Essay21Feb
upload below:
Alice, Comparative essay
The Future Looms - Sadie Plant
When Computers Were Women - Jennifer Light
Question - is there a deeper, natural connection between women and technology, particularly between women and software? Does software have a gender?
This essay is meant to compare and discuss two different texts relating to women in computing. Both essays were written by women, and both were published in 1999. The first text considered here is 'When Computers Were Women', by Jennifer Light, an essay discussing women's contribution into the technology world during and after the second World War. The second essay is 'The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics', by Sadie Plant. In this case, the author looks back at the computational icon of the 19th century, Ada Lovelace, and draws the relationship between women and computers through the practice of weaving.
The main theses of this essay relates to the idea that women and software are somehow interconnected. The two texts take two different approaches to the 'feminine' aspect of software development. One deems it inherent to the female spirit, while the other looks at gendering an occupation, a process that diminished its importance in the eyes of the general public and the media. It is important to note that, even though both texts were written by women, they often present the points of views of the men that were also present in the same context.
Both essays make reference to two real-life examples of women working in technology. Plant focuses her essay on the well-known Ada Lovelace, today an icon of women in computing, who worked with Charles Babbage in the 1800s on his Analytical Engine, a computer that could perform simple calculations. Respectively, the second essay presents the work of women in technology during and after the second World War, particularly on the ENIAC computer, which calculated ballistics trajectories. In both cases, women with great mathematical skills were assigned the software side of the project, while the men were in change with designing and building the hardware. In the case of the ENIAC, a large number of recent female graduates were hired due to the shortages in male workforce. This was a consequence of men being sent to war, a purely practical economical reason for women to replace men in their previous positions. Ada Lovelace, on the other hand, was a highly privileged woman with a natural affinity to mathematics and computing, which led to her involvement with the Analytical Engine. Therefore, we are looking at women from different time periods and contexts, who got involved in technology for very different reasons. Here, we can also highlight an important distinction between the viewpoints of the two essays—the first one looks at the relationship between women and software from a philosophical perspective, the second one focusing on a more material viewpoint.
The idea that software and women are interlaced is developed in both texts, although from very different perspectives. Sadie Plant dives deep into history, looking at how weaving, a very sophisticated and programmatic practice of arranging threads into a particular patters, has always been associated with women. Rather than being dismissed as "women's work", as it is in the case of ENIAC, the importance and complexity of weaving is clearly recognized. Moreover, the design of Babbage's Analytical Engine is based on the design of the first automated loom, which used punch cards to record patterns of weaving, much like the algorithms used in programming. Plant states that, since weaving came so naturally to women throughout history, programming should have the same kind of connection.
In contrast, the programming work women were doing during World War Two, even though just as intricate, was seen as less important than whatever men were working on. The assumption that software simply reproduces the same notions and computations over and over again is clearly meant to suggest that the work that is put into programming is menial and of less importance than that of building hardware. The male engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics considered that doing computational work was a waste of their skills and time, and that these tasks should be assigned to women instead. Thus, women and software both were considered to be working in the service of men, the software being a subordinate of the hardware.
Both weaving and computational work required, then more than now, working in a particular rhythm. Mechanization has generally transformed the natural rhythms in which women were weaving and making calculations by hand, and machines have taken over production in many areas where women used to work manually. When such developments occur, the manual work that came before, and ultimately helped this development take place, is often overlooked. This was the case of ENIAC, whose software was based on, and built through the manual work of women. The machine's achievements were ultimately praised completely independently of all the labour behind it. The software was seen as an invisible layer, hidden inside the physical machine build by the men, working in the interest of the man and his machine. Surprisingly, in the case of Ada, her legacy lived on way further than that of Babbage, through the ADA programming language used by the US Defence Department.
The two perspectives of the relationship between women and software are extremely different. On one hand, the complexity of software development is inherent to the way in which women have always worked. This viewpoint recognizes the work of women at the level of excellence at which they were performing, as well as the abstract aspect of their work which made it less approachable for men. On the other hand, the repetitive aspect of programming is seen as a form of clerical work with less value than engineering in Light's essay. In this case, "women's work" is no longer considered complex and abstract, but rather menial and unimportant, compared to the work that men were performing, and therefore pushed into anonymity.
As stated earlier, women's work in software is presented in dual form - as repetitive work that simulates and reproduces reality, or as conceptual work rooted deep into the history of humanity. In both perspectives, the work is given a gender, female. I believe the conceptualization of software as weaving is more than a metaphor, but a view based in reality. An example here would be the women working on the Apollo software which was hand-woven to contain all the 0s and 1s necessary for takeoff into space. Dismissing the work of women as simple and repetitive is a gross underestimation of the complexity of the patterns they create.
Tash
On female authorship in American and Indonesian literary history
Comparing interviews: with Ursula Le Guin and with Melani Budianta
In Western literary history, the exclusion and distortion of female authorship has been a feature of feminist critique for some time. This is not the case all over the world. A country like Indonesia is at a different juncture in the evolution of both their literary tradition and their experience of feminism. Without a history of suffrage but with more volatile political and religious tensions, equality in Indonesia is grounded in a different context. So what is the current role of women’s writing in their respective canons? In her 1995 interview I am a Woman Writer, I am a Western Writer, author Ursula Le Guin discusses this issue, and shares her personal experiences dealing with the male-dominated literary establishment. Twenty years later, in an interview with Jurnal Perempuan (Women’s Journal) acclaimed Indonesian critic Melani Budianta examines similar questions in the context of Indonesian literature. Together, Le Guin and Budianta each help chart the rise, fall and current position of female authorship in American and Indonesian literature.
To begin with, both Le Guin and Budianta express a similar discontent with the representation of women in the recording of literary history. Both stress the way that male writers are more widely recognized and canonized than their female counterparts. Furthermore, in the instances when female writers have entered the literary ‘mainstream’, there is resistance. Le Guin (p.197) is emphatic in her reaction: “It just seems so damn silly to me to leave out half our writers. Nearly half of our fiction has been written by women. Often while they were alive these women were beloved and popular, respected, but as soon as they died the lid went on.” Budianta’s tone is more studied, academic, as she points out that the minimization of women’s writing in literary history has always been a reflection of women’s value in wider society. As such, “…there is no such thing as a golden age for women writers. They rise and then they fall.” In contrast to male authors, the status of women’s writing is never permanent, but requires effort to maintain.
Another issue brought up by both Le Guin and Budianta is the underrepresentation of women in the structures which manage the literary field. The older, more established Western publishing industry is deeply male-dominated. Le Guin points out that though nearly half of American fiction has been written by women, power still lies with the male editors, publishers and critics. Using concrete examples of literary prizes, she points out that “…writing in both poetry and fiction, is about fifty-fifty men and women, but prizes, grants, and awards are nowhere near fifty-fifty.” In much the same way, Budianta laments the dominance of men in Indonesian editorship and academia. Where she does diverge from Le Guin, is her focus on culture as the root of this gender bias. Budianta points out that traditionally, the activities of Indonesian women were restricted to the private sphere, while literature was governed by men – those who could engage in public life, in the workplace, in politics. In this way, men became the gatekeepers of the book as a medium.
With the problems exposed, Le Guin moves on to explore several key feminist responses to the literary tradition. Speaking primarily of women writers of the 21st century, like Virginia Woolf and herself, Le Guin outlines two early approaches: those who imitate men’s writing to become more canonical, to those who passionately defend l’écriture feminine. Of her own generation she says: “We’re learning how to write as women. A lot of us feel that we've found our voices.” (p. 197) For them, the challenge now has less to do with the formation of a women’s tradition, but with inserting this writing into the mainstream. The situation is different for Indonesian women’s writing, however. In her interview, Budianta spends some time speaking of a new crop of Indonesian women writers who are exploring female sexuality and experience for the first time. In 2016, Indonesian women are only beginning to make the transition from object to subject. In this way, the state of feminist literary critique in Indonesia today is perhaps more similar to that of 1970s America.
Another point of difference between American and Indonesian literature is the state of documentation of women’s writing. While Le Guin provides several examples of how feminists have uncovered and promoted women writers over the last fifteen years, Budianta notes that there are many blind spots in Indonesian literary history. Much of the country’s more informal writing ephemera have never been archived, and the first novel by a female author to be included in the National Library was only written in 1930. Budianta asserts that “It is now our task as literary critics to document and question these practices and attitudes.” That there are more successful women authors in Indonesia than before, and more women in academia, are encouraging developments.
To round up her analysis of the current position of Indonesian women writers, Budianta also mentions the country’s political climate. Having spent most of the last 50 years under a dictatorship, one of the things which makes Indonesia’s literary history so distinct to America’s is its experience with censorship. During Soeharto’s presidency, censorship was mostly focussed on restricting political and ideological language. Coming out from under this media environment, Indonesia experienced a period of significant growth and prosperity. However, in the last ten years, new forces are coming into play: that of religious extremism and social censorship. Budianta notes that today, there is a tension between the more progressive urban population and the more conservative majority. The obstacles that face Western writers are more subtle. In America, Le Guin is certain that things are changing, but it’s not so much about who is writing and what is being written as much as who is reading. It’s about fighting the assumption that “If it's about men everybody wants it; if it's about women it's only for women.”
In conclusion, though they speak from different times and of different cultures, Le Guin and Budianta are both feminists challenging a male-dominated literary tradition. They both speak of the rising status of women authors in literary tradition, and the feminist work needed to maintain this trend towards diversity and equality. Ultimately, what is clear is that the Western context is more developed in both directions – in that it has a more established male-dominated canon but also a stronger tradition of feminist criticism. For Indonesian writers, history presents less resistance. The key challenge instead, lies in overcoming contemporary political and religious censorship.
References:
Walsh, W., Le Guin, U. (1995) I am a woman writer; I am a western writer: an interview with Ursula Le Guin. Kenyon Review 17(3/4).
Wijaksana M. (2016) Melani Budianta: Merekam Perempuan Penulis Dalam Sejarah Kesusastraan. [Online] Available at: http://www.jurnalperempuan.org/9/post/2016/03/melani-budianta-merekam-perempuan-penulis-dalam-sejarah-kesusastraan.html (Accessed 02/12/18).
Joca
Using the stereotype
Could mechanisms that excluded women from information science, empower them now?
Totally different worlds; This is what you encounter when comparing the student body of a course in library science with a programme focused on information science. Although both disciplines are closely related, librarians are framed to be mostly female, while information science is the domain of men. This gender divide is changing however.
In Information Science: Not Just for Boys Anymore Jennifer Gilley (2006) compares the male/female ratio of different information science courses in the United States. Although this discipline traditionally has a higher percentage of male students, some courses have 50/50 split. The differences in student population are however significant when comparing Master's that are accredited by the American Librarian Association (ALA) with non-ALA-accredited programmes. The ALA designated programmes have a higher than average percentage of female students, while the opposite is true for information science courses that have no affiliation with any library science course.
Gilley dives further into this phenomenon and finds out that this is a side effect of the growing convergence of library science and information science. Library schools are merging both disciplines to adapt to this development. The label of librarian influences the image that prospective students have of a specific information science master's. A course inside a librarian school, with an ALA accreditation, emphasizes the values traditionally connected to librarianship: The commitment to help people, though now in a more technology-oriented context. According to Gilley, the focus on this service ethic makes the field of information science more appealing to women. Studies show that the ability to help people, is one of the main characteristics women look for when choosing a career.
This is quite a paradoxal situation. To empower women to enter a male-dominated discipline, one of the mechanism that degrade work typically done by women is used: domestication of the profession, and the push of women to offer service and take care of people. It certainly has a positive result for the number of women in information science education, but to what extent can we use this strategy to improve the image of the librarian?
Service as the essence
Librarianship started to be positioned as a female profession by the end of the 19th century. Charles Dewey, the founder of the first library school and the decimal classification system used in many libraries today, believed that it was the perfect career for women who graduated from college; they had the right combination of intellectual capacity and social skills to provide service for users of the library.
Dewey laid the foundations of modern librarianship and his principles were followed in other countries as well, for example in Brazil. Maria Mary Ferreira goes deepter into this context in O profissional da informação no mundo do trabalho e as relações de gênero (2012). She cites Castro (1997) to show that the development of female librarians started in Brazil from the 1920's, as the 'institutionalization of the profession coincides with the feminization of it.'
Although the societal position of women improved at the time, the choice of careers for women was limited. The ones left, like librarianship, were part of the process of domestication of women. The hierarchical relation between dominant men and serving women was part of the education, and steered the possible career choices. Girls were stimulated to look for jobs that focus on giving care, and 'not focus on the use of reason.' (Belotti, 1987) This made the public image of Library Science similar to a discipline like Pedagogy.
Dividing the profession
Before the 'feminization' of Library Science, the field was the territory of male intellectuals, who were often at the same time writers and early information scientists. In contrast to modern librarianship, these people had not the aim to primarily help library users. Their focus was on the organization of the library, the categorization of the information and development of a complete collection.
Librarianship had an image of skilled work at the time, but this changed when the concept of the modern librarian was developed. One of the examplary cases of that according to Jennifer Gilley is the Williamson Report. This research from 1923 had the aim to create standards in library education. The outcomes were a division between skilled work and clerical work, and a recommendation to professionalize the discipline by obligatory higher education and a bigger influx of men.
After this report, librarianship got seperated into two disciplines. The librarian would do the clerical work, and help the users in the library itself. This work was mostly done by women, who got a short education to train them for the technical skills required for the profession. The skilled work went to a field that developed into information science. This field attracts more men, focuses on organizing information on a more abstract level and has a higher status then library sciences.
In the 90's an effort to counter this development started. To illustrate this redefinition of library science and information science, Gilley refers to KALIPER: the Kellogg-ALISE Information Professions and Education Renewal Project. It enabled four library schools to create courses that include an education information science, starting in 1994-1996. In 1998 all curricula of schools in this discipline were analyzed, to examine the state of library science education at that moment. KALIPER does not analyze the gender issues in the field. Feminist librarians like Suzanne Hildenbrand and Sarah Pritchard warn however that the increasing role of technology in librarianship could have the same result as the Williamson Report: the enforcement of male-dominated hierarchies that result in a difference in status and salary.
Gilley argues however that the current number of female students in information science programmes proofs the opposite. She thinks that differences between librarians and information scientists in terms of gender division, public image and salary, will disappear in the future, because library science and information science merge into one discipline in which both men and women are equally represented.
Creative solutions
It seems that it is effective to disguise information science as a field that appeals to the traditional female image, especially when the outcome is a better image of the librarian and the information scientist in the end. Isn't it that 'the formerly negative image of the "feminine" profession can be transformed if both sexes cooperate in recognizing problems and offering creative solutions'? (Freedman, 1970)
But is this really going to happen? Ferreira draws a number of conclusions from her research on the Brazilian librarian from the perspective of gender. She believes that discussing the gender issues, means to revaluate the work of the female librarian. To improve the image of the librarian, the profession and the society needs to change its position towards the value of women's work. In that respect, even the female preference for careers in care and service is not set in stone. As Ferreira states in her article, girls were educated to have this preference.
Taking these considerations into account, it is counter productive to attract more women to information science highlighting the ability to help people using the discipline. At least as long as the social and service aspects of a profession are seen as female and inferior. When all these factors don't change the result will be that people start to devaluate the now 'feminized' work of the information scientist. A scenario that looks uncanningly similar to what happened to library science in the past.
back to methods:
Angeliki
Oral memorization in Orality and Literacy (1982) by Walter J. Ong Typewriter (1986) by Friedrich Kittler
How repetitive bodily tasks affect the knowledge production in both oral and literate cultures?