cartography of gender equality projects in ict: liberal equality from the perspective of situated...

This article was downloaded by: [Memorial University of Newfoundland]On: 09 October 2014, At: 12:34Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Information, Communication &SocietyPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20

CARTOGRAPHY OF GENDEREQUALITY PROJECTS IN ICT:Liberal equality from theperspective of situated equalityMarja Vehviläinen a & Kristiina Brunila ba Department of Women's Studies , University ofTampere , 33014, Finland E-mail:b Department of Education , University of Helsinki , c/o Teollisuuskatu 23, 00014, Finland E-mail:Published online: 21 Jun 2007.

To cite this article: Marja Vehviläinen & Kristiina Brunila (2007) CARTOGRAPHYOF GENDER EQUALITY PROJECTS IN ICT: Liberal equality from the perspectiveof situated equality, Information, Communication & Society, 10:3, 384-403, DOI:10.1080/13691180701410067

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691180701410067

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressedin this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content shouldnot be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/13691180701410067

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691180701410067

whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connectionwith, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Marja Vehvilainen & Kristiina

Brunila

CARTOGRAPHY OF GENDER

EQUALITY PROJECTS IN ICT

Liberal equality from the perspective of

situated equality

This paper examines gender equality activities in the context of information andcommunication technology (ICT), traces the social and cultural relations thatintertwine with them and discusses the understandings of gender, equality andICT maintained in them. The aim of the paper is to analyse how liberalequal treatment actions prevail in ICT, although it is well known that liberalpolitics alone do not succeed in promoting gender equality, and not even in ful-filling its own goal of raising the proportions of women in technology. The studyis based on oral history interviews with 30 women who have committed importantparts of their lives to gender equality activities through several decades, as wellas follow-up studies of women’s ICT groups that aimed to promote equality inICT expertise, both of these studies being conducted in Finland. The interviewedgender equality workers are competent promoters of gender and equality.However, they need to negotiate their aims, for example, in order to getfunding, within national and transnational institutional practices, with actorswho have little knowledge regarding the social construction of gender, equalityor ICT. The managerial terms ‘efficiency’ and ‘good practice’ then take over theunderstandings of the gender equality activities in ICT, mainly organized as pro-jects, and further emphasize the measurable goals often linked to liberal genderequality actions. These terms have material consequences and while gender equal-ity projects continue to provide possibilities for unexpected changes, they arelocked within liberal politics.

Keywords Gender equality; gender and ICT; gender equalityprojects; understandings of equality; liberal equality; situated equality

Information, Communication & Society Vol. 10, No. 3, June 2007, pp. 384–403

ISSN 1369-118X print/ISSN 1468-4462 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13691180701410067

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

Introduction

Information and communication technology (ICT), including both its use anddevelopment, has been one of the important targets of gender equality pro-jects in Finland and in many other European countries in the 1990s and2000s. The number of women in science and technology has generally beenrelatively low (She Figures 2006), and the European Union has directedresources to the research and development of gender equality in scienceand technology during this same period. Gender in information and communi-cation technology has been studied and gender equality in ICT has been devel-oped in several comparative projects, as ICT professions persistently haveparticularly low numbers of women (e.g. Webster 2005; JIVE 2006; SIGIS2006; WomenIT 2006). Although both women and men use ICT inWestern countries, ICT sustains cultures and expertise commonly regardedas masculine (Margolis & Ficher 2002; Vehvilainen 2005a).

The consequences of policies and actions for gender equality have beenwidely discussed both in research communities and among people promotinggender equality in Europe and in the United States (e.g. Etzkowitz et al. 2000,Wyatt et al. 2000; Rees 2001; Lagesen 2003). Sustainable improvements inwomen’s position in science and technology are achieved only throughchanges in institutional and organizational practices. The Helsinki group onwomen and science, established by the European Commission in 1999,makes a clear statement that the problem in ‘leaky pipelines’ in scienceand technology is in the ‘pipelines’ and not in the women who are supposedto proceed through the career pipeline. Actions related to individuals orgroups of women tend to have only a limited impact on improvingwomen’s position in science and technology.

Gender equality activities in ICT have still in the 2000s, however,focused on women individually and women’s groups (Brunila 2005). Finnishsociety, the context of our research, as part of both the European andNordic welfare regimes, has undergone major institutional development ingender equality, including gender equality laws, equality plans in workplacesand quotas in public decision-making bodies. There has been knowledge,competence and means to promote institutional changes in gender equality(Holli & Kantola 2007). In this setting, it is curious that ICT, which holdsa major economic role and shows a persistent male bias, differs significantlyfrom the general societal development. Gender equality actions in ICThave mainly been organized as gender equality projects addressing individualwomen, even though these projects have not succeeded in significantlyincreasing the proportion of women in ICT education or professions.Finnish society has recently been presented as a (model) laboratory of aninformation society, partially because of its equality (Castells & Himanen2002). This paper continues the analysis by examining the relationship

G E N D E R E Q U A L I T Y P R O J E C T S I N I C T 3 8 5

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

between gender equality activities and the patterns in gender and ICT. Tech-nology and ICT in particular seem to require special attention as a question ofgender equality and, vice versa, gender has to be taken as part of the agendawithin ICT equality.

This article examines how gender equality activities in ICT continue toact on individual women and on women’s groups. It asks how the practicesand understandings of gender equality projects in ICT get shaped in such amanner that the focus on individuals prevails. How are the practices organizedand what kinds of goals are set for gender equality? How does the understand-ing of gender, equality and ICT intertwine with the actions for gender equal-ity in ICT? These questions are analysed from the perspective of concretegender equality activities and through the accounts of people who havebeen involved in actions on gender equality.

The article starts by presenting understandings of gender, equality andICT as well as by showing the mutual connections between these understand-ings and their relations to concrete gender equality actions. Understandings ofequality, gender and ICT vary and can be used in a number of combinations inthe actions on gender equality in ICT. Secondly, we explain the context forthe research and the studied gender equality activities in ICT and then con-tinue to an analysis of the accounts of everyday activities for gender equality.

Equality, gender and ICT – and gender equality in ICT

Equality has been one of the central citizens’ rights in most Western societies.The meaning of equality, however, has varied from one society to another(Walby 2004; Raevaara 2005). Ruth Lister (1997), in her discussion on fem-inist citizenship, points out that the rights to equality originating from theEnlightenment do not necessarily lead to equal agency. Universal rights arenecessary for equal agency, but they are not sufficient. As confirmed bymany scholars (e.g. Skeggs 1997) the social orders intertwining withpeople’s everyday lives considerably shape their chances of achieving equality.The ones in favourable social positions, such as Western, well-educated,white, heterosexual men, generally achieve equal rights more easily thanany other groups. Equality is not a question of individual choice, as theliberal Enlightenment ideology tends to emphasize. Rather, it is a socialprocess and a question of agency, practices and institutional support.Groups that do not have such a favourable position may need specialsupport and perhaps special rights in order to accomplish equal agency.Societal and institutional practices organize the practices of individuals andgroups. In Lister’s understanding of equality, the focus moves from equaland universal rights to people acting in various positions in societal powerrelations and to their chances of achieving and negotiating equal agency

3 8 6 I N F O R M A T I O N , C O M M U N I C A T I O N & S O C I E T Y

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

from their points of departure. Equality is a collaborative achievement ofseveral societal actors in institutions and organizations as well as in commu-nities of people.

The European Technology Assessment Network (ETAN), and its reporterTeresa Rees (e.g. Rees 2001), has outlined three commonly used approachesin actions for gender equality: equal treatment, positive action and main-streaming. According to Rees, equal treatment emphasizes equal rights. Posi-tive actions have addressed disadvantages experienced by women throughspecial training projects to improve women’s skills and employability. Themainstreaming approach covers gender-impact analysis of legislation and pol-icies as well as structural societal changes that aim to make society more opento both women and men. Compared with the understandings raised by Lister,the mainstreaming approach deals with the broad societal and institutionalaspects of equality, and the positive impacts of the practices of equality forspecific groups, while equal treatment focuses on individuals and the rightsof the liberal feminist tradition.

Research on gender and ICT falls within the main coordinates discussedby Lister and Rees. For example, Flis Henwood and her colleagues (2000) dis-tinguish two main traditions in research approaches, one commonly referredto as the liberal feminist approach, and the other the social constructionistapproach. Partially included in the latter group, Rosalind Gill and KeithGrint (1995) identify an eco-feminist approach, and Judy Wajcman (2004)a cyberfeminist and a technofeminist approach.

The liberal feminist approach in ICT emphasizes the importance ofgetting more women to participate in ICT education and professions.Equal access to technology is another important aim. Women willachieve equality only by entering the same fields as men, including technol-ogy. The choices and the responsibility are held, as is common in liberalpolitics, by individuals and especially individual women (Gill & Grint1995; Henwood et al. 2000). In contrast, the eco-feminist approach haslooked for women’s own technology, which is considered different from,and even better than, the approach of male experts (McNeil 1987; Gill& Grint 1995). Women’s groups have been forums where women havedeveloped technology on their own terms. For the liberal approach, tech-nology is neutral and beyond social analysis, while the eco-feministapproach relies on the social deterministic view of technology beingsolely a social construction made by human actors.

The social constructionist approach to gender and technology researchviews both gender and technology as sociocultural processes and relations.As distinct from the liberal approach, technology is seen as a social achieve-ment including gendered practices and knowledge in addition to artefacts. Arecent stream within social constructionist approaches is rooted in DonnaHaraway’s (e.g. Haraway 1991) situated knowledge and cyborg subjectivity.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

It introduces agency that combines both the machine connected to globalsocietal relations and the animal, the bodily and material, with a humanagency. Knowledge, as well as practices of gender and technology, are situ-ated and related to the position and subjectivity of the actors and simul-taneously to societal and cultural orders. The research stream ‘combinesmateriality and metaphor’ in understandings of both technology and genderand makes ‘a cyborg solution in technofeminism’, as Judy Wajcman (2004)has called it.

When gender and technology approaches are compared with genderequality actions, as described by Rees, the liberal feminist research approachmatches well with the equal treatment actions. They both focus on ‘bringingin’ individual women. The positive action and mainstreaming do not as self-evidently connect to any one research approach. Positive actions have beenbased on radical eco-feminist understandings of women’s specific knowledge(for example, in Boston Women’s Collective in the 1960s: McNeil 1987), butthey are also connected to the social constructionist understandings with apoint of departure in women’s practices (e.g. Vehvilainen 2001). Main-streaming, with its emphasis on institutions, however, always presumes asocial constructionist analysis of societal gender orders.

In order to incorporate the recent understandings of gender and tech-nology into the research of gender equality in ICT, we introduce a researchapproach of situated equality in ICT by combining Ruth Lister’s feministcitizenship and Donna Haraway’s (1991) notion of situated knowledge(Vehvilainen 2005b). This approach allows for one’s own agency from thepoint of departure of one’s local practices and situated knowledge. The uni-versal rights are an important part of it, but the agency takes shape in situ-ations, gendered societal relations and differences as well as in culturalinterpretations. Agency is communal rather than individual and deeplyrooted in the societal technically mediated orders. In situated equality,equality starts from locality where people define their space in globalICT. This understanding is part of the social constructivist and more specifi-cally technofeminist research traditions. It further connects features fromequal treatment (rights), positive action (local communal agency) and main-streaming (institutional and societal development). It creates a research fra-mework for the analysis on concrete activities and actions on genderequality in ICT described in this article.

Furthermore, gender is understood as a process and doing (Korvajarvi2002; Adkins 2004), and ICT as textuality in the lines of Dorothy Smith’s(1990) institutional textuality. ICT texts include computers, email messagesand media texts of ICT while ICT textuality includes both these texts and thepractices of their interpretation and production. Both gender and ICT are, onone hand, interpreted and produced in practices of people and, on the other,organized through societal, partially textual orders. Interpretations refer to


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

understandings of gender, similarly to those of technology, which furtherintersect with the activities and aims for equality.

Research material and context

The research is based on three sets of research materials. They consist, firstly,of oral history interviews conducted by Kristiina Brunila in 2003–04 with 30gender-equality professionals, called here equality workers, who have com-mitted important parts of their lives to gender equality over severaldecades. Nearly all have academic degrees, and all had worked in education.Secondly, the research includes follow-up studies of women’s ICT groups thathave aimed to promote equality in ICT expertise and their backgroundmaterial such as policy texts and media representations, including extractsfrom Helsingin Sanomat, the main daily newspaper in Finland, from Februaryto May 2005 and February to May 2006, all texts dealing with ICT (in totalover a hundred texts a year). The article presents four equality workerswho have worked with gender equality in ICT.1

Thirdly, documents on equality projects and their context includingarticles, project reports and project publications from the 1970s to 2003have been read by Kristiina Brunila in her previous research, includingnearly 300 projects (Brunila et al. 2005). They deal with equality inschools and teaching, working life and occupational safety and health,diversity, policies of equality in work communities, women’seducational and work careers, comparable worth in work, reconciliationof work and family life, as well as ICT, all familiar topics in manyWestern countries.

In the 1990s, the number of equality projects in working life increased asFinland joined the European Union and Finland was, for example, required totake action on the gendered segregation of labour from the late 1990sonwards. The project workers have often been paid through funding directedto equality, a significant part of the resources coming from the EuropeanUnion and the national ministries.

Equality projects are embedded in gender equality actions in particularsocieties. In Finland, the forestry industry has given room to the ICT industry,which has suffered from the lack of a skilled labour force. Simultaneously,high-standard welfare state services were developed in the 1970s and1980s, which partially declined in the late 1990s. Both women and menhave worked full days in equal numbers for several decades and day carefor children has become a universal right for all parents. Women’s edu-cational level rose rapidly in the 1960s and is now higher than that of menin all cohorts of the working-age population. However, the typical concernsof feminist debates have prevailed. Women’s wages have remained at


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

approximately 80 per cent of men’s wages with no indication of improve-ment, and gender segregation in both education and working life has remainedstronger than in most European Union countries (e.g. Rantalaiho & Heiskanen1997; Lehto & Sutela 2004; Women and Men in Finland 2005).

In international comparisons, Finland is regarded as one of the ‘women-friendly’ Nordic welfare states and gender equality machineries reveal therelatively high success of both Finnish women’s movements and state femin-ism (Holli & Kantola 2007). The welfare state has been a major institutionalsupporter for women and equality work (Anttonen 2001; Raevaara 2005).Gender equality has been promoted through political struggles and changesin legislation, as well as through positive actions (e.g. Holli 2003). Genderequality legislation has been developed within the framework of transnationalregulations (United Nations, European Council and Union) and by followingthe models of other countries – other Nordic countries in particular from the1980s (Raevaara 2005). Finnish gender equality activities have taken place inrelatively lower numbers and later than in other Nordic countries (e.g.Bergqvist 1999).

The proportion of women in both ICT education and work grew, consist-ent with women’s extensive full-time participation in the labour market, upto an internationally high percentage, one third of all, in the 1970s and 1980s(Vehvilainen 1999). The numbers then dropped significantly, similarly to theother Western countries (e.g. Webster 2005) in the 1990s while the numbersin ICT professions generally multiplied and the ICT field thus became moremale dominated. This curve has slightly changed in the 2000s (Lehto 2004)but the technical universities still have almost entirely male classes in ICT.

Anja, one of those interviewed, with a background in technology, hadworked in several gender-equality projects in ICT from the 1980s. Sheremembers how women studied mathematics and sciences in the 1970smore than they do today in Finland. She tells Brunila that she ‘had graduatedfrom high school in 1975, about 30 years ago, when girls were encouraged tostudy mathematics and sciences . . .. In fact, it feels as if there has been a back-lash.’ There has been a major cultural change related to pupils’ interest inmathematics and to girls’ understandings of appropriate femininity takingplace since the 1970s. Furthermore, an all-male culture of personal compu-ters and computer games in the 1980s influenced the practices in classroomsand furthered the gendered career choices in the 1990s (Saarikoski 2004). It isharder to recruit girls and women to sciences and technologies in the 2000sthan it was in the 1970s and 1980s. The gender bias in ICT has indeed been astrong argument for actions in gender equality in ICT from the 1990s.

Equal access to ICT and its skills have been given the status of a universalright in information society strategies from the 1990s (Sitra 1998) to therecent governmental programme for 2007–15, and equality projects in tech-nology have been relatively well resourced. The closer we come to the


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

present day, the more technologically oriented the equality projects are(Brunila et al. 2005).

According to the research by Brunila and her colleagues, the equality pro-jects in ICT in Finland have mainly focused on changing girls’ and women’seducational and career choices and on the integration of ICT into teaching.The projects have developed new methods and practices to shape girls’ andwomen’s attention and interest in technology, including job-training pro-grammes to increase women’s competences in technology. Distinct fromother equality projects, which have held a variety of views on equalityduring previous decades, the projects in ICT and equality have mainly main-tained a liberal understanding of gender, and have understood that womenthemselves have had to change and adapt throughout the entire period fromthe 1980s to the 2000s (Brunila et al. 2005).

As evident from the statistics on education and working life (e.g. SheFigures 2006) the liberal actions have not succeeded in their aims of bringingmore women into ICT. When liberal actions cover such a narrow understand-ing of the complexity of equality, as elaborated in Lister’s and Rees’s frame-works and within situated equality proposed by ourselves, the failure is notsurprising. However, it is interesting to explore the equality activities inorder to understand how liberal feminist activities persistently prevail, getfunded and are implemented, even though the achievements have provedvery limited.

In order to examine gender equality activities we studied the sphere ofconcrete equality work. People involved in gender-equality work aremainly women, in various positions and with different kinds of interests. Inour analysis we have done thematic reading on the collected interview andother fieldwork material and here we present an overview of the socialrelations that shape equality work in ICT. The first themes are common toequality projects in general, and then we move on to the specificity ofgender and ICT.

The landscape of gender equality projects

Gender equality projects in ICT take place within the practices of society andgoverning as well as institutions and organizations. Johanna, who worked ineducation and had years of experience in gender equality activities, analysedthe institutional settings of equality projects in an interview with Brunila:

Finland is interesting because of it is a small state consisting of smalloffices and ministries with small political elites. The circles are verysmall. If one [from the elites] recognizes that the information societyissues are ‘in’ in the EU and brings this message here, all ministries


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

start distributing funding to information society projects. Similarly, ifsegregation has become an issue and this message is brought home fromBrussels, then all ministries jump on the bandwagon. . .. Politics israther authoritarian. Generally speaking we Finns have a special featurein our women’s movement. It works from the top down, including thefirst wave [of feminism] while in other countries, particularly in theUnited States and the United Kingdom, the women’s movement hasstarted from a grassroots level and has proceeded upwards. In Finlandwe have done it very differently, and that is visible in these projects.They represent very much a state-led public agency which starts fromthe top down. We do not have appropriate women’s or equality move-ments because those are not seen as necessary.

In Finland equality projects often start as a consequence of administrativeinitiatives in ministries and other national or regional governmental agencies,rather than, for example, as NGO projects. The agencies allocate funding totheir initiatives. As Johanna also describes, equality workers watch for theseinitiatives and design their projects accordingly. The narrow circle in minis-tries shares a common vision and, in addition to this, equality workers andauthorities collaborate with each other (cf. Raevaara 2005). This approachdiscourages initiatives from the workplace and grassroots level, and it under-mines the situated agency of these people. Since it focuses, for example, onchanging women’s educational and career choices, it presumes that womenthemselves are not capable of defining their own goals and choices. Theybecome objects and targets of initiatives rather than active situated agentsthemselves, as in Johanna’s words: ‘they [the project participants] are inthese projects often targets in the end. How much are they there as actors?This is a good question which one sometimes wonders while doing projects.’

Brunila and colleagues’ study on equality projects further shows that theterm ‘good practice’ appeared to the Finnish gender-equality project reper-toire along with EU governance in the mid-1990s. ‘Technical goals’ as wellas ‘measurable objectives’ have been part of the equality project discourseused in project planning, activities and organization since the late 1980s. ‘Pro-ductiveness’, ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’ are also found from the docu-ments of equality projects, the progress of projects being measured througheconomic indicators (Brunila et al. 2005). These terms also appear in the out-comes of equality projects, signifying that projects have integrated them totheir understandings of equality. For example, an equality work guidebookstates (Otala 2000, p. 5):

When equality and diversity are seen as measures for competitiveness,they get more emphasis, and the just treatment of workers is establishedas a managerial principle. From the company point of view, this means


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

that all resources are utilized well and the circumstances are developed tomake this happen.

Equality workers actively use the new discursive practices and models comingfrom transnational agencies and other countries as a resource, as Eeva Raevaara(2005) also points out. They are perhaps required by funding agencies but theymay appear helpful for equality work as well. Heli, an equality specialist witha long career, tells Brunila how equality activities improved when Finlandjoined the EU:

The equality project work was much easier in the end because ‘good prac-tice’ had landed in Finland, and naturally in the project itself. Forexample, when the Ministry of Labour, in accordance with the EU,started to use the concept of ‘good practice’ in the middle of theproject, this directed all of the projects’ activities to more a practicallyoriented and more goal-oriented direction.

‘Good practice’ helped to set the focus on the practices of doing equality andgender. If the previous activities had emphasized equal treatment, ‘good prac-tice’ extended gender equality to processes and practices.

However, as embedded in managerial discourse, ‘good practice’ andother managerial terms favour management instead of women and men ortheir communities within institutions. ‘Good practice’ does not leadtowards situated equality. Rather, it aims to develop managerial gender equal-ity to harness the resources available in non-dominant groups. In fact, as thenew public management tends to decrease welfare services, it works againstgender equality (Holli & Kantola 2007).

Understandings of equality challenge each other inconcrete activities

As we have discussed, gender equality projects in ICT have mainly concen-trated on individual girls and women and their attitudes and have persuadedthem to enter male-dominated technological fields without paying attentionto societal, governing and organizational practices dealt with in the genderequality mainstreaming or even positive actions.

The equality workers interviewed are often rather critical of the liberalequality approach; they aim to avoid it and rather plan their project by othermeans entirely. Anja reflects on this to Brunila: ‘Changing the attitudes alonedoesn’t help if the reality doesn’t begin to change simultaneously.’ She waswell aware that the liberal gender equality activities of bringing womeninto technology do not function alone and she had planned her project to


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

include learning and knowing that focused on the practices of equality andgender. This understanding of equality, however, was not shared by her col-laborators, as she describes her dialogue with an external evaluator, such aswas routinely integrated into each EU-funded project:

They [the evaluators] had written that the objective of the project is tobring more women into the field of technology. I then said that bringingwomen into the field of technology had never existed in the project plan.In my mind it has not been the aim of the project. The evaluator,however, continued arguing that it was the goal. This is verycontradictory.

The evaluator was reading the equality project plan differently from itsauthor, the equality worker Anja. The evaluator’s reading relates to policydocuments and media discourse related to ICT in Finland; for example, thenational Information Society Strategy (Sitra 1998, p. 10) which aims ‘toprovide equal opportunities for acquisition and management of informationand for the development of knowledge’ in terms of liberal citizenship,which is not sensitive to situated knowledge, to agency, or to genderrelations, and which establishes a basis for a liberal ‘bringing women intotechnology’ policy.

The evaluator of Anja’s project, while perhaps evaluating a range of topicsfor the European Union, had little time for the critical analysis of these dis-courses, and adopted them as such to her work practices and even contrary tothe actual document written by Anja. Similarly, equality workers collaboratewith a number of actors who make comments on and decisions concerningtheir projects in the funding agencies and in the steering groups of their pro-jects. They are employed and recruited by ministries and regional authorities,which do not necessarily help or demand that they articulate gender or othersocial aspects of equal agency. There has been too little public debate on sup-plying appropriate interpretive frameworks with other than the liberal ‘bring-ing more women to technology’ policies (Raevaara 2005). Equality workers,as Anja said, face contradictions within interpretations embedded in the gov-erning practices. Measures, such as the women’s numbers, are easily managedobjectives. Too often the liberal policy measures thus take over the other, lessstraightforward activities of gender equality.

Gender: a tricky relation in the context of ICT

Gender, as such, is a particularly tricky social relation to be taken intoaccount in the context of ICT expertise and to be developed consistentlywith gender in ICT projects. Vehvilainen followed six women’s ICT


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

groups, which first started with an understanding of situated equality, includ-ing socio-constructivist understandings of both gender and ICT, and made arather paradoxical turn in their understandings of gender equality. Thegroups were supposed to develop skills in ICT by starting from their owneveryday situations in women-only groups. Firstly, however, the teacherswho implemented the project turned the activities to partially equal treat-ment action and partially to positive action for a disadvantaged group. Thegroups studied standard user skills in ICT. Secondly, the groups wereguided in weekly sessions by women teachers, but on a few occasions thegroups all gathered together for workshops that were taught by male teachers.This perpetuated the idea that there are certain areas in ICT education thatcannot be taught by women and must be left to male teachers. This suggestedto the women that expertise in ICT is highly gendered: women can teacheveryday skills but there is a domain beyond the reach of women whereonly men can be experts. This is the stereotypical Western understandingof gender, expertise and technology relations (Wajcman 1991), whichstrengthened rather than challenged the existing gender bias. In this case itdid not support the women’s active agency, but it limited the agency andgave the final agency to the male experts. The situated equality practisedturned to practices and understanding that undermined any kind of genderequality. As Tuula Heiskanen (2006) has also noticed, understandings ongender as a socially constructed relation tend to disappear from gender-equality activities. Here, gender equality first turned to the liberal feministapproach, and then started to function against gender equality.

The difficulties of keeping gender relations in ICT within the agenda ofgender-equality activities relates to the public discussion in the media and pol-icies of ICT. In Vehvilainen’s reading of the two four-month periods of themain newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in 2005 and 2006, only one article pre-sented a view that the gender pattern in ICT needed to be changed. One ofthe Technical Universities introduced ‘everyday practices’ as a means ofattracting women students to technology. The article assumed that we allknow that it is difficult to get women into technology, and it did not articulatethis point. It also assumed that the biased gender pattern had to be changed,but again it did not explain this either. It only described the solution to theproblem: technical universities need to pay attention to the everyday experi-ences and contexts of technologies, and this will make girls interested in tech-nology. The observation is very significant and has been confirmed by severalresearchers on gender and technology (e.g. Margolis & Fisher 2002). Thearticle was based on people’s everyday knowledge of gender and ICTexperts: the experts are male and special efforts are needed to recruitwomen. Everyday knowledge, however, remains as a tacit members’ knowl-edge. This article avoided discussing the problem of gender and presentedonly a positive solution. Gender issues typical of Finland (Korvajarvi 2002;


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

Raevaara 2005) were not reflected in the articles on ICT. Similarly, they arenot present in the national information society strategies from 1998 or 2006either.

ICT has been discussed in a rather techno-optimistic way both in mediaand in information-society strategies. This kind of technical deterministicunderstanding is linked to the liberal feminist understanding of gender andgender equality. Gender relations are bypassed and thus the opportunity forsituated equality is lost.

Furthermore, gender equality has mainly covered equality betweenwomen and men, and the differences among women and among men, aswell as the other social differences that intersect with gender, have generallyreceived little attention (Holli & Kantola 2007). This is even more true ingender equality activities in ICT (Brunila et al. 2005).

Lifelong projects: competence in finding the smallopportunities

Equality workers possess a major competence in gender equality activities.Many of them have worked for gender equality for years and even decades.They have knowledge of gender and ICT relations and of the possibilitiesand limits of gender-equality actions. How do they make sense of theirefforts when, for example, institutional and organizational practices directtheir actions towards liberal activities, although they try hard to developactions based on a social constructivist analysis?

Tuula was one of the equality workers who had continued working onequality projects for years. She had a background in municipal and nationalpolitics and had developed social and health services in a European Unionfunded project. She initiated the grassroots women’s information technologygroup NiceNet in her neighbourhood centre after having seen there entirelyall-male information technology groups. Later she pushed for the EU-fundedproject on the six women’s information technology groups, discussed earlier,in her region in the late 1990s: ‘There is a danger that women are displaced ininformation society development. They participate less than men in the con-struction of computer programs. During the 1990s the field has become evenmore male dominated.’

The EU funding meant a major institutional change to NiceNet and theproject was now run by a big educational institute. Tuula attended the plan-ning phase and the steering group. She explained her original idea of theimportance of women’s own information technology that is based onwomen’s everyday practices – along the lines of the situated equalityapproach. She participated in one of the women’s small groups all throughthe process. However, the new women’s groups turned out rather differently


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

from her original idea. Women’s everyday life as a point of departure forwomen’s active agency became rather undermined and the project developedto emphasize the liberal gender equality and standard ICT skills. However,she did not lose her objective in promoting gender equality, and one yearlater, after a large regional information society seminar, she comments:‘There were amazingly many participants in the Information networkseminar, and more than three hundred followed it through the Internet. Iwas surprised that the majority of the participants were women: entrepre-neurs, women from working life, from rural areas and from cities.’

The particularities of the projects seemed to be of secondary importanceto her. It was most important to keep the gender equality projects going. Theactivities in projects give space for people’s active agency, and now her pro-jects had encouraged a large group of active women to take part in the Infor-mation Network seminar. They were all local women, and this she consideredpositive both for the province and for gender equality. These women gaveTuula new confidence to continue her work for gender equality. In thesame way, many active women who worked in gender equality seemed to con-tinue their commitment from year to year and even from decade to decade,even though the governing practices did not always support them. They havekept the gender equality activities going and they have developed strong com-petence in them by reflecting on and developing the practices of equality aswell as their relationship to gender entwined with other social differences(cf. Raevaara 2005). They seem to keep themselves ready to use any oppor-tunities to promote gender equality.

Situated equality as an objective

In this paper we have examined the activities for gender equality in ICT bytaking the perspective of long-term equality workers committed to the pro-motion of gender equality. Equality workers work and act in the contradic-tory landscape of changing societal, governing and organizational practices,and they interpret them from the perspective of their own biographies andsituations. Many of them follow and reflect on the political discussion ofequality and gender, and the actual settings of working life and education,intersecting with social differences, and even theory on gender and equality.They have become discourse experts and translators who know how to talk tovarious actors since gender equality is not well articulated in Finnish publicdiscussion in general and even less in the context of ICT. Equality workersneed to find ways of persuading a number of actors in order to get theirfunding, which lasts no more than a few years at a time, and in additionthey also need to be able to run their projects in concrete educational andworking life organizations. They continue to initiate new activities although


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

they rarely manage to achieve the particular objectives that they have set fortheir projects. As in Tuula’s case, they consider the development of genderequality as an important aim as such, and within everyday practices theyalso find new openings for gender equality.

The understandings of equality in equality projects from the past threedecades vary and employ the concepts and rhetoric of their time (Holli2003), managerialism and ‘good practice’ being the main newcomers inrecent years. Although they all aim to strengthen equal agency, the differentunderstandings of equality and gender support different practices and groupsof people, instead of providing agency and equality evenly to everyone. Theunderstandings that ignore social relations, including gender, give priorityto privileged groups of people, to well-educated white men (and sometimeswomen), in the context of ICT to technical experts, in spite of, in theory,supporting women or providing equal rights to all citizens. ICT projectsfall into this category even more often than the rest of the gender equalityprojects in Finland. If ICT is understood in a techno-optimistic tone and ifgender is entirely silenced in the context of ICT, the efforts towardsgender equality too easily take the shape of liberal equality. The terms dohave material consequences and managerial terms keep the efforts in equalitywork continuously linked to liberal politics.

The article has had a specific aim: to understand how liberal equality ismaintained in the actions for gender equality in ICT. Firstly, liberal equalityprevails when the social construction of the phenomena equality, gender andICT, and especially their mutual relations, remain vaguely conceptualized. AsHenwood and her colleagues (2000) also state, both gender and ICT should beunderstood as socially constructed in order to go beyond liberal policies. Ifgender in ICT is seen as women’s access to ICT, in terms of liberal feminism,women’s everyday competence and situated agency are ignored as irrelevant.Social differences generally do not have any role in universal equal access.Similarly, if ICT is seen only as artefacts and skills related to them, bypassingthe social processes embedded in them, the gendered cultural aspects and themasculinity of ICT expertise become invisible. In the case of six women’sgroups, the view of gender in ICT as socially constructed was replaced by con-ventional equal access, and the project finally strengthened the duality of gen-dered ICT skills, men being experts and women needing only user skills.Furthermore, if equality is understood only as rights and equal treatment,as it often is in Information Society strategies, not even socially constructedunderstandings of gender and ICT can save the project from liberal actions.

Secondly, while the main concepts of gender, equality and ICT are vaguelyarticulated, managerial concepts and practices may influence how they areunderstood. In the context of ICT, ‘economic efficiency’ and ‘good practice’have been the important frameworks intertwined with gender equality.‘Good practice’ directs attention to the practices themselves, and is thus a


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

major shift from a liberal equal treatment towards social understandings ofequality. However, it links to the perspective of management, rather thanwomen and men involved in actual practices, and thus it does not focus on sup-porting their agency. It does not involve critical evaluation of the societalgender orders organizing the concrete practices to be developed. In fact, thenew public management tradition simultaneously decreases welfare servicesand thus weakens women’s equality on the societal level.

Thirdly, the governing as well as other organizational and institutionalpractices shape gender equality in ICT along the lines of liberal politics. Asthe example of Finnish ministries and project evaluators showed, an increasingnumber of equality projects, mainly funded by the European Commission,have been launched with work opportunities for many new actors in bothproject committees and evaluation. These new actors had little knowledgeconcerning gender, ICT and equality. Although each project perhaps hadcompetence in gender equality work, the fast project processes, run interms of economic efficiency and measurable goals, did not allow for amutual learning process within the projects. The easily measured liberalobjectives familiar from media and information society strategies took overduring the project process. It is of great concern that European Union objec-tives change every few years. When gender equality is no longer fundeddirectly, the broad group of actors that had been involved in gender equalityprojects had not yet learned to conceptualize gender, equality and ICT inother than liberal terms. The devoted equality workers continue workingwith gender equality as before. Gender equality should already have beenknown and mainstreamed. This small group should have the time andresources to intervene in all activities and make a trick of adding, or main-streaming, gender there. This is, of course, a contradiction in terms.

The approaches that view gender, gender intertwined with other societaldifferences and ICT as social processes is beginning to give agency to peopleand their practices. In order to overcome the limitations of liberal equal treat-ment activities, the paper proposes an understanding of situated equality in ICT.The vision of situated equality calls for actions bridging mainstreaming, positiveaction and equal treatment while supporting the situated agency of embodiedsocietal human beings. This understanding would require cooperationbetween the authorities that develop legislation and other institutional orders,and organizations which develop their practices intertwined with gender, equal-ity and ICT, as well as concrete actions that build new kind of activities from thepoint of departure of situated embodied humans. However, first of all, situatedequality requires discussion on the various understandings of gender, equalityand ICT. The perception of gender and equality as socially shaped relationsand embodied everyday practices is needed in information society policies andICT practices. And the view of ICT as a social activity should be included ingender equality activities.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

Note

1 Kristiina Brunila gathered oral histories in the Equal national thematicnetwork project Desegregation of the Labour market (2003–05) withMervi Heikkinen, Pirkko Hynninen being a member of the researchgroup. Marja Vehvilainen participated in the project’s planning withMarja-Leena Haataja, Kirsti Miettinen, Leena Teras, Vappu Sunnari,Helena Karasti, Elina Lahelma and Paivi Korvajarvi. Marja Vehvilainengathered part of the material from the Academy of Finland projectGender and Citizenship in the Information Society (1998–2001).

References

Adkins, L. (2004) ‘Reflexivity: freedom or habit of gender?’ in Feminismafter Bourdieu, eds L. Adkins & B. Skeggs, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 191–210.

Anttonen, A. (2002) ‘Universalism and social policy: a Nordic-feminist revalua-tion’, NORA, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 71–80.

Bergqvist, C. (ed.) (1999) Equal Democracies? Gender and Politics in the NordicCountries, Scandinavian University Press, Oslo.

Brunila, K. (2005) ‘Bittimaailman asiantuntijat ja hyvat jatkat Tietotekniikansukupuoli ja henkiloston kehittaminen segregaation solmukohtina’(Gender in ICT and personnel development, in Finnish), in Koulutus, suku-puolisosialisaatio ja teknologia nakokulmia segregaatioon, ed. L. Teras, Oulunyliopisto, Kajaanin yliopistokeskus, Kajaani, pp. 69–82.

Brunila, K., Heikkinen, M. & Hynninen, P. (2005) Difficult but doable. GoodPractices for Equality Work, Oulu University, Kajaani University Consortium,Adult Education Unit/The National Thematic Network, Kajaani.

Castells, M. & Himanen, P. (2002) The Information Society and the Welfare State: TheFinnish Model, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Etzkowitz, H., Kemelgor, C. & Uzzi, B. (2000) Athena Unbound, The Advancementof Women in Science and Technology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Gill, R. & Grint, K. (1995) ‘The gender–technology relation: Contemporarytheory and research’, in The Gender–Technology Relation: ContemporaryTheory and Research, eds K. Grint & R. Gill, Taylor & Francis, London,pp. 1–28.

Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinventions of Nature, FreeAssociation Books, London.

Heiskanen, T. (2006) ‘Gender issues in action research: implications for adulteducation, International Journal of Lifelong Education, vol. 25, no. 5,pp. 519–533.

Henwood, F., Plumeridge, S. & Stepulevage, L. (2000) ‘A tale of two cultures?Gender and inequality in computer education’, in Technology and In/


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

equality: Questioning the Information Society, eds S. Wyatt, F. Henwood,N. Miller & P. Senker, Routledge, London, pp. 111–128.

Holli, A.-M. (2003) ‘Discourse and politics for gender equality in late twen-tieth century Finland’, Acta Politica 23, Helsinki University Press, Helsinki.

Holli, A.-M. & Kantola, J. (2007 forthcoming) ‘State feminism Finnish style:strong policies clash with implementation problems’, in Changing StateFeminism, eds J. Outshoorn & J. Kantola, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

JIVE (2006) [Online] Available at: http://www.jivepartners.org.uk/ (22December 2006).

Korvajarvi, P. (2002) ‘Gender-neutral gender and denial of difference’, inCasting The Other: The Production and Maintenance of Inequalities in WorkOrganizations, eds B. Czarniawska & H. Hopfl, Routledge, London,pp. 119–137.

Lagesen, V. A. (2003) ‘Advertising computer science to women (or was it theother way round?)’, in He, She and IT Revisited, New Perspectives on Genderin the Information Society, ed. L. Merette, Gyldendal Akademisk, Oslo,pp. 69–102.

Lehto, A.-M. (2004) Presentation at the Gender Equality in ICT Seminar, Parlia-ment House, 14 October, Helsinki.

Lehto, A.-M. & Sutela, H. (2004) Uhkia ja mahdollisuuksia. Tyoolotutkimusten tulok-sia 1977–2003 (Results from working life studies 1997–2003, in Finnish),Statistics Finland, Helsinki.

Lie, M. (ed.) (2003) He, She and IT Revisited, New Perspectives on Gender in the Infor-mation Society, Gyldendal Akademisk, Oslo.

Lister, R. (1997) Citizenship; Feminist Perspectives, Macmillan, London.Margolis, J. & Fisher, A. (2002) Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, MIT

Press, Cambridge, MA.McNeil, M. (1987) ‘Being reasonable feminists’, in Gender and Expertise, ed.

M. McNeil, Free Association Books, London, pp. 13–61.Otala, L. (2000) Hyva ja tasa-arvoinen tyoyhteiso. Hyvan ja tasa-arvoisen tyopaikan

kriteeristo (Criteria for a good and equal work community, in Finnish),Kansallinen tyoelaman kehittamisohjelma, Tyopapereita 10, Helsinki.

Raevaara, E. (2005) Gender Equality and Limits of Change: Gender Equality as aPolitical Problem in the Debates on Parity in France and Quotas in Finland (inFinnish), TANE Publications 7, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health,Council for Gender Equality, Helsinki.

Rantalaiho, L. & Heiskanen, T. (eds) (1997) Gendered Practices in Working Life,Macmillan, London.

Rees, T. (2001) ‘Mainstreaming gender equality in science in the European Union:the “ETAN Report”’, Gender and Education, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 243–260.

Saarikoski, P. (2004) Koneen lumo. Mikrotietokoneharrastus Suomessa 1970-luvulta1990-luvun puolivaliin (The hobby of personal computers in Finland fromthe 1970s until the mid-1990s, in Finnish), Nykykulttuurin tutkimuskes-kuksen julkaisusarja, Jyvaskyla.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

She Figures 2006 (2006) She Figures 2006, Women and Science Statistics and Indi-cators, European Commission, Directorate General for Research, Belgium.

SIGIS (2006) [Online] Available at: http://www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/sigis/ (22December 2006).

Sitra (1998) Quality of Life, Knowledge and Competitiveness: Premises and Objectives forStrategic Development of the Finnish Information Society, Finnish National Fundfor Research and Development, Helsinki.

Skeggs, B. (1997) The Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable, Sage,London.

Smith, D. E. (1990) The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowl-edge, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Vehvilainen, M. (1999) ‘Gender and computing in retrospect: the case ofFinland’, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 44–51.

Vehvilainen, M. (2001) ‘Gender and citizenship in the information society:women’s information technology groups in North Karelia’, in VirtualGender, eds A. Adam & E. Green, Routledge, London, pp. 225–240.

Vehvilainen, M. (2005a) ‘Tietotekniikan miehisten kaytantojen jaljilla, sukupuo-len ja teknologian tutkimuksesta’ (Tracing masculine practices in ICT:on gender and technology research, in Finnish), in Tiede, teknologia ja suku-puoli, eds L. Husu & K. Rolin, Gaudeamus, Helsinki, pp. 150–169.

Vehvilainen, M. (2005b) ‘The construction of “equal agency” in the develop-ment of technology’, in Innovatory Users and Information and CommunicationTechnologies, eds L. Haddon, E. Mante, B. Sapio, K.-H. Kommonen,L. Fortunati & A. Kant, Springer Verlag, Dordrecht, pp. 203–217.

Walby, S. (2004) ‘The European Union and gender equality: emergent varietiesof gender regime’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State andSociety, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 4–29.

Wajcman, J. (1991) Feminism Confronts Technology, Polity Press, Cambridge.Wajcman, Judy (2004) Technofeminism, Polity Press, Cambridge.Webster, J. (2005) Women in IT Professions: Corporate Structures, Masculine Cultures,

paper presented at the Symposium for Gender & ICT, Manchester, http://ict.open.ac.uk/gender/papers/ (22 December 2006).

Women and Men in Finland 2005 (2005) Women and Men in Finland 2005, Stat-istics Finland, Helsinki.

WomenIT (2006) [Online] Available at: http://www.kajaaninyliopistokeskus.oulu.fi/proj/womenit/index.php (22 December 2006).

Wyatt, S., Henwood, F., Miller, N. & Senker, P. (eds) (2000) Technology and In/equality: Questioning the Information Society, Routledge, London.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

Marja Vehvilainen works as an associate professor in Women’s Studies at the

University of Tampere, Finland. She has researched gender and ICT in the

context of working life and information society as well as technology develop-

ment and nationalism. Address: Department of Women’s Studies, 33014 Univer-

sity of Tampere, Finland. [email: [email protected]]

Kristiina Brunila M.Ed. is preparing her doctoral thesis at the University of

Helsinki, Finland. Her research concerns equality and equality work, the technol-

ogy field included, in Finland from 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first

century. Address: Department of Education, c/o Teollisuuskatu 23, 00014 Univer-

sity of Helsinki, Finland. [email: [email protected]]


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Mem

oria

l Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewfo

undl

and]

at 1

2:34

09

Oct

ober

201

4

cartography of gender equality projects in ict: liberal equality from the perspective of situated...

Documents