls and young women as the solution to the problem of gender inequality in STEM and tech. However, girls can only be the solution should they cultivate a particular ‘can-do’ subjectivity (Harris, 2004) – that of the problem-solving, entrepreneurial, tech girl.

A focus on tech girls as problem solvers

Websites encourage a can-do subjectivity by positioning women and girls as problem solvers – a key feature of the STEMinist sensibility. Code Like a Girl (2020) promotes their ‘Python Primer’ course as ‘great for the creative problem-solver’. Similarly, Tech Girls Movement’s ‘Entrepreneurship for a Day’ programme invites girls to ‘become a champion in your organisation through developing innovative solutions to everyday problems’ (Tech Girls Movement n.d). Likewise, the web page for Girl Geek Academy’s (2020) school holiday programme states ‘Inspiring the next generation of girls to solve problems with artificial intelligence’. These programmes suggest that the development of individual skills and knowledge (through coding camps and workshops) is sufficient to overcome obstacles to equality in tech fields and positions women and girls as responsible for solving the future problems of society as well as gender inequality in tech.

Relatedly, the websites appeal to girls as problem-solving can-do subjects by rebranding tech workers as entrepreneurial and creative social actors. Aspiring computer programmers are called ‘coders’, ‘designers’ or ‘hackers’; business and salespeople are referred to as ‘start-ups’, ‘hustlers’, or ‘disruptors’; engineers become ‘makers’, builders’, ‘dreamers’ and ‘tinkerers’. The words science, computer programmer/programming, software developer and technologist are infrequent, except for Robogals, which refers to engineers and engineering. Accompanying images, like Girl Geek Academy’s (2020) #shemakes web page, reframe tech as creative, crafty and fun to appeal to girls and young women (Blosser, 2021). Using non-technical terms implies that tech isn’t for girls and needs to be reframed to accommodate to them. Code like a Girl’s adult programmes promise to ‘demystify the magic’ of coding as if, for women, technology is something they are unable to understand unless it is revealed to them. This reinforces stereotypes about girls being non-technical and essentialist differences between girl geeks who are constructed as human-centred, creative and collaborative, and tech bros who are technical computer nerds (Banet-Weiser, 2018, pp. 137–138). Moreover, young women and girls are encouraged to be ‘hustlers’ or ‘disruptors’, constantly adapting and innovating to be successful, placing the onus once again on women and girls and their problem-solving abilities to find a way into tech, rather than STEM institutions addressing gender bias and discrimination in hiring, promotion, pay, workplace policies and cultures.

Helping to secure the idea that the problem and solution lies with the individual, is an absence of collective redress to the issue of women and girl’s underrepresentation in STEM. Notably, the word ‘feminism’ does not appear on any of the websites, despite the problem being expressed in terms of feminist principles of equality and empowerment. The rejection of collective feminist action in favour of individual development is characteristic of a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, 2007) and of a popular feminism that recognizes the gendered injuries women experience in sexist societies, but marshals entrepreneurialism and feminine capacity as a response to these injuries (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Harris (2004) suggests that young women and girls have become a target for organizations that offer confidence-building, skill development and empowerment as part of a feminist-capitalist package. The concurrent framing of girls as ‘in crisis’ (and in need of empowerment) and as problem-solving ‘can-do’ consumers of these programmes underpins what Banet-Weiser (2018, p. 47) refers to as the ‘market for empowerment’. This includes both external mechanisms of empowerment, such as coding programmes, and the mandate for young women and girls to empower themselves, thereby constructing the choiceful, entrepreneurial identity as the ideal to strive for. Within a STEMinist sensibility, problem-solving girls are positioned as being able to enjoy new opportunities and make choices, especially with regard to education and employment, that will result in their success in tech. Yet this construction of women and girls pays limited attention to the ways in which those choices are embedded or constrained within raced and classed socio-cultural conditions (Budgeon, 2015; Harris, 2004). It is well documented that women and girls from working-class and some ethnic minority backgrounds remain particularly poorly represented in STEM, many feeling that STEM is not ‘for them’ (Brotman & Moore, 2008; Godec, 2018). On these websites, all girls, irrespective of the varied intersectional marginalizations they experience, are subject to the same discourse that refigures risks as opportunities for self-made success through adaptability and good choices, thereby erasing differences in class through an assumption of sameness (Harris, 2004).

Where class difference is made all but invisible on these websites, the same cannot be said for race and ethnicity, where a more complicated picture emerges. Images on the Code Like a Girl and Girl Geek Academy websites depict mostly white girls and women. They are either shown as cool and edgy, wearing trendy clothes, or as professional and serious in white shirts and black jackets that are the sartorial workwear choice for businesswomen. These images undermine their claims to inclusion and reinforce the idea that tech and STEM are ‘for’ middle-class white women. In contrast, Robogals’ images show a racially diverse mix of women. This is encouraging, particularly as these are photos of actual participants and engineering students.

Girls in Tech, in line with their recent rebranding ‘evolution’, take a different approach. They state on their homepage ‘Tech has a new look. Including every perspective’ and that ‘diverse backgrounds and views help us build a stronger community’ (Girls in Tech, 2020). This is visually reinforced by a curated mosaic of stock photos of racially, ethnically and culturally diverse women, making a bold statement about inclusivity and implying an understanding of the intersectional nature of inequality faced by non-white women in tech. Heidi Mirza (2008), describes this as a ‘paradox’ where women of colour are invisible at levels of power yet they are highly visible where a claim or call to diversity exists. Although Girls in Tech’s intention is to advocate for more diversity in tech, when ‘brown faces’ are used to help institutions achieve their ethical goals and appeal to a wider market, particularly through the ‘chocolate box’ presentation of diverse women apparent on their website, women risk being appropriated, objectified and commercialized (Mirza, 2008).

Cultivating community and connection for success

Alongside appeals to build girls’ confidence and capacity as tech actors, are images of cooperative groups of women and girls. A sense of girlfriendly community is a dominant motif in the STEMinist sensibility that organizations cultivate on their websites. Community networking events are a key service offered by these organizations, and presenting themselves as a welcoming and supportive girl-friendly environment is a strategy used to appeal to women and girls. The prominent and regular promotion of these events on the website homepages with links to ‘register now’ send a forceful message to women that to succeed in STEM they are required to ‘sign up’ and be sociable, devote unpaid time and labour (or even paying for the privilege) to building communities of support and safety rather than STEM organizations reforming sexist and discriminatory practices that make STEM environments hostile to women. On these websites, collaboration among all-girl networks is presented as a safe alternative to the otherwise unwelcoming tech ‘boys club’ (Sassler et al., 2017). This is achieved by portraying groups of girls working together around a computer or similar technology, posing for group photos, interacting with each other or listening intently to a teacher. Girls are shown smiling, laughing and having fun, portrayed huddled together or arm-in-arm, and cheering with their fists raised. Such imagery works to generate sentiments of mutual support, collegiality and solidarity, despite organizational offerings being geared towards individual programme participation. The text accompanying these images further reinforces the presentation of these organizations as communities of like-minded, supportive and fun-loving gal-pals. The Code Like a Girl ‘About’ section explains that the organization was founded as a way ‘to form strong connections and female friendships’ and ‘focuses on making tech accessible, inclusive, open and, most importantly, fun’, while Girl Geek Academy (2020) promotes their programmes for girls under the slogan ‘make new friends and learn to build the internet’.

The prominence of the theme of community and girlfriendliness is characteristic of the representations these outreach organizations make. Alison Winch (2013) identifies girlfriendliness as a popular trope articulated through images of solidarity and support among women and girls. Girlfriendliness is deployed as a marketing strategy that constructs organizations as spaces of sociality and solidarity in order to strengthen women’s position against the gender power imbalances in tech through the pooling of resources, networking and the creation of new business opportunities. However, while strategic sisterhood claims to empower women through agency and individual choice, it engenders relationships between women and organizational brands rather than with each other (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Winch, 2013). Furthermore, by conflating girlfriendless with the feminist notion of being supportive of all women, the websites imply that these ‘sisterly’ relationships are free from conflict or tension (Kanai, 2017). The construction of a supportive tech girl community obscures the reality that these women and girls must compete for jobs and promotions within STEM and places an additional burden on them to work on their girlfriendliness and does little to make tech environments outside of these organizations more welcoming or supportive to women.

Feminist scholars of postfeminist media (Kanai, 2017; Winch, 2013) suggest that a girlfriendly emphasis on sociality does not replace the focus on individual self-improvement but reconfigures it as a new form of ‘capacity’ whereby women and girls are subject to the imperative to be relatable, supportive and collaborative. This constitutes a form of ‘tightrope labour’ - a term usually used to describe the invisible work women perform to manage and navigate working relationships with men (Webber & Giuffre, 2023, pp. 534–535), and this work of ‘accommodation and assimilation’ likewise applies to developing girlfriendliness. To be included within the girlfriendly community, the ‘can-do’ tech girl is required to demonstrate a commitment to cultivating the ‘right’ kind of social skills and emotional intelligence to successfully negotiate her journey towards a tech career. For example, Girl Geek Academy (2020) promotes their #SheHacks programme as an opportunity to:

make new friends and build a startup together … You will meet people who may become your cofounders. You will be in a room full of people with the right skills to build a company, as we bring together some of the best hackers, hustlers and hipsters … You don’t have to be technical, but you do have to want to be awesome.

Where a postfeminist sensibility in contemporary advertising encourages girls to transform their bodies with the help of cool and fun expert girlfriends (Winch, 2013) and consumer products (Gill, 2007), a STEMinist sensibility invites the tech girl to transform herself from problematic to entrepreneurial problem-solver through building networks and cultivating a sociable disposition.

The organizational websites’ emphasis on collaboration, sociality and creativity as desirable characteristics for the tech girl suggests that women and girls are valuable to these fields not for their coding skills or engineering knowledge, but for their dispositions and how they can effectively leverage these for career and business success (Chesky & Goldstein, 2018). This can be seen in the language used to promote Girls in Tech’s Personal Development Program, which claims to help young women ‘Build the soft skills you need to succeed – the ones that often go overlooked but are invaluable in the workplace. For example, ‘develop better communication and stronger leadership skills’ (Girls in Tech 2020.). Girl Geek Academy’s (2020) #SheMakesGames workshop sells ‘a mix of training in both hard, technical skills and the soft skills required to negotiate career success in the formative years of your early career’. Whereas men in tech are valorized for their technical skill, especially within computer science and coding, and the man geek’s complete lack of sociality is often considered normative (Margolis & Fisher, 2003), women and girls are expected to be creative, collaborative and technically skilled to be successful in tech careers.

Playing with girlification

The final characteristic of the STEMinist sensibility concerns the varied ways the websites mobilize girlification to market their brands and programmes. All of the organizations reference girls in their names. While this is appropriate for their younger audiences, the use of the word ‘girl’ to address grown women reflects what Gill (2007, p. 151) refers to as the ‘girlification of women’ which is prevalent in postfeminist media discourses and functions to undermine women’s skills, knowledge and authority. Code Like a Girl, Tech Girls Movement and Girl Geek Academy deploy a stylistic approach that simultaneously produces and unsettles an emphasis on girliness. Part of their marketing appeal involves feminized imagery and pink or purple branding. The most prolific application of this approach is on the Code Like a Girl website where the pale pink colour scheme is conspicuous on most pages, their logo, social media icons, some header text and menu navigation. This is accompanied by multiple ‘girly’ animations and graphics, like pink painted nails, blinking long-eyelashes, and heart and rainbow shapes. Similarly, Tech Girls Movement features a pink design, while Girl Geek Academy employs a purple and pastel colour theme featuring hearts and unicorns.

The association of pink with femininity in Western cultures is well established, with Koller (2008) identifying its gendering function within visual texts to attract an audience of women and girls. Alongside the use of pink to indicate the gendered nature of a product, she suggests that the less traditionally feminine that product is, the more pronounced that use of pink may become (Koller, 2008). Following this argument, pink colour schemes and cute icons on organizational websites function to peak girls’ interest in the tech programmes they offer counteract the idea that tech is masculine (Myers et al., 2019) and denote a girl-friendly environment. It has been suggested (Winch, 2013, p. 50) that the ‘spectacular pinkness’ of girlhood is not necessarily a return to essentialised femininity but the application of girlhood as an aspirational and optimistic consumer choice that, particularly within the context of a girlfriendly community, obscures the more demanding aspects of neoliberal, entrepreneurial subjecthood, such as that expected of the tech girl.

Where feminists once rejected pink along with patriarchal gendered stereotypes, in a postfeminist context, some women have reclaimed pink to assert their femininity and communicate fun, confidence and empowerment, thus distinguishing themselves from the stereotype of the unattractive feminist killjoy (Koller, 2008). On the websites, pink-washing and feminization are applied at times with a deliberate knowingness or irony, which is distinct from how pink-washing has been used in other STEM representations (Myers et al., 2019). The pink and ‘girly’ design at Code Like A Girl includes the flashing ‘girls girls girls’ animation on their homepage that evokes the neon signage associated with strip clubs. It uses this traditionally sexist reference to hail women rather than men to come and have a look, and what they’ll find is clever geek girls. The application of irony, Gill (2007) argues, is characteristic of postfeminist media culture wherein the referencing of sexist tropes becomes a way to suggest that sexism is in the past. Moreover, emphasizing girl power as fun and playful can downplay the complex skills and knowledge that women in tech acquire through training and require in STEM workplaces. For Code Like a Girl and the other STEMinist organizations, sexism is clearly still very much a problem of the present.

Research has shown that the use of pink and pretty images and effects does not necessarily influence girls’ choice to take up STEM subjects or careers (Archer et al., 2013) and that some young women express a dislike for these tactics, describing them as ‘unnecessary’ (Myers et al., 2019) and that pinkified, gendered marketing serves to reinforce gender differences (Fine & Rush, 2018). Notably, two organizations reject a pink-washing approach. Robogals does not feature pink or girly content on their website, adopting a black and blue design. During this research Girls in Tech updated their website branding from a hot pink theme to a blue and red colour scheme. They explain this pivot as being part of their ‘evolution’ (Girls in Tech 2020) towards a more mature focus promoting a diversity of women rather than just more women in tech (as discussed earlier). This change suggests an awareness of the problematic aspects of pink-washing.

Conclusion

The promotion of women in STEM initiatives as empowering, friendly and inclusive could be interpreted as a positive development for encouraging women and girls into STEM fields dominated by men. Our research troubles this view through an investigation of the websites of five Australian women in STEM organizations, which highlights that the framing and response to structural constraints governing women’s participation rely on postfeminist and popular feminist tropes of confidence building, networking and girlfriendliness. While this focus seems to confront perceptions of STEM and tech as individualist, unwelcoming and masculine (Chesky & Goldstein, 2018), positive messages of inclusion remain underpinned by the imperative for the tech girl to be good-humoured and supportive, innovative and entrepreneurial, as well as technically skilled in a way that men and boys are not. This messaging is pervasive in the websites we analysed and is enabled by a STEMinist sensibility that promotes girls’ capacity to improve and work on themselves as the solution to gender inequality in STEM. Furthermore, by mobilizing a girlfriendly vernacular of cute and hip icons, colour schemes and descriptors, they (re)produce a STEMinist sensibility premised on a friendly, acceptable and non-threatening feminism that makes few demands on industries to better accommodate women and girls.

The findings from this study have implications for organizations seeking to attract and retain women in STEM by demonstrating an urgent need for interventions that address, rather than simply acknowledge, the structural constraints and inequitable relations of power shaping girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM. To make tech more equitable, parental and teacher bias, discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, the gender pay gap, and policies relating to pregnancy, parenthood and caregiving need to be addressed. As Myers, Gallaher and McCarragher have noted, ‘STEMinism promotes empowerment without a power analysis’ (2019, p. 657). Although women in STEM outreach organizations help to raise awareness of gender disparity in STEM and aid recruitment of more girls and women into these fields, their STEMinist sensibility reinforces ideas of individualist meritocracy and does little to remove barriers to success.

This article adds to existing research exploring media portrayals of women in STEM by advocating for greater awareness of the pervasiveness of postfeminist sentiments in STEM outreach programmes. It does so by introducing a STEMinist sensibility as a conceptual construct to broaden our understanding of representations of women in STEM at the nexus of STEMinist and postfeminist sentiments. Additionally, it has sought to complement research that identifies the socio-structural factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in STEM by adding new understandings of how STEM organizations respond to these problems through their websites.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angela Bennette

Angela Bennette is a Sociology PhD candidate at Deakin University investigating gender equity initiatives in STEM in the Australian context.

Kim Toffoletti

Kim Toffoletti is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Australia. Her research is focused on two key areas: feminist studies of the media, and women’s sport, physical activity and wellbeing. Her work draws on critical postfeminist, transnational feminist and social media paradigms to advance the fields of sport sociology and feminist media theory.