September 8th, 2009
   Vienna, Austria

Organizers:

Jennifer Rode,
   University College London
Susanne Bødker,
   University of Aarhus

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ECSCW 2009


Participant's papers


Program

Considering Gender in ECSCW

In light of an increasing interest in gender and technology, there is a need to discuss how these relate to CSCW. By organizing this one day workshop we hope to encourage CSCW research in this area and promote better design that takes into account gender differences.

Workshop Goals

This workshop looks at the roll of gender within ECSCW. This workshop will discuss a number of approaches to gender and technology, some which are known to the existing ECSCW community interested in gender, as well as, some new approaches. We will discuss the implications of Liberal Feminism, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience, amongst other theoretical approaches to gender.

This workshop will provide a forum for discussing both gender as it is currently formulated within the ECSCW literature, as well as, new aspects of gender theory that might be pulled from the gender studies, and feminist science and technology studies community to strengthen ECSCW's treatment of gender. Issues of discussion during the workshop includes:
  • Understanding the current literature within ECSCW on gender and related theory, including the ethnomethodological perspective.
  • Discus perspectives on gender found in the larger HCI community including Liberal Feminism and experimental studies of gender.
  • Bring in new perspectives of gender from oustide ECSCW from the Gender Studies and the Feminist Science and Technologies Studies community, these include but are not limited to:
    • Alcoff's Gender Positionality (1988)
    • Cockburn's notion of Technology as Masculine Culture (1992)
    • Young's Lived Body Experience (2005)
    • Haraway's Cyborg Feminsm (2007)
    • Others as brought forward by attendees
  • Pulling these theories together and discussing how ECSCW should treat gender going forward.

Call for participation

To particiapte please send a 2-4 page position paper to the organizers by the 27th June 2009. Acceptance notifications will be sent by 6th July 2009. Papers should be in the ECSCW format. See the call for more details.

About the Organizers

Jennifer Rode is a Lecturer (equivellent to Assistant Professor) at the University College London, Interaction Center. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Irvine, where she worked with Paul Dourish. Her dissertation was an ethnographic study of domestic technologies, looking forward at the implications for designing the smart home of the future. In particular she looked at the programming of domestic appliances, and differences in how individual co-construct their gender and their technical identity. She has ten years of experience in the HCI industry beyond her formal studies as a usability engineer, ethnographer and consultant, working on product design and evaluation. See more at Jennifer's website.

Susanne Bødker is professor of human-computer interaction at Aarhus University. She is concerned with information technology in use and does empirical as well as theoretical work on use and design of IT. She has worked with gender and design as many of her research projects on computer support for cooperative work and participatory design. See more at Susanne's website.