ABSTRACT
Research to date has (almost universally) found that women are more attracted to computer courses that emphasise social issues and computer applications than to traditional science-based computer courses (Siann 1997). In terms of numbers alone, our research would seem to support this contention. Women
constituted just 20 per cent of all CS students but over 50 per cent of ID students. In addition, women appeared to fare well, in terms of formal outcomes on both courses, but especially well on the ID course. However, in this chapter, we want to argue that, in attempting to assess the extent to which dominant gender constructions can be resisted or overturned, attention must be paid not only to formal outcomes such as pass rates, results and grades, but also more informal outcomes, including perceived levels of competence and confidence amongst the student groups. It is in assessing these levels of competence and confidence that it becomes clear how these relate to the extent to which students are able not only to acquire technical skills but to own that acquisition at a more subjective level, as part of their overall identities. We shall argue that it is this process – the ‘internalisation’ or ‘ownership’ of technical skills – that is inhibited by their continual exposure to constructions of gender-technology relations that offer women only marginal or ‘outsider’ status within technological cultures.
