Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Interacting with Computers
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/intcom
A theoretical agenda for feminist HCI
Jennifer A. Rode ⇑
Drexel University, United States
i n f o
Article history:
Available online 27 May 2011
Keywords:
Gender
Critical theory
Ethnography
Anthropology
HCI
a b s t r a c t
HCI has a complex and often ambivalent attitude towards the issue of gender and interactive systems.
Here I discuss three dominant paradigms for treating gender in HCI, and discuss their limitations. Next,
I will present the theoretical perspectives on gender which are on the fringes of HCI – Technology as
Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience – and discuss their possible contributions. I will show how this supports a reassessment of the use of gender theory in technological settings and its relevance for framing questions of gender in HCI. My goal in doing so is to argue for
the importance of a more direct treatment of gender in HCI and move towards a feminist theory for
HCI.
Ó 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
HCI has a complex and often ambivalent attitude towards the
issue of gender and interactive systems. On the one hand, a series
of examinations, focused primarily but not exclusively on cognitive and perceptual tasks, has uncovered gender differences that
may be consequential for interactive system design (Beckwith
et al., 2006; Cassell, 2002; Kelleher et al., 2007; Rode et al.,
2004; Tan et al., 2003). On the other hand, at a somewhat higher
level, there is a pervasive belief that gender does not – or should
not – be consequential to patterns of computer use e.g. (Martin
et al., 2007; O’Neill and Martin, 2003; Tolmie et al., 2007). Cutting
across this issue of framing gender, there are clear gender gaps in
technology participation, which are mirrored by similar gaps in
numbers of women creating technology. Feminist STS scholars argue (Cockburn, 1992; Wajcman, 1992) that this is indicative of an
underlying male bias both of technical culture but also of technical products, which if eliminated would allow technology to be
designed more responsively to the flexible gender definitions of
its users.
In this article, I call for the framing of the issue of gender in
interactive systems using a different perspective. My perspective
differs from more traditional HCI approaches in two ways. First, I
argue for a need to focus on gender issues in real-world settings
rather than in laboratory settings, because I want to focus on gender as an aspect of everyday life. Second, I argue for the examination of gender as a social product – that is, I am concerned with the
⇑ Tel.: +1 949 923 0191; fax: +1 215 895 1820.
E-mail address: [email protected]
ways in which gender roles are enacted and performed in everyday
action. So, our question is not ‘‘do women and men display different aptitudes for technological tasks?’’ but rather, ‘‘how are beliefs
and use of technology embedded in the production and ongoing
management of gender in daily life?’’
I have been approaching these questions through a series of
qualitative studies of gender in rich social settings where gender
unquestionably affects everyday interaction in a deep and pervasive fashion (Rode, 2010, 2008; Rode et al., 2004). That work has
allowed me to reflect on three dominant paradigms for treating
gender in HCI, which I will discuss here along with their limitations. Next, I will present the theoretical perspectives on gender
on the fringes of HCI and discuss their possible contributions. Finally, I will show how this supports a reassessment of the use of
gender theory in technological settings and its relevance for framing questions of gender in HCI.
My goal in doing so is to argue for the importance of a more direct treatment of gender in HCI. There is a twofold reason for increased emphasis on gender. First if women are avoiding careers
in math and science because the culture excludes them (Camp,
1997; Margolis and Fisher, 2002), we have the opportunity, as I will
show here, as HCI practitioners to ensure that the artifacts themselves encourage both Technical Femininity, as well as flexible definitions of gender and that the design processes support this.
Secondly, as we move from considering issues of usability to user
experience, and from GUI to increasingly ubiquitous computing,
we must recognize that gender although suspect to redefinition
and reinscription is deeply enmeshed in all aspects of daily life,
particularly domestic life.
I want to frame this paper here in terms of Bardzell’s more recent ‘‘Feminist HCI’’ (Bardzell, 2010) paper which is more familiar
0953-5438/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2011.04.005
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a r t i c l e
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J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
populations that were at least two-thirds male (Barkhuus and
Rode, 2007). This suggests that while in some case gender may
genuinely not be relevant, we are not following best practices in
studies using balanced samples, and a careful review of the CHI literature combined with knowledge of gender theory might lead us
to question a few hypotheses.
The space of orientations towards gender then includes four
positions. First, individuals who choose on principled grounds
not to engage with gender as it is irrelevant to their subject of
study regardless of their personal beliefs. Second, as illustrated
above, individuals who over-look its relevance. Third, in many
communities, though I will make no claims regarding whether this
view exists in HCI specifically, there are individuals who have a
hostile attitude towards the topic altogether and believe women
are lesser creatures. Fourth, individuals who pick up the topic of
gender and engage with it passively or actively in their work.
It is this last category, individuals who engage with gender, that
I wish to address in more detail in the next section. I will describe
three dominant positions, which can be mapped to specific theoretical orientations towards gender. These are not the only three
for instance, my work has strong Marxist-Feminist leanings, but
it is clearly in the minority. The three positions I will lay out are
more mainstream and readily identifiable, and most importantly
by setting them out here, I can explain how these positions are
inherently problematic. This will allow me to readily contrast other
feminist positions outside HCI which I will show have relevance to
HCI.
2. Approaches to gender within HCI
2.1. Liberal Feminism
How is gender treated in HCI research? There are a variety ways
of addressing, or not addressing, gender in HCI. Some writers within HCI would argue gender is not relevant to their subject of study,
and as such make a principled decision not to include it. As a feminist scholar I believe that while there are genuine cases where
gender is not relevant, its relevance often is merely overlooked.
For example, take Goh et al’s study of photowork (Goh et al.,
2010). In their 2010 Nordichi paper they lay out a careful study
of photowork with an imbalanced gender sample, concluding that
their competitive phototagging game out performed the collaborative one. However, as I said, the gender of their study’s participants
was unbalanced, such that they studied 66% men. While their conclusion was statistically valid, if one combines it with feminist theories, the strength of their finding is substantially weaker. What
they actually showed is that a competitive game was more preferred by a predominately male sample, and if you combine this
with the theory that men are socialized to be more competitive
and women more collaborative (Hapnes and Sorenson, 1995), the
end result is really that tagging applications are successful if they
follow gender norms. (It is worth noting that Goh and colleagues
in yet unpublished follow up work were able to replicate the finding with a gender balanced sample reaffirming their initial hypothesis.) However, it illustrates the possibility of gender’s relevance to
studies where the research team initially thought it might be
irrelevant.
This is why best practice in experimental psychology is to gender balance participants. However, an examination of usability
studies published in CHI over 24 years shows that the great majority ignore gender of their participants altogether as a consideration
(Barkhuus and Rode, 2007). Specifically, in Barkhuus and Rode’s
sample in 2006, about half the studies failed to mention the gender
of their participants at all, and another quarter tested on subject
If, as I have shown, the majority of CHI papers are ignoring gender, and considering gender is part of best practices in the social
sciences, then why are we doing this? As a feminist who believes
gender is relevant to most situations, I would like to think better
of our community than authors simply being methodologically
sloppy or failing to acknowledge gender’s relevance. Although gender is often ignored, this is not necessarily a failure to take a theoretical stance towards gender as topic; it can be an expression of a
particular theory of gender, Liberal Feminism (Tong, 1998; Oost,
2003). As such, Liberal Feminism provides one internally consistent rationale for this behavior. Liberal in this instance is not a reference to a political orientation but a specific school of feminist
thought. Liberal Feminism denies inherent gender differences,
even those that may have biological basis, and argues that women
would achieve parity with men if they were just given the same
opportunities (Tong, 1998). Accordingly, a liberal feminist position
denies the relevance of gender to HCI, because it argues that, ‘‘all
other things being equal,’’ gender should not matter. HCI practitioners who followed Liberal Feminism then would ignore gender in
their studies not out of methodological sloppiness, but rather because they principally believed it was irrelevant. While not all
HCI practitioners who fail to examine gender are Liberal Feminists,
an implicit Liberal Feminist leaning in HCI, perhaps even an unconscious one, may in part explain the community’s attitude towards
gender.
However, there is a problem with this position which I will lay
out next. It is precisely this question of ‘‘all other things being
equal’’ which potentially undermines the liberal feminist perspective. The inherent focus on the individual in Liberal Feminism
makes it difficult to see the ways in which underlying social structures and values disadvantage women; and it is precisely these
structures that question the premise of the Liberal Feminist stance
(such as those surrounding development of and access to technology.) Liberal feminism then assumes technology itself is gender
neutral, which I will show later (in Section 3) is not the case.
1
However, broadly this paper is my attempt to publish the theory that came out of
my dissertation (Rode, 2008) and companion talk series.
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to this community.1 Here Bardzell sketches four possible contributions of feminist theory to HCI: theory, methodology, user research
and evaluation (Bardzell, 2010, p. 1305). She concludes there are
two ‘‘general ways in which feminism contributes to interaction design’’ these are critique based or studies with feminist lenses and generative contributions where ‘‘feminist approaches’’ are used to
influence design judgments (Bardzell, 2010, p. 1308). This paper is
calling for a third contribution beyond those called for by Bardzell,
and the scope of influence is not limited to interaction designers specifically, but rather the field of social informatics as a whole. Many
researchers, including Dourish (2006) and myself (Rode, 2011), have
argued for the need for socio-technical theory, and here I strive to
build the foundation for a socio-technical theory of gender.
Thus moving forward requires us to appropriately handle gender. I will argue we need to do so by embracing feminist theory—
that is engaging with the critical theory in the gender studies community and applying it to HCI. This article hopes to discuss relevant
theory from gender studies, and show how it relates to HCI in the
hopes that it will move all us towards that goal. Ultimately, we will
need to create our own gender theory as a community, but for now
my goal is simply to promote awareness of our community’s
stances on gender and how they relate to established theories. In
this paper I am not presenting a unified feminist theory for HCI,
rather I am setting a theoretical agenda. I am calling for us to engage with existing feminist theory to create our own feminist socio-technical theory; this goes well beyond the current framing
of Feminist HCI.
J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
Consequently, I argue that the influence of this philosophy in
HCI is a disregard for gender as an element of design—in that technology is not seen to be a source of this opportunity gap. Technology designers do not consider themselves to have the agency to
give men and women the same opportunities. Thus these issues
are seen to have social and not technological origins. However, as
illustrated by Bjiker’s technological frame (the set of techniques
used by a community for problem solving including tacit knowledge) (Bijker, 1994) there is a bi-directional nature of influence between technology and society. Thus, not considering the technical
origins of attitudes towards gender is perhaps shortsighted, but
regardless the dominant treatment of gender in HCI is to consider
it a problem beyond what is consider the appropriate scope of
technology design. Gender-blind design is explicitly mandated in
Cassell’s ‘‘undetermined design.’’ Cassell writes,
Gender, then, is removed from the consideration of designers in
that the ‘‘user’’ can construct their identity as they choose if presented with sufficiently gender-blind technological opportunity.
However, as I will show later (see Sections 3 and 3.1) creating gender-blind technology is fraught with issues, in that technology is
inherently gendered (Berg and Lie, 1995; Harding, 1986; Oost,
2003) and as designers we need to have agency in its gendering.
2.2. Parameterize gender for interface design
A second approach, reflecting HCI’s origins in cognitive psychology, focuses on gender differences in task performance. In general,
this work attempts to determine a series of parameterizable gender differences that might be influential for design and analysis.
Here gender is a variable, and as such it is a category constructed
by the results of repeated experiments (e.g., Helgeson, 2010). Recent examples include Beckwith et al.’s research (Beckwith et al.,
2006) which attempts to differentiate men and women’s self-efficacy quantitatively in terms of their abilities to tinker and reflect
as part of learning to program, or Tan et al.’s (Tan et al., 2003) looking at gendered differences of ability in terms of spatial navigation.
This approach takes the issue of gender difference seriously, by
determining clear differences between men and women. However,
it has its limitations.
First, studies often ignore important aspects of the social context within which gender issues occur in everyday life. Social context, however, is critical to understanding gendered behavior. For
instance, consider Robinson-Staveley and Cooper’s research, which
showed that college-age female computing novices were less successful and experienced greater situational stress when performing
tasks in the presence of another person (Huff, 2002). The same
study showed men performed better on the same task in public.
This demonstrates how social context is required to understand
gender.
Second, it adopts an essentialist approach to gender, of the sort
that has been a considerable site of critique for third-wave feminism.2 Third-wave feminism argues for a more fluid and nuanced
consideration of gender, one that recognizes gender as a discursive
2
Third wave feminism is the current school of feminist study which critiques
earlier feminist work for focusing too much on Anglo-European elites, focuses on a
more diverse group of women and resists trying to homogenize women’s needs across
cultures.
and performative phenomenon in conversation with race, class,
and other subjectivities. Paramterizable studies assume that by simply putting people into categories based on their biology one can
control for differences in socially constructed gender. As I will show
later (Section 3.2), this is not the case.
Third, this work often results in technology designed explicitly
for women’s needs, such as Kelleher and Pausch’s version of the
Alice system for teaching girls to program (Kelleher et al., 2007).
As Cassell (Cassell, 2002) points out, this approach risks ghettoizing women or girls, and assumes a deficit model where male technology use is understood as normative, while females need to
‘‘catch up’’ to levels of their male counterparts.
Thus, this approach is problematic in that gender requires
understanding complex social settings, without resorting to gender
essentialism (as discussed in Section 3.2). Doing so leads designers
to a problematic deficit model of design.
2.3. Ethnomethdological treatments of gender
A third approach to gender is that of the ethnomethodological
treatment. The ethnomethodologists in HCI and CSCW have a
well-reasoned argument for avoiding gender, in that it is a methodological convention that they do not apply theory when discussing fieldwork; rather they focus on the meaning of what was said
and the members’ own conceptual categories (Garfinkel and Sacks,
1970). Their argument is that these are constructions and as such
not observable, thus the theories lack explanatory power. An
example of an ethnomethodological treatment of gender within
HCI would be Tolmie et al. (2007), who differentiate themselves
from ‘‘traditional social science accounts of housekeeping, which
emphasize the roles of gender divisions to the accomplishment
of housework in general,’’ presumably because they found no observable patterns in terms of gender. However, outside HCI and
CSCW, ethnomethodologists have explicitly discussed observable
patterns in men’s and women’s behavior (Garfinkel, 1984; Garfinkel and Sacks, 1970; West and Fenstermaker, 1995; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Further, while they question gender as a
theoretical construct, they acknowledge that participants can engage in managing their gender identity in the context of social
expectations of what men and women do (Garfinkel, 1984). The
ethnomethodological stance on gender is best articulated in West
and Zimmerman’s ‘‘Doing Gender’’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987).
Here they discuss gender as a situated activity which is repeatedly
‘‘being done’’ in relation to others. Actions are constructed in response to normative gender practice, and ideally actions will pass
as normative, just as Garfinkel’s pre-operative transsexual Agnes
hoped to be socially classified as a woman by behaving appropriately (Garfinkel, 1984). While normative gender behaviors are enacted such that they are unremarkable, individuals are accountable
to any deviations from normative behavior—or in West and Zimmerman’s terms ‘‘to be at risk of gender assessment.’’ So too, is gender being done, when men and women allocate technologies to the
masculine or feminine spheres.
While ethnomethdologists outside of HCI have discussed the
performativity of gender, those within our community have chosen
not to engage with gender.3 I would argue in doing so they have
implicitly embraced the Liberal Feminist notions of many of their
peers. While I will not challenge their disposition against theory in
this essay, as such a debate belongs in an essay of its own, I take issue with their not engaging with the performativity of observable
gender, especially in situations such as conversation or domestic
work (O’Neill and Martin, 2003; Tolmie et al., 2007) which have been
3
There are few instances of ethnomethodology in HCI that discuss gender at all,
but when they do their treatment is similar to Tolmie et al’s (Tolmie et al., 2007) in
that they declare it out of scope (Martin et al., 2007; O’Neill and Martin, 2003).
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‘‘We didn’t see that it was our place to design a game for girls or
a game for boys. We didn’t see that it was our place to claim to
know what girl was or what boy was, because there’s too much
diversity. So, we decided to design computer games that in their
very use would allow children to decide who they were, and to
discover who they were in the richest way that we could.’’ (Cassell, 2002, p. 12).
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J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
shown to be highly gendered (Berk, 1985). The ethnomethodological
perspective on gender from authors such as Garfinkel, West, Fenstermaker or Zimmerman would be a valuable addition to the HCI community designing systems.
2.4. Reflection on current practice
4
Clearly, there may also be other minority approaches including individual
adherents to other specific schools of feminist though (Tong, 1998), however, I am
attempting to broadly identify major positions so I can outline how we can read
feminist theory in light of them.
3. Treatments of gender further afield
Next, I wish to introduce three theoretical approaches to gender
from the gender studies literature and the feminist science and
technologies literature that might prove more productive as orientations towards gender. While each of these approaches have had
some influence on authors in HCI, they are lesser considered views.
These theories are broadly compatible, though have not necessarily
been applied together. These are three of many theories, selected
because when considered in relation to current treatment of gender in HCI they give insight into areas of future inquiry for HCI.
Before I can examine them in more detail, I need to clarify the
multiple analytic roles that gender can play. I rely in part on Sandra
Harding’s (Harding, 1986) distinction of three uses of the word
gender – Individual Gender, Gender Structure, and Gender Symbolism.
Individual Gender refers to a person’s gender self-identification, and
for many people this would correspond to their biological sex;
Gender Structure refers to the gender role as defined by a division
of labor and responsibility at a larger societal level; while Gender
Symbolism is the assigning of gender to other characteristics
beyond the individual and division of labor.
Gender Symbolism is by far the most theoretically complex. In a
home domain, for instance, details of practice such as the Symbolic
Gendering of appliances are included (Livingstone, 1992). Berg and
Lie discuss how this gendering is not done on the basis of heuristics
but based on social construction (Berg and Lie, 1995). Symbolic
gender, as Oost (2003) shows, can be given as part of the design
process (Oost, 2003). At the same time individuals recognize the
symbolic gender of an artifact, as illustrated by Livingstone’s study
(Livingstone, 1992) where she asks people to label domestic technologies as masculine or feminine and finds there is clear consen-
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These three approaches take radically different stances on gender.4 Liberal Feminism considers the inequalities of gender to be outside the milieu of the technology design space. The second approach
in HCI attempts to parameterize gender and the design accordingly.
And the third, the ethnomethodological approach, raises a complex
theoretical objection to the theoretical concept of gender being abstractly applied to a data set.
Taken together, the critiques of these three perspectives suggest
that there is an important area of investigation that is under-examined in HCI research. The current treatment of gender is problematic for three reasons. First, there is still significant disparity in
society with regard to gender (Berk, 1985; Martin, 1984; Maushart,
2001; Strathern, 1980; Sullivan, 2002). Second, as I have shown
elsewhere, how men and women enact male and female gender
roles effects the organization of domestic work with regards to
technology (Rode, 2010; Rode et al., 2004). Finally, these approaches assume gender is stagnant and based on physiology. This
ignores the empowering concept that notions of gender can be
changed. Just as in Bijker’s technological frame, technology and
society have bi-directional influence on one another such that each
can impact or shape one another (Bijker, 1994). Similarly, gender,
as one aspect of society, and technology both exert bi-directional
influence.
Cutting across these three issues is the strong evidence that
there is a gap in women’s participation in technology (Camp,
1997). These issues prompt Burnett (2010) who questions how
‘‘supposedly gender-neutral software interacts with gender differences.’’ What if, as Burnett eludes, the cause of this participation
gap is that software often is not gender neutral? Indeed, I will address this later (in Section 3.2), but for now I wish to stress that
cutting across these issues of gender disparity, gender roles as applied to technology, and the bi-directional influence of technology
and society is the notion that the gender of software is, at least in
part, the artifact of the design process. I will come back to this last
point later (see Section 3.1), but first my use of the term gender requires additional clarification.
Gender is a separate concept from biological sex, though often
these two issues are conflated (West and Zimmerman, 1987).
When I talk about the lack of women in science and engineering
I am talking about sex. Thus much of HCI research that does deal
with women focuses on sex, in particular the work on behavioral
differences between men and women or gaming for girls. However,
when I talk about science and engineering cultures not allowing for
expressions of femininity I am talking about gender. We need the
debate to move from discussing sex to discussing gender.
Gender is not a fixed concept; both femininity and masculinity
are socially constructed and undergo constant, albeit subtle, redefinition and re-inscription. At the core is the assignment of gender
characteristics to the dualism of sexed bodies, or assigning passivity and nurturing to the feminine and aggression and providing to
the masculine (Faulkner, 2000b; Ortner, 1974). Feminist philosopher Sandra Harding expands on this by saying, ‘‘gendered social
life... is the result of assigning dualistic gender metaphors to various perceived dichotomies that rarely have anything to do with
sex differences’’ (Harding, 1986, p. 17–8). This assignment of characteristics to a particular gender (for instance, women are graceful
whereas men are strong) is not fixed, but rather socially and culturally constructed (Butler, 2006; Young, 2005). Consequently,
Butler (2006) quotes Beauvoir: ‘‘‘one is not born a woman, but,
rather one becomes one’’’ (p. 11), and Butler adds that ‘‘gender is
performatively produced. . . gender proves to be performative—
that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be’’ (p. 34). Butler
argues that women do this in part by reaffirming and grounding
the masculine identity of their partners; they deny and give up
their own desire in order to participate in the desire of men.
It is important to recognize that, while all types of gender are
socially constructed, these are not ‘‘equal,’’ but conditioned by a
series of power imbalances. Ortner, amongst others, examined
these from a cultural perspective (Ortner, 1974). She argues that
in the West, the masculine is associated with the built environment and culture, and the feminine with nature, and that, by
extension, the masculine realm is that of the mind and the feminine that of the body. Consequently, she argues that as the mind
controls the body, the masculine world controls the feminine
world. In looking at the Hagen case, Strathern has shown how
assignment of these dualities are not culturally universal, in that
the Hagen treat aspects Westerners consider masculine to be feminine and vice versa (Strathern, 1980). Thus the assignment of
dualistic gender traits to Structural Gender is culturally constructed.
However these gender dualities come to be, it is clear they are
complex and apply to different aspects of social life. Moreover,
these complexities are under constant negotiation as we construct
and redefine notions of gender. Our goal here is to contribute to an
emerging effort to understand gender in a techno-cultural context
(Bell et al., 2005; Wyche et al., 2006). I want to understand not just
how gender affects technology, but how technology affects gender,
and how the relationship between these topics emerges as part of
socially-situated, everyday practice.
J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
3.1. Technology as Masculine Culture
The first theoretical framework for discussing gender is the
Technology as Masculine Culture (Cockburn, 1992), which suggests
that the inherent male bias of technology is in part caused by women’s lack of involvement in the design of technologies that are often shaped by male power and interests (Oost, 2003; SchwartzCowan, 1983). The notion here is that designers are inadvertently
constructing masculinely symbolically gendered technology, and
that this impacts how technology is ultimately used if it is at odds
with Individual Gender. As a result, women feeling alienated from
technology define their femininity in terms of rejection rather than
adoption of technology (Turkel, 1988). Thus, some women may
intentionally define themselves as not technological to preserve
their femininity (Turkel, 1988), or if they do they are liable to experience what she terms Gender Inauthenticity. Gender Inauthenticity
then refers to how the masculine culture surrounding technology
design makes women who choose to participate struggle with creating an Individual Gender that includes technology use that is at
the same time consistent with Structural Gender.
Faulkner (2000a) looks at Gender Inauthenticity and how it affects career choice; she claims it propels women toward what
she calls more feminine technical careers which she defines by
example—user interfaces, quality assurance, project management
or management of people. She argues these careers are ‘‘ghettoized’’ within the software profession and are low-status from the
perspective of the engineering culture. Similarly, Kvande discusses
her ethnographic work and how female engineers were presented
with a dilemma in the workplace as to how to construct their identity, showing that many of them give up aspects of their femininity
to act as ‘‘One-of-the-Boys’’ (Kvande, 1999).
What this suggests is that Individual Gender and Technical Identity, one’s identities pertaining to technology, are being co-constructed. While there are no doubt individual exceptions, what
this substantial body of feminist literature suggests is that the social construction of gender within engineering is problematic for
many women, and likely some men as well. Technologies can have
gender inscribed into them, ie. be symbolically gendered, as part of
the design process (Berg and Lie, 1995; Oost, 2003). Technologies
with masculine symbolic gendering are particularly problematic
for women and prone to produce Gender Inauthenticity. Prior work
(Alsheikh et al., 2011; Friedman, 1996; Kaye, 2007) has argued as
designers we have the opportunity to engage with Values in design. Extending this rather than reifying the gendered status quo,
we as technology designers have the unique opportunity to attempt to change values with regards to gender as we create technology. We can act as agents of social change that attempt to
redefine normative Structural Gender.
To apply Technology as Masculine Culture to HCI a two-pronged
approach is required. First, a productive starting point for HCI
would be the design of technologies that do not marginalize female
or feminine values. Second, just as there are many examples of
masculinely symbolically gendered technologies, there is a need
for technologies that allow for the demonstration of Technical Femininity. Technical Femininity is demonstrated by women using technologies that are symbolically gendered to be feminine and still
maintain their status as Technology, thereby resolving Gender
Inauthenticity. While some women are able to construct a feminine
technical identity, this remains a problem for the majority (Turkel,
1988), and only feminine technologies will address it. As I stated in
Section 3, a lack of femininely gendered technology is particularly
problematic in that technologies that are femininely symbolically
gendered often lose their status of requiring technical skill to operate (Frissen, 1985). Consider for instance the typical oven which
Rode et al. (2004) showned to require considerably more cognitive
complexity to program than a VCR, and yet is no longer considered
to be Technology. This needs to be addressed. Of course, Cassell argues designing for women risks ghettoizing them (Cassell, 2002). I
would like to clarify this. The risk is in designing technology explicitly for women, and not in designing feminine technologies. The
latter is not essentialist and is used by both men and women,
but appeals to feminine aspects of their character. These tasks
are gendered as feminine, in that they center on the construction
of normative and Individual Gender. Normative definitions of Gender Structure can be oppressive and limit power particularly when
technical skill is tied to wealth and power in our society, but at the
same time they can afford a sense of empowerment and an outlet
for creativity. We as designers we cannot afford to engage in Liberal Feminism, given so much evidence that technology is currently
gendered in a way to exclude women (Berg and Lie, 1995; Camp,
1997; Cockburn, 1992; Dourish, 2006; Faulkner, 2000a,b, 2001;
Harding, 1986; Huff, 2002; Kvande, 1999; Rode et al., 2004; Rode,
2011; Turkel, 1988; Oost, 2003; Wajcman, 1992). ‘Technology as
Masculine Culture’ (Cockburn, 1992; Wajcman, 1992) is a provocative (and difficult) starting point for design, but I feel it is one that
CHI needs to consider. If you were to take this school of thought as
valid, how would it be addressed in design? We need to engage
critically with these three forms of gender (Individual, Structural
and Symbolic) and be nuanced in treatments of gender as we make
design decisions regarding Gender Inauthenticity and Technical
Femininity.
3.2. Gender Positionality
A second theoretical framework of relevance to HCI is Gender
Positionality (Alcoff, 1988). This is an approach that specifically attempts to examine the practice of gender as a relational concept
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sus. Livingstone’s participants classified brown goods, goods that
used to be wood paneled, such as TV components, stereos and
PCs, as masculine. By contrast, they defined feminine technologies
as white goods, such as kitchen and laundry appliances (Livingstone, 1992). Historically technologies that are femininely gendered, however, gradually lose their status as technology
(Frissen, 1985; Kaye, 2007). For instance, on introduction, the landline phone was considered highly technical and masculine, but
gradually women became primarily responsible for maintaining
social networks via the phone (Frissen, 1985). Eventually the
phone became femininely gendered and, arguably, we no longer
think of it as technology (Frissen, 1985). I do not mean to implied
these ‘‘masculine technologies’’ are not used by women, it is to say
we do not think of them as feminine. Thus Technology, ‘‘big T’’
technology, the technology we think of as technical, becomes synonymous with men’s technology. This opens a design space for
Technologies, with a big T, that simultaneously have a feminine
Gender Symbolism and retain a technical identity. Ultimately, the
symbolic gender of an item is socially constructed through the
bi-directional process (Bijker, 1994) with input applied by both
society, which comprised of individuals, and technology creators.
Individuals’ beliefs on Gender Symbolism are an important part of
Individual Gender, and artifacts may be gendered differently in
terms of Individual and Structural Gender.
These layered meanings of gender (Individual Gender, Gender
Structure and Gender Symbolism) interact with one another as individuals manage their relationships with technology. While biological sex may be binary, rare cases of intersexed persons aside,
gender is a nuanced, socially constructed aspect of our identity;
thus it is critical our discussion of gender maintain this nuance.
Next I will discuss the three theoretical approaches to gender
which I argue the HCI community can benefit from, Technology as
Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience,
each in turn.
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J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
When the concept ‘‘women’’ is defined not by a particular set of
attributes but by a particular position, the internal characteristics of the person thus identified are not denoted so much as the
external context within which that person is situated. The
external situation determines the person’s relative position, just
as the position of a pawn on a chessboard is considered safe or
dangerous, powerful or weak, according to its relation to the
other chess pieces (p. 433).
Gender Positionality theory then allows flexibility for the definition
of woman to change radically at some point in the future.
I find Gender Positionality relevant to HCI for two reasons. First, I
find this approach particularly useful because it allows gender definitions to change as domestic roles are modified in response to
new technology. Further, Gender Positionality permits one to consider being a woman as a perspective from which values are interpreted and constructed. This would include a woman’s values on
technology as well as a woman’s relationships to technology and
to the Symbolic Gendering of technology. Gender Positionality allows for the exploration of the nuanced relationship between gender and technology as we as designers explore femininely
gendered technologies.
This brings me to the second reason it is relevant to HCI, when
examining technology and gender from this perspective, it is
important to note that a binary concept of gender may be inadequate for the task at hand. Binary gender is the notion that Individual Gender identity follows physical gender. Binary gender is what
we assume when we do experimental studies where we group
people by bodily traits, by sex, thus HCI research that treats gender
as parameterizable is susceptible to critiques about binary gender.
Faulkner’s ethnographic research on gender and technology (Dourish, 2006; Faulkner, 2000a, 2001) illustrates that the relationship
is more complex than binary patterns of gender would allow. Consequently, echoing Butler (2006), I call for a non-binary treatment
of gender in approaching technology and technology use.5 Butler
argues grouping men and women by sex enforces heteronormativity,
that is an assumption that Individual Gender identity follows sex, and
as such robs men and women of flexible gender definitions. While
Butler as a queer theorist uses this to argue for the inclusion of
gay and lesbian identities in gender theory, it is just as relevant for
Individual Gender characteristics that go against Structural Gender
for straight individuals. We need to move past binary gender in order
to allow a flexible discussion of gender and technology.
5
My critique is less of the studies themselves, as binary gender is an organizing
feature of Structural Gender norms, rather than of how these studies are applied. They
suggest we need to adopt extreme care in using these studies findings as a starting
point for design.
The question then is how does binary gender relate to Harding’s
three forms of gender? While Gender Structure is enacted in relation to hegemonic binary gender norms, these norms are being
redefined and reconstructed. Binary gender is then something that
we can theoretically move beyond, and indeed one could argue a
more flexible normative categorization of gender is occurring,
while at the same time the work of gender is enacted primarily relative to binary gender. Individual and Gender Structure then are
both changing, and at a theoretical level neither need to be binary.
It is critical to recognize that while I am calling for a non-binary
treatment of gender with regards to theory, in everyday life binary
treatments of gender do exist in society. Individual identity and
Structural Gender are created in relation to binary gender norms,
though individual constructions can be non-binary. Gender then
on the level of the individual can be constructed in a non-binary
fashion, however at the same time we can recognize a socially constructed dominant paradigm of Gender Structure which is presently constructed as largely binary. Ethnographic realism
requires practices to be documented for what they are, and real life
might rely on binary gender. However, as we construct theory
based on ethnography we cannot fall into essentialist treatments
of gender.
Similarly, essentialism is a serious critique for the HCI studies
that hope to establish the psychology of gender. Further, in line
with Butler’s vision we can recognize that a more nuanced paradigm of both individual and Structural Gender that allows for more
flexible combination of physical sex and gendered traits is needed.
This allows for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, and transsexual
identities, and by extension, Technical Femininity and a-technical
masculinity. At the same time it provides flexibility given that society is still struggling with incorporating these attitudes into its
existing binary framework of Structural Gender. Gender Positionality
allows for a non-binary treatment of gender in HCI, which is critical
for creating theoretical framework for redefining gendered attitudes towards technologies.
3.3. Lived Body Experience
Finally, a third theoretical approach to gender is Young’s Lived
Body Experience (Young, 2005). This is a non-binary treatment for
gender, which can be used to further investigate technology use.
Young’s approach dispenses with categorization of sex and gender,
which Young argues is limiting in that it should not be treated
independent of other factors such as race, class, disability and so
forth. Further, Young argues these cannot merely be treated in an
additive fashion. The Lived Body approach, as proposed by Moi
(1999), focuses on the physical experiences of the body in a particular socio-cultural context. Thus, it is critical to study experience
in situ, hence my call in the introduction for needing to explore real
world settings.
The Lived Body approach’s relevance to HCI lies in that gender is
just one axis of life experience. Embodiment is achieved in relationship to many different aspects of experience. The Lived Body
approach is not tied to definitions of gender, class, or race. It concentrates on the perspective of the individual living in a particular
socio-cultural context, as Young explains:
The person always faces the material facts of her body and its
relation to the environment. Her bodily organs have certain
feeling capacities and function in determinate ways; her size,
age, health and training make her capable of strength and
movement in relation to her environment in specific ways.
Her skin has a particular color, her face determinate features,
her hair particular color and texture, each with their own aesthetic properties. Her specific body lives in a specific context
– crowded by other people, anchored to the earth by gravity,
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(that is, one in which gender roles are mutually constituted.) Gender Positionality is founded on critiques of other relational conceptions of gender.
For instance, while cultural feminists have argued for a reappraisal of the values and characteristics defined as masculine and
feminine, they have nonetheless accepted those attributions as given; and while poststructuralist gender scholars have pursued a
deconstruction of gender roles and gender rhetoric, their approach
fails to provide a position from which political reform can be
achieved. In her Gender Positionality framework, Alcoff presents
an alternative to these approaches (Alcoff, 1988).
Broadly speaking, rather than seeking a relational position with
respect to men, Gender Positionality suggests that women are conceptualized relative to society. Since society is in a constant state of
change, this relationship is also subject to change. Alcoff elaborates
the relationship between women and society by analogizing it to a
game of chess:
J.A. Rode / Interacting with Computers 23 (2011) 393–400
surrounded by buildings and streets with a unique history,
hearing particular languages, having food and shelter available,
or not, as a result of culturally specific social processes that
make specific requirements on her to access them. All these
concrete material relations of a person’s bodily existence and
her physical and social environment constitute her facticity
(Young, 2005, p. 16).
4. Conclusions: a new approach to gender
While prior treatments of gender in HCI have attempted to
parameterize gender, reify Structural Gender through the creation
of gender-specific technology, or argue on theoretical grounds that
it is an irrelevant abstraction, here I have presented three importance pieces of social science theory that provide new ways of
engaging with gender, each of which have important implications
for HCI. First, in this article I have argued that a masculine culture
of design can alienate female users producing Gender Inauthenticity. Consequently, as designers we have the opportunity to ascribe
values to our technology that encourage progressive attitudes towards gender roles, especially towards feminine Values (Alsheikh
et al., 2011; Friedman, 1996; Kaye, 2007). In doing so I have shown
technology is gendered affecting women’s opportunities, making
Liberal Feminism an untenable starting point for design. Second,
I presented Gender Positionality which allows for gender to be produced and enacted in everyday life; further, in using it I argued
how gender and technical identity are being co-constructed and
both are subject to redefinition and reinstruction. Here I called
for nuance to avoid essentialism and binary treatments of gender
and discuss adopting Harding’s more precise vocabulary of Individual, Structural and Symbolic Gender. I demonstrated how we must
approach experimental studies in HCI that reify binary gender,
and instead suggest qualitative work that allows for nuanced
understanding of non-binary gender identity as it is co-constructed
alongside technological identity. Finally, I argued we need to consider the Lived Body Experience and how our technology interac-
tions are embodied within it. Not only are the physical
experiences of our bodies situated in a particular socio-cultural
context, they are part of a socio-technical context as well. This
means we cannot afford to ignore gender in ethnomethodological
or other ethnographic forms of analysis. A Lived Body approach
brings gender into the discussion of embodiment: beyond that a
Lived Body approach indicates that the treatment of gender I have
suggested above is appropriate for issues of class, race, and physical ability. Consequently, a Lived Body approach can allow us to
move beyond the co-construction of gender and technical identity,
to the co-construction of technical identity and a broader sense of
embodied identity which includes aspects of gender, class, race
and physical ability. In doing so we can ensure the experiences
of technology are more broadly inclusive for a broader range of life
experiences.
Here I have argued for three specific feminist theories, Technology as Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience, in that they allowed me to overturn assumptions present in
HCI’s current treatment of gender. However, these are only a few of
many Feminist theories. Radical Feminism; Marxist and Socialist
Feminism; Psychoanalytic Feminism; Multicultural, Global, and
Postcolonial Feminism; Ecofeminism; and Postmodern and Third
Wave Feminism all likely offer other insights. As a community,
feminist HCI needs to engage with and develop fluency in the various forms of feminist theory before we can begin to create critiques and responses. Only then can we develop a comprehensive
feminist critical theory of HCI.
A starting point for a feminist theory of HCI, if we do indeed
wish to embrace a more considered perspective of gender and address the disparity of women in science and engineering, is that we
need to understand this process of co-construction of technical and
feminine identity. A deep understanding of these practices will allow for the creation of technologies that support these practices for
a broader range of women. This requires a focus on gender as an
aspect of everyday life, as well as an examination of gender as a social product – that is, looking at the ways in which gender roles are
enacted and performed in everyday action. As researchers we need
to stop attempting to answer the question ‘‘do women and men
display different aptitudes for technological tasks?’’ but rather,
‘‘how are beliefs and use of technology embedded in the production and ongoing management of gender in the world?’’ Engaging
with rich theoretical practices such as Technology as Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience and using them
to ground qualitative research to generate best practice are critical
for a program of Gender Sensitive Design—my term for Value Sensitive Design to support Feminist design goals (Rode, 2008). Such a
program of feminist design would focus on creating technologies
that afford Technical Femininity, as well as and other forms of flexible definitions of gender and technological identity. This sort of
theoretically motivated design could address Gender Inauthenticity
and in turn might ease the participation gap in computer science
and engineering. Engaging with gender theory and constructing
our own socio-technical theories of gender is a vital component
in any program of Gender Sensitive Design.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Paul Dourish, Genevieve Bell, Sean Goggins, Andrea
Forte, Melinda Sebastian, and Rachel Magee as well as anonymous
reviewers for comments on this article. This work was funded by
NSF 1048515, Google and Nokia.
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