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ICT Text Quest

Educational and professional opportunities exist for women in new technologies like information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, research has shown that ICT fields quickly become male-dominated, with men given preference for management roles despite lacking skills, while women with skills are denied opportunities. Additionally, while ICTs could enhance women's education, their effectiveness in school environments is unclear, and women may face isolation and lack of connection in online learning styles. Overall, greater representation of women in science and technology fields could significantly benefit society, but gender biases continue to impact career paths and opportunities in new technological domains.

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75 views7 pages

ICT Text Quest

Educational and professional opportunities exist for women in new technologies like information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, research has shown that ICT fields quickly become male-dominated, with men given preference for management roles despite lacking skills, while women with skills are denied opportunities. Additionally, while ICTs could enhance women's education, their effectiveness in school environments is unclear, and women may face isolation and lack of connection in online learning styles. Overall, greater representation of women in science and technology fields could significantly benefit society, but gender biases continue to impact career paths and opportunities in new technological domains.

Uploaded by

iiMouad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Educational and Professional Opportunities for

Women in New Technologies


The principle that you don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car can also be
applied to Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Gone are the days when a computer user
needed knowledge
of a programming language. On one hand, this is good news for women. It is because
women can now
use computers without needing computer science qualifications that gives ICTs the
potential to enhance
women’s education. But, our lack of ICT skills is not praiseworthy. Feminist
writers for many years
have argued that if more women were engineers and scientists, we might live in a
very different world.
(Rothschild 1982)

In a review of five countries, Millar and Jagger examined women’s employment in ICT
occupations.
They found a pattern of a low proportion of female entrants, a significant
‘leaking’ (Alper 1993) of
those who enter to other areas of employment, and a ghetto of women in lower paid
jobs. How did a
new area of economic activity become gendered so quickly? An obvious answer could
be that men
have seen it as a desirable area and women have not.

It is often said that new industries are both ‘gender blind’ (i.e. if you are good
at your work you’ll
succeed whatever your gender) and that they value ‘feminine’ communication and
‘people’ skills. But
recent research does not bear this out. A study of a new high—tech ICT company
(Woodfield 2000)
employing highly qualified graduates showed that men were given management
responsibility despite
an acknowledgement by the company that they had poor management skills. And there
was an
unwillingness to give responsibilities to women who had these skills. It seems that
jobs acquire gender
quite quickly in some sectors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, interesting studies were done into the ways in which men
and women think
about the world. They argued for the validation of diverse ways of thinking, rather
than a hierarchy
with a particular kind of male intellectual tradition at the apex. Turkle (1984;
1996) has done similar
work on the ways people interact with computers. She sees computers as tools used
as an extension of
our identities, with significant variations in the ways that men and women use them
to explore and
perform their gendered identities. This subtle way of understanding our
relationship with this
technology, however, must go in parallel with a materialist view, which is that an
underlying
motivation for most ICT-based initiatives in work, education, leisure, citizenship
is economic force.

We must also differentiate between the opportunities for employment offered by


ICTs, and the tools
they provide for education. We must beware of the inappropriate application of ICTs
to a problem that
would be better addressed in another way. Research into the effectiveness of lCTs
as measured by
student performance in Maths, suggests that for young children there is a negative
relationship between
classroom computer use and Maths performance. One researcher, Angrist, from MIT
found when
examining ICTs in the classroom that the set-up costs were obvious and the benefits
much less so
(Economist 2002). It could be more effective to have more teacher involvement and
lower class sizes.
In 1963 Clark Kerr, the President of the University of California, coined the term
‘multiversity’, to
suggest that universities were no longer based on a body of universal knowledge or
a heterogeneous
body of students. Higher education, professional education and life skills
education are now being
delivered by a variety of different universities, colleges and commercial
companies. The distinctions
between these are breaking down. Just when women are getting equal access to higher
education and
professional education, what constitutes higher level education and valid scholarly
activity has been
called into question through the creation of virtual universities. On the other
hand, women are often
claimed to have the most to gain from these new flexible and distributed kinds of
education.

Although online education provides new opportunities for women it is also the
source of new
pressures. The term ‘Second Shift’ was invented to identify the work/life balance
of employed women.
Women in paid employment did not substitute this for their domestic work; they
struggled to carry out
both obligations. Kramarae sees education in the new century as the ‘Third Shift’:
‘As lifelong learning
and knowledge become ever more important, women and men find they juggle not only
the demands of
work and family, but also the demands of. .. further education throughout their
lives.’ (2001)

lCTs — the Internet in particular — are seen as providing global access to key
educational resources.
However, access to information is a useless resource if you don’t have the skills
to evaluate and use it.
Shade (2002) distinguishes between the feminisation of the Internet, where women
are targeted as
consumers rather than citizens or learners; and feminist uses of the Internet where
women develop
content that creates opportunities for women.

Digital media may also produce inflexibility for women engaged in learning. A survey
of open and
distance learning students (Kirkup and Priimmer 1997; Kirkup 2001) demonstrated
differences in the
preferred learning styles of women and men. Women were uncomfortable with isolation
and stated a
desire for connection with others. Engagement in creating and maintaining networks
and relationships
is often cited as a reason why computer-mediated communication will be a ‘female’
technology.
Unfortunately, however, empirical work challenges this. Li (2002), in a study of
university students in
the UK and China, found that male students used e—mail more frequently, spent more
time online, and
engaged in more varied activities than women students. There is now a wealth of
research on the
gender differences of male and female online activity, all of which demonstrate the
online environment
creating a gendered world operating in similar ways to the material world.
Questions 27 — 34

Look at the following people (Questions 27 — 34) and the list of reported findings
below.

Match each person with the correctfinding, A - K.


Write the correct letter A - K in boxes 27 — 34 on your answer sheet.

27 Rothschild 31 Angrist
28 Alper 32 Shade
29 Woodfield 33 Kirkup
30 Turkle 34 Li

List of Reported Findings


HUOW>

Men and women perceive their environment differently.


The advantages of ICTs in schools are difficult to specify.
Men see ICT as an exciting new area of employment.
Female students find working on their own unappealing.
A greater female representation in scientific and technical posts
would have
enormous benefits.
-mcaw

Women can be seen as both passive and active users of ICTs.


Female students can benefit most from ICTs and distance learning.
In Higher Education, men use a wider range of ICT skills than
women.
A considerable number of women give up ICT posts to work in
different fields.
The way the two genders regard computers reflects the differences
in the way they
develop their sense of self.
K Certain new employment sectors are soon colonized by workers of
one sex.

Questions 35 — 40
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 35 — 40 on your answer sheet.
35 The term ‘ .............................. ’ refers to a company that is
equally happy to promote workers of
either sex .

36 It is clear that ICT developments in most fields are driven


by .............................. .
37 The range of institutions providing high level instruction today is known as
a
38 Women who are working find it hard to get
their ........ ......... right.
39 The way workers of both sexes now face having to fit children, work and
continued learning
into their lives is called the
40 Women are thought to be suited to computer work as it involves
developing ..............................
and .....

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