Engendering ICT: Emerging women ICT professionals in Aotearoa–New Zealand Diane P. McCarthy A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts At the University of Otago, Dunedin New Zealand Date: 28 October 2009 Abstract A significant challenge to Aotearoa/New Zealand’s involvement in the global knowledge economy, especially in recession mode, is enabling the participation of women from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) training and education. Women are significantly less involved as ICT specialists in business and academia, earn less, yet represent diverse households. Multiple pathways to training and retention need to be traced and understood, as well as formulating possible strategies to enable counter-discourses to emerge. A better understanding of these complex interactions between women’s subjectivities, agency and power may benefit women, the wider community and economy through transformative change. This thesis seeks to make sense of ways that emerging and new ICT professionals took up, resisted and/or subverted masculinised training discourses in two Te Wai Pounaumu (South Island) polytechnic institutes of technology (ITPs). Participants volunteered from three of the four diploma and degree programmes of study that led to employment in the ICT industry in 2007. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews in focus groups. Comprised by their year group, or as recent graduates, six groups met up to three times for about an hour. Groups met face to face or online in chat mode in the Moodle Learning Management System. Individual in depth interviews took place with a significant group member once these sessions concluded. NVIVO 7 was used as a repository to manage the large amount of data, and to identify and code the discourses from transcripts. The referencing format is APA version 5. The overarching research question, guiding this research project, is: How do emerging women IT professionals in two ITPs in Te Wai Pounaumu (South Island) of Aotearoa-New Zealand experience their education, training and initial workplaces? Specific research questions include: In these local institutional settings, what are the demographics of all of the students who have taken up training and education in ICT? ii What are the dominant discourses underpinning women students’ attempts to make sense of their undergraduate setting of ICT training and education in a New Zealand polytechnic environment? How does subjectification as a woman student/new professional in ICT constrain, empower, and/or modify her agency? How can these educational institutions do better to encourage a greater participation of women students in ICT? The 2007 mid-year student demographics were used to provide background quantitative data about the characteristics of the intake as a whole, and to contextualize the participants. Discourse analysis was used to interpret how women students’ and graduates made sense of their subjectivities, agency and power as emerging ICT professionals within their training programmes and workplaces. This analysis was informed by a blended technofeminist poststructuralist analytical framework. The dominant discourse of “Constraint” and the counter discourses of “Resistance and Resilience ,” and “Empowerment” were taken up by the participants to make sense of their training and employment. Co-created femininities and masculinities in these settings were analysed as subjects-in-process: mobile, lack, deferred, constituted and performative. The interplay between subjectivity, discourse, agency and power in taking up ICT training and employment was interpreted. Possible strategies to make ICT training more accessible, enjoyable and meaningful to women in neoliberal times were explored as well as further research. iii Acknowledgements The completion of my Masters thesis is a milestone to celebrate as a lifelong learner. I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of a Masters Building Research Capacity in the Social Sciences (BRCSS) grant and an Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) travel grant. These provided me with invaluable assistance to network with other women, gender and IT sister researchers at two international Grace Hopper Celebrations of Women in Computing in 2008 and 2009 and OZWIT in 2009. It is also timely to thank my family and friends within academia and beyond for their unstinting support and encouragement. Firstly, thank you for my professional support from Murray, David, Mehdi, Trish, Catherine, Anna, Kyla, Julie, Rosemary, Karen and Susan, my supervisor, as a post graduate distance student. I thank with love my sister Julia and brother Rob, and friends-in-family Sue, Barbara, Shaun and Lorraine and Catherine. My love, respect and remembrance go to my late mother-in-law Pat, who died in 2008, my late parents Pat and Jock and father-in-law Harry, who died in early 1990s; and my treasured recently deceased aunt, Pidge. Thank you too, to my good friends; Victoria, Jenine, Alyson, Helen, Lesley and Sam, Alison, Julia, Shelley, Sylvia, the late Kate, Joy, Judith, Miro, Leone, Rose and the late Sonja. The events of the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch Earthquakes slowed my thesis revision, but I thank the examiners for enabling this work to have greater depth. To our students who are sealed away into permanent anonymity, thank you for your engagement, encouragement, and participation as we unpacked the dynamics of this gender inclusion issue, with such good humour and patience. Finally, to my husband Chris who has understood me for over 41 years and for 27 engaging years of face-to-face, txt and cell phone communication and musical performance with our daughter Megan Erana Rose, and her life partner, Peter, you are my sanctuary. While research has times of solitary confinement at a computer, it is also the sum of deep thinking and discussion with that tool. So viva ICT, and all those committed to technology as a means of creativity, transformation, and joy. iv Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Contents ...............................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Theoretical framework: blending poststructural Foucauldian, feminist and technofeminist theory...........................................................................................................6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................6 Poststructuralism ..............................................................................................................6 Feminist Poststructuralist Influences ...............................................................................7 TechnoFeminism..............................................................................................................8 Poststructural concepts.....................................................................................................9 Summary ........................................................................................................................17 Chapter 3: Discourses in Aotearoa-New Zealand Technical Education Policy ................19 Introduction ....................................................................................................................19 Beginnings: Kai Tahu, Tangata Whenua of Te Wai Pounaumu ....................................20 Colonialism and post colonial themes in Kai Tahu education .......................................21 Gender Differentiated Technical Training .....................................................................22 Egalitarian Foundations of New Zealand Education .....................................................23 Technical Education Meeting Workplace Needs as Gendered Domains ......................23 Gradual gains towards gender equity in training and employment ...............................26 Education and Neo-liberalism........................................................................................28 Technical Education as a Commodity ...........................................................................28 Summary ........................................................................................................................30 Chapter 4: Strategizing the recruitment and retention of women in ICT ..........................32 Introduction ....................................................................................................................32 The discourse of lack: overcoming women’s deficiencies as an essentialist explanation and strategy ...........................................................................................................................32 The counter-discourses of constructing positive working and learning environments..34 Poststructuralist Feminist research approaches .............................................................36 Building a sense of identity............................................................................................36 Confronting stereotypes and assumptions .....................................................................37