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NSF spending big bucks to design a “feminist computer”

Is your computer sexist?

Obama thinks so.

“The National Science Foundation (NSF) is spending over $300,000
to create ‘feminist theory’ for human interaction with
computers, and aims to make computer systems more ‘gender
sensitive,’” The Washington Free Beacon reports.

“A project led by a researcher at Drexel University theorizes
that there are fewer women in computing fields because computers
are made by men,” the Beacon reports.

Even though it’s named the National Science Foundation, the NSF
apparently rejects the scientific finding that more men are in
the computer field because male brains tend to do better with
spatial skills, while female brains do better with language,
expression and impulse control.

The project’s grant is a left-wing word salad.

The [Principal Investigator] PI’s long-term goal is to create
theory to inform [Human-Computer Interaction] HCI design
practices, to ensure the production of egalitarian designs that
reflect all users’ values.

In particular, she aims to create feminist theory for HCI, which
she hopes will close the gap in women’s participation in
computing.”

Previously, the PI has shown how approaches to designing for
women are questionable when viewed in light of feminist theory.

Feminist scholars argue that the lack of women in computing
further discourages women from pursuing programming-related
careers, and that women are also excluded because technologies
created by men better address male needs.

The PI believes the problem lies not only in who is excluded but
in that the design processes inherently alienate women.

Her approach is to address the problem by bridging previously
unrelated aspects of the learning sciences, human-computer
interaction, and the science and technology studies of gender,
which will be combined with findings from a multi-year
ethnographic study to acquire a deep understanding of how girls
co-construct their gender and technical identities, how
technologies come to be associated with one gender or the other,
and how this affects girls’ career choices.

So far the NSF has spent $345,019 studying how to build a
“feminist computer.”

The project claims computers have a gender, and it’s male.

Researchers hope to learn how “young women co-construct their
gender and technical identities, what appeals to them about
technical careers, and the process by which technology artifacts
acquire symbolic gender.”

Comments:

LaRae Bailey • 6 days ago
I think the man has a true gender identity issue and is hell
bent to prove something
• Reply•Share

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