Technology is gendered. From the philosophy behind it, to the design and construction of it, to the uses to which it is put, to the social structures it uses and supports, technology incorporates gender. Feminist theory, and especially the work on women and technology, asks the fundamental question of _how_ technology is gendered. How do the machines, methods, and social organizations of technology reflect, support, or undermine gender roles? With specific focus on geographic information systems(GIS), what are the impacts of this gendering on women as geographers, as GIS practitioners, and as the focus of geographic study?
Feminist theory provides various paths of analysis when focused on GIS. Three distinct categories emerge: (1) the impact that GIS has on the status of women in geography (here I focus only on academic geography, but clearly the status of women in the private sector is also affected); (2) the visibility of women in GIS-centered research; and (3) feminist critiques of science, epistemology and methodology (the praxis of GIS). I will briefly outline the types of analysis which can illuminate each of these topics.
(1) The Jobs in Geography listings make clear that skills in GIS are becoming increasingly important as a prerequisite of academic jobs; female representation among_GIS_ faculty is lower than female representation among geography faculty. It may be that the gains in status that women have made in geography are eroding because they do not utilize the technology to the extent that men do. In addition, GIS has added a masculine layer to the culture of academic geography. With the introduction of computer science (the basis of GIS technology), the masculine computer culture spread into geography more than it would have with less intensive use of the machines. Many women avoid this culture, not only because they may not have the background and skills necessary to function in it easily, but also because the masculine climate created can be an uncomfortable one in which to work. Researchers in women and computers posit that women may actively avoid computer-intensive work, opting instead for a work environment which is more personally interactive and for research topics which are more contextual (e.g. Lloyd and Newell, 1985). This does not bode well for the future of women in a geography heading for increased use of GIS.
The history of the workplace demonstrates that as certain jobs are deskilled, they are assigned to women (e.g. Cockburn, 1985). Thus certain skilled industrial processes were broken down into a series of unskilled procedures which were then given to women to do at much lower wages. Although computer programming was initially considered a clerical (female) task, it was reassigned to men when it was professionalized. Currently, the level of skill in programming is again being reduced - just as an increasing number of women are entering the field. Within GIS, it is perhaps too soon to tell if a similar pattern will emerge. With more and more private companies adopting GIS and a growing number of women trained at the baccalaureate and masters levels, things could conceivably go either way: women could become established as GIS professionals, or they could be assigned to `clerical' GIS functions. Note that `clerical' in this context does not necessarily refer to mindless digitizing or data entry. GIS is following the path of computer programming in that tasks which were previously highly skilled are now more automated and thus less skilled. The historical and current patterns of the work force suggest that this second path is more likely. Within academic geography, a similar pattern could emerge. GIS is increasingly a skill which geographers are expected to possess, yet the highly technical aspects -- as opposed to the skills for use or application -- may constitute a separate category: a category made up predominantly of men. A predictable outcome would be a power/influence /funding differential with distinct gender characteristics.
(2) Since feminist geography emerged in the 1970s and 80s, the discipline has been giving increasing acknowledgement to how women have been hidden in much of traditional geographic analysis, thus leaving women's lives unexamined. Feminist geography is working to fill in those gaps. GIS research becomes problematic, however, since it often depends at least in part on existing databases. Census records, for example, tend to obscure women's lives by building certain assumptions about roles and activities into the questions and categories. Few existing data bases contain as complete data about women or other marginalized groups as they do for dominant groups. Including true measures of women's lives needs to be an intentional and deliberate project. Even then there are questions if the discrete design of computer data sets can accurately capture the complexities of (especially marginalized) lives (e.g. Damarin, 1993).
It is not only demographic or social science data sets which hide gender differences. Natural resource data sets can also obscure women's lives and women's interaction with their environments. Rocheleau (1995) describes how satellite images of land use can easily conceal women's use of that land. With out a deliberate search for alternate methods, the gendered nature of both land use and land use maps would remain invisible. This was not a situation whereby a data set could be tweaked to reveal new information. The remotely sensed data layer had to be supplemented with a ground up view.
(3) Feminist critiques of science, its epistemology and methodology can also be used to shed light on gender issues in GIS. GIS is born of positivist science, a model which feminists, among others, have found inadequate. Other ways of creating knowledge are necessarily included in feminist methodology; GIS has not yet incorporated them. Computers are designed to use neat, clean, mutually exclusive categories. This vision of reality built into the database is reflected in the binary design of the machine itself. Feminist researchers of science, on the other hand, look to fluid, changing and possibly conflicting views of the world. If we force these knowledges into the designed structure of the computer, something must get lost.
I suggest that GIS become one method in a more inclusive methodology, one which insists on including other types of knowledge. There is no reason that GIS structure need determine an entire research project. While GIS can be a very useful technology, other forms of knowledge which resist GIS/computer structure can certainly be incorporated. A recipe metaphor is useful here: certain knowledge is to be put through the data processor, but other knowledge must be carefully folded in by hand. Without both of these steps, the final product is not complete.
Clearly these gender issues intersect the concepts chosen for the Specialist Meeting. If all social action is gendered, as I contend, then GIS praxis will contain gender issues. I add just a few other comments. Concept (3) asks how the knowledge and need of marginal social groups can be incorporated into GIS-based decision making. I would add a prior question: _can_ that knowledge be incorporated into current GIS praxis without major and/ or detrimental transformation? If we foster a change in GIS praxis to a more inclusive methodology, the needs of marginal groups might be better served. Administration and control issues surround this technology as well, not only in terms of who controls the research, but also in terms of who holds power within the technology itself. Without a full understanding of that dynamic, a full understanding of the possible utilization of the technology by others is less likely. Gender issues embedded in data collection and database construction, for example, are relatively easy to identify and analyze _if_ someone looks for them. But biases held within the technology resulting from the world views of the designers are harder to ferret out. Women's position outside technology can help to illuminate these issues for other marginalized groups as well.
My dissertation, "Theorizing GIS: A Feminist
Perspective," (expected completion August, 1996) explores
these issues as well as other topics in GIS which can be
illuminated through feminist theory. I am interested in studying
this technology from a science and technology studies (STS)
perspective: how does GIS compare with other computer-based
technologies and with technologies throughout history? If
technology is inherently a means to dominate nature, how can we
reconcile that philosophy with what we would like to be an
environmentally friendly geography? And, especially, what are the
gender issues embedded in all of this?
Cockburn, Cynthia. 1985. Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men and Technical Know-How. London: Pluto Press.
Damarin, Suzanne K. 1993. "Technologies of the Individual: Women and Subjectivity in the Age of Information." Research in Philosophy and Technology Volume 13: Technology and Feminism.
Lloyd, Anne and Newell, Liz. 1985. "Women and Computers." in Faulkner, Wendy and Arnold, Erik. Smothered by Invention: Technology in Women's Lives, London: Pluto Press.
Rocheleau, Dianne. 1995. "Maps, Numbers, Text, and
Context: Mixing Methods in Feminist Political Ecology."
Professional Geographer, 47(4): 458-466.