Are girls interested in technology?

A guest post by Ulrika Sultan

[A note from Torben: Today, 23 June, is International Women in Engineering Day. Marianne Culver (President, RS Components) says Let’s inspire more young women to fall in love with engineering.]

---

ITU Special Envoy for Women & Girls In ICT, Geena Davis with a young inventor at World Maker Faire, New York, 22 September 2013.

There are conditions in society that influence girls from an early age with specific attitudes and roles that hinder them. Feminists scholars of technology (e.g Harding 1986, Cockburn & Ormrod 1993) argue that everyday discourses of technology cultivate a prominent factor that effect stereotyping and gender norms in a negative form, promoting stereotyping in the field of technology. Other factors, including lack of confidence, lack of support at home, lack of encouragement in the classroom and lack of support from peers and other authority figures, can explain why so few girls pursue a career in technology. Studies have also revealed that ineffective teaching methodologies may favour boys over girls. These norms fuel ideas of what technological agency is and what ”technological” looks like. These discourses can disguise girls’ engagement and interest in technology. Maybe there needs to be a significant cultural change.

In my research, I want to test the dominant discourses around girls as not interested of technology. Are girls seen as beings that have to become interested in technology or as beings that are interested in technology already? Are girls constructed to be beings not interested in technology? Are there unconscious or conscious attitudes that declare girls as less able than boys and therefore, leading to differences in teaching and/or encouragement. Is there a problem with the concept of technology in technology education? Many questions appear when reading others’ research in the field.

Sylvia Todd: Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show – TEDxSanDiego 2013

The overall hypothesis in my research is that girls are interested in technology. Technofeminism is my theoretical lens. A technofeministic view of the learner regards the learner as a part of socially situated learning, constructed by society’s views on the learner. I don’t want to link the social construction of gender to the social construction of the user of technology. I’m merely interested to see if there is a construction of girls as beings that are not interested in technology.

I hope that the results of this study-to-be can generate new understandings regarding whether girls are constructed as being interested in technology, or described as and looked upon as not interested in technology. This could lead to further questions, such as if there is a problem with the concept of technology and how we teach it in school. If there is a problem with the concept of technology and how we teach it in school this can be seen as highly relevant for the research field of technological education and be seen as a contribution to the competence of the knowledge of teaching technology.

I know that comments are always welcome on this blog so if you are a teacher and have any views on ways to engage girls with technology and or comments about the way girls respond to technology in your school I’d be delighted to hear them.

References

Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cockburn, C., & Ormrod, S. (1993). Gender and technology in the making. London: Sage.

Ulrika Sultan

Now a doctoral student in technology education at Linköping University, with special interest in girls engagement in technology. I’m also a lecturer at Orebro university. There I educate preschool and primary teachers-to-be in technology and the natural sciences. My previous experiences include working as a licenced teacher in preschool, preschool class, compulsory school, and the recreation centre. My latest working experience before becoming a graduate was as Head of the municipal engineering school, KomTek.