This important volume examines European perspectives on the historical relations that women have maintained with information and communication technologies (ICTs), since the telegraph. Features: describes how gendered networks have formed around ICT since the late 19th Century; reviews the gendered issues revealed by the conflict between the actress Ms Sylviac and the French telephone administration in 1904, or by ‘feminine’ blogs; examines how gender representations, age categories, and uses of ICT interact and are mutually formed in children’s magazines; illuminates the participation of women in the early days of computing, through a case study on the Rothamsted Statistics Department; presents a comparative study of women in computing in France, Finland and the UK, revealing similar gender divisions within the ICT professions of these countries; discusses diversity interventions and the part that history could (and should) play to ensure women do not take second place in specific occupational sectors.
Cuprins
Connecting Gender, Women and ICT in Europe.- Part I: Networks and Empowerment.- Telegraphy and the ‘New Woman’ in late Nineteenth Century Europe.- Airing the Differences.- From Marie-Claire Magazine’s Authoritative Pedagogy to the Hellocoton Blog Platform’s Knowledge Sharing.- Part II: Gendered Representations.- The Sylviac Affair (1904-1910).- The Representational Intertwinement of Gender, Age and Uses of Information and Communication Technology.- Part III: ICT and professionalization.- From Computing Girls to Data Processors.- The Gendering of the Computing Field in Finland, France and the United Kingdom Between 1960 and 1990.- Breaking the ‘Glass Slipper’.- Gender-Technology Relations in the Various Ages of Information Societies.