从女性计算机到男性计算机:或者为什么编写算法和开发软件的女性如此之少

From female computers to male comput♂rs: Or why there are so few women writing algorithms and developing software

HUMAN RELATIONS · 2020
被引 29
人大 AFT50ABS 4

中文导读

基于访谈研究,揭示了软件开发行业中三种性别本体论(计算机、人类、理想开发者)如何使女性陷入要么是女性要么是程序员的两难境地,从而解释了女性从业者减少的原因。

Abstract

Software development is one of the few professions in Europe and the USA from which women are disappearing. Current explanations range from unproven assumptions that women cannot write algorithms to insights into the misogynistic culture of this profession. This article argues these explanations are inadequate, and illuminates how forms of masculinity constituted within software development put women in the ambivalent position of being either female or a coder, but not both. Using a poststructural theoretical position to analyse materials from a qualitative, interview-based study, we identified three constitutive ontologies of the person circulating within the profession. The Comput♂r is presumptively male and can merge with the machine, although a subset, Geeks, cannot demerge from it. The Human, presumptively female, can communicate with people but not the machine. The Ideal developer claims the best of both, that is, adept at writing algorithms and communicating with people. These ontologies are informed by a theory of the body circulating within software development whose norms are unattainable by women. Female bodies are envisaged as ‘flesh’, and male bodies as a futuristic merger of body and machine. This Janus-faced theory excludes female developers from practising their profession.

软件工程性别研究社会学计算机科学