History has gone through various phases and the gradual and current emancipation of women has been present at all times.
I do not have to say that the achievements of women are various in the present date, we all know that, but is still visible that gender is even now a big issue in societies- all of them.
The attempts to fight inequality in all grounds (religion, race, beliefs, gender) are many and hopefully with big victories. The problem is when the minorities themselves do not make effort to change history patterns. I am not saying that women do not choose IT for their careers because the society says so, I am trying to point that they do not choose that specific area because from early age they see that field attached to men.
IT is seen as a male dominant area- this is a fact! To explain this we have one example of the article that states that children (both girls and boys) see computers as a ´boys toy´. This happens because ´boys are more likely than girls to choose to play with computers´, nevertheless boys and girls are both expert using computers.
What really calls my attention in this article is the ‘option’, in other words, the fact that women do not actually choose IT. Is their option to choose or not other areas! It is all about choices. In this case, choices made by a standard way of thinking, that can definitively conduct (unconscientiously) peoples minds.
Being so is not hard to see how choices are made when they grow up.
The way that female children and students are mentored can be the main reason for this condition and can represent the solution as well. And this is what is suggested in the article – a mentoring programme – the same that was useful in Monash University.
To look at this situation we have first and foremost attend to the culture in question. Obviously more westernized is a culture, less this phenomena tends to happen, however even in the most developed societies the discrepancy of figures related to the number of women choosing IT for higher education seems to be very high.
This article was written within a programme carried out in the School of Multimedia Systems at Monash University in Australia. In that case we can see the problem affecting a well developed country.
This article identifies a matter of concern very interesting, however gendered based, it is questioning as well, how women deal with the problem themselves and in some way is showing that this is not a discrimination issue, is rather a choice and mentoring problem!
I think this was the strong point of this article.
And this idea can fall apart when I see in this article a soft proposal saying that the market needs to be proactive and recruit more women, increase the number of females in the IT departments either in companies and universities. However pointing a very interesting question, I think it could be written in a different way. And this can be seen as the weak points of the article.
I rather prefer the mentoring programme as a plan. For sure we need to encourage people to all areas, I repeat people, not women! Mixture is a natural process, it can not be forced.
Conclusion
In my opinion the authors intention in this article was achieved in the sense that we could identify why women are less present in Information Technology field. It was successful as well because after identify the problem he advocates a programme with all the capacities to be triumphant in a short run.
I would recommend this article to radical feminists that think the world in some way is against women, to show them that sometimes the fact of existing inequalities are not solely related to gender ostracism or discrimination. Sometimes we need to be more flexible and put a hand in our minds and see that maybe the problem is in ourselves.
Barbie does not have an IT degree, because she does not want to… it is a question of orientation!
Introduction to Social Enquiry
Article Review
Gender(ed) Studies: Why doesn’t Barbie have an IT Degree?
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Tutor: Dave Hodgkinson
Cláudia Xafrêdo dos Reis
BA(Hons) Humanities &Social Sciences
Year 1
