As the introduction notes, there are several perspectives on the status of women in information technology. First is the individualist view, exemplified by the myriad how-to and advice books on the shelves, ready to advise women how to succeed (Going to the Top; Same Game, Different Rules; Breaking the Glass Ceiling; Lean In; Hardball for Women).1 These books include exhortations for women to acquire mentors, engage in networking, modulate and lower their voices, and even watch Monday Night Football so as to be able to discuss it with male colleagues on Tuesday morning.
A second perspective is found in journal articles and books that analyze institutions such as secondary schools, colleges, and universities. A third perspective, also incorporating an institutionalist viewpoint, is offered in the articles and books, if any, that direct themselves toward the industry and companies within it. Curiously, very little fills that space: no one has closely examined the positions the industry takes and what courses of action it should consider, as this book attempts to do.
A fourth perspective, possibly informing all the others, utilizes a collectivist viewpoint. These theories and schools approach the status of women generally rather than the status of individual women, as do the “how-to” and advice books. The feminist literature predominates in this “space,” as MBAs refer to areas of endeavor. The question here is, What do collective viewpoints offer that will inform institutionalist approaches? Rephrased, Do the schools of feminist thought help tell those in control of corporations and influential in the information technology industry what can or might be done?
One knowledgeable source adumbrates no fewer than nine theories or schools of feminist thought.2 The “relevant features of nine feminist theories” may be “directed toward improving the position of women in science (and, by extension, engineering and technology).” Theorists recognize the problem as a significant one because, “from the perspective of women’s studies, technology and engineering represent one of the last bastions of male domination and appear impervious to gender change.”3 In its short existence, the IT industry has been characterized as representing “technological somnambulism,” with companies controlled by persons “willing to sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence.”4
The framework of feminist theory is useful for an examination of three issues involving the relationship of gender to information technology: women in the workforce, women as users of technology, and women and technology design. The primary emphasis of this book is, of course, on the first of those three issues, that is, women in the workforce, especially those in or who aspire to senior management or governance positions.
Liberal Feminism. Much like our current Supreme Court, which regards everyone including corporations as equal before the law, no more and no less,5 liberal feminism deals with woman questions the same way. That is, “liberal feminists seek no special privileges for women and simply demand that everyone receive equal consideration without discrimination on the basis of sex.”6
Most of the organizations that attempt to advance women in the workplace and in corporate governance, such as Catalyst, the Association of University Women, the Women’s Engineering Program Advocates, or the Society of Women in Engineering, espouse this view. Either implicitly or explicitly, most women’s organizations and advocates urge equality between the sexes and no more.
Socialist Feminism. As the label implies, this approach is imbued with Marxist theory. Women form another element in the means of production, the members of which are engaged in an upward struggle to overcome past discrimination and untoward treatment (“workers unite”). “Socialist feminists . . . place gender on an equal footing with class in shaping technology.”7
Middle- and upper-class men create and design new technology. They also serve as the sources of capital for design and creation. Incorporating women as designers in, as well as the potential users of, technology “suggests that more technologies might meet the needs of women,” reducing the “white [male], upper-middle-class, suburban” element that currently dominates in the industry.8 The foregoing is one example of what socialist feminist critiques emphasize as sources of oppression that combine with gender in shaping information technology.
Essentialist Feminism. According to an essentialist view, what most unites women is their biology. Women are different from men not only because of their reproductive systems but also because of their secondary sex characteristics. Essentialist feminism may also extend to other alleged gender differences such as visuospatial and verbal ability, aggression and other behavioral differences, and mental and physical traits based on hormone levels.9
Higher aggression levels in males have been attributed to higher levels of testosterone. The same is true for larger physical size and increased muscle mass.10 An essentialist approach implies that men, because of their biology and inability to conceive, develop technology to dominate, control, and exploit the natural world, including women and nonwhite peoples. By contrast, women give birth, leading to a proclivity to nurture life in all its forms rather than dominating and exploiting others.11
Existentialist Feminism. In contrast to essentialist feminism, existentialist feminism maintains that it is not the biological differences themselves but the values the society assigns to them that lead us to believe that men and women are more different than they really are.12
Women serve as the predominant caregivers to children, perhaps because they give birth to and nurse them. But to consign to women a permanence, or an exclusivity, in those roles does not necessarily follow. Rather than biology, those characteristics (permanence and exclusivity) result from the viewpoints and resulting values the surrounding society takes on, based upon historical precedents. But even those precedents are changing rapidly as the society evolves. The stereotypical roles assigned to men and women have been breaking down for some time, in some geographical areas more than others and in certain roles nearly altogether (sharing childcare, for example).
Psychoanalytic Feminism. Sigmund Freud famously stated that anatomy is destiny. Boys and girls resolve differently the Oedipus and castration complexes that arise in the stage of normal sexual development. This has been called “biological determinism.”
Later in life, encouraged to be independent, autonomous, and distant, male engineers, programmers, and computer scientists adopt the “hard systems” approach to computer systems development that follows a positivist, linear, and technicist roadmap. By contrast, women, because of their different psychoanalytic background and makeup, are socialized to value connections and relationships. Women tend to feel uncomfortable with the hard-systems approach many males use. Women bring “caring values” to research and design in computer science. Caring values include empathy, an other-oriented relationship to people, and a more holistic and less hierarchical worldview. Women have a less competitive way of relating to colleagues and a greater affinity to users.13
Radical Feminism. Radical feminists reject altogether nearly all scientific theories, collections of data, and experiments testing various hypotheses. They reject studies that exclude women as well as those that include them. The only approaches palatable to radical feminists are those that are “women-centered.”14 Legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon adds a further element to radical feminism. She suggests that a consciousness-raising feminist group methodology form part of the doctrine.15 “Using their personal experiences as a basis, women meet together in communal, nonhierarchical groups to examine their experiences.”16
Early on (1983), radical feminist Cynthia Cockburn applied the idea to information technology:
In my view, by far the most effective principle evolved to date is [the call for] separate, women-only organizations. It enables us to learn (teach each other) without being put down. Provide schoolgirls with separate facilities and the boys won’t be able to grab the computer and bully the girls off the console. Provide young women with all-women courses so that they can gain the experience to make an informed choice about an engineering career. . . . Autonomy works wonders for our feelings and our strength. We need, before all else, a great expansion of the autonomous sphere in technology.17
Of course, imagining technology from a women-centered perspective in the absence of male influence and control is not only extremely difficult; at this late date, it is impossible, with the exception of smaller pockets of endeavor (computer clubs, computer labs, single-sex education perhaps).
Postmodern Feminism. “Postmodern” has become a buzzword that professors and sophisticates like to throw into their analyses. In this context, according to postmodern feminists, across a broad spectrum, women differ in their national, class, and cultural identities. So viewed, women “can no longer be regarded as smooth, uniform and homogeneous.”18 These postmodernist theories imply that no universal research agenda, technologies, or approaches will be appropriate. Various women will have different reactions to technologies or approaches depending upon their class, race, sexuality, country, region, and other factors. There are limitations to perceiving women as a universal group. The views and approaches historically advocated are thus simplistic.
Cyberfeminism. Yes, there is such a field or subcategory of feminism.19 The theory overtly fuses technology with gender. Modern information technologies are “inherently liberatory. . . . Their development will lead to an end to male superiority because women are uniquely suited to life in the digital age.”20 Sexism, racism, tyranny, and oppression will have much less of a presence in cyberspace, serving “as a major contrast between the virtual world and the real world.”21
Some question whether cyberfeminism is a feminist theory at all. For example, “the Internet becomes a tool for making women more vulnerable to men using it for [soliciting] . . . prostitution, cybersex, assumption of false identities, and pornography.”22
The list of feminist schools of thought goes on. Other important theories are the African American and racial/ethnic feminism schools. Treating racial diversity combined with gender diversity is simply beyond the scope of this work, deserving of volumes and more on its own.23
Certain other feminists also maintain that patriarchal views dominate everyday life in postcolonial and in neocolonial nations and regions much the same as they did in colonial days. Moreover, postcolonial feminism separates out and examines more closely those phenomena.24 Postcolonial feminism also is beyond the scope of this chapter.
For a variety of reasons, this work will address only some of the feminist theories listed above. Radical feminism, for example, seems too militant to offer many insights into issues of gender, information technology, and business. Alternatively, a radical feminist theorist rather than a male law professor should argue for the theory’s application.
Marxist philosophies have been decidedly on the wane over the last several decades. Only four traditional socialist countries remain: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The latter two (Vietnam and the PRC) have basically capitalist economies; only the political side can lay claim to being socialist. Yet on the economic side, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still operate in many fields in Vietnam and the PRC. Those nations first corporatized many SOEs, then further privatized many of the corporations, in whole or substantial part. Given that background, socialist feminism seems to be able to bring little to the table these days.
Postmodern feminism, which holds that women differ greatly across a wide spectrum and that therefore no universal or broad-based theories or reforms are possible, is antithetical to the fiber of this book and will be discussed no further.
This work will also not engage with psychoanalytic feminism, which argues that many differences exist between males and females, owing in part to their sexual development, as Sigmund Freud first espoused.
As will be developed later, to make any inroads on the significant lack of gender diversity in IT, or in any other industry, we need to take as our starting point the assumption that, aside from inescapable biological differences, no differences or disparities exist, or at least should be recognized, in the treatment of men and women. For too long now, those in control of corporations, employment, promotion, and governance have chosen the path of least resistance, able to get away with the throwaway line, “After all, she is a woman,” implying or explicitly stating that women are different—too emotional, not analytical, and so on.
A last rationale for not covering this ground in depth comes from Winston Churchill, who observed that “what the mind can absorb is limited by what the rear end can endure.”
So, on to three theories that may have relevance here: liberal feminism, essentialist feminism, and existential feminism. Of the three, essentialist feminism has to go out the window as well, for much the same reason as psychoanalytic theories. Little or no progress, or at least progress across the board, can be achieved if those with power to influence the advancement of women can tune out, or sign off on half-hearted measures, on the grounds that women are different.
Boards of directors and senior managers should tell everyone in their corporations that
the organization will bend over backward to treat all employees fairly and equally . . . with one exception. Equality gives way when there exists a universal and defined biological trait that requires equality to assume a secondary role. And there is only one such trait—child bearing. . . . Any woman who goes on the “mommy track” for any reason (more lengthy maternity leave, part-time when children are entering school, Fridays off when children are young) . . . nevertheless is entitled to equal treatment. No adverse inferences will be drawn. No negative or neutral (“damning by faint praise”) evaluation practices will be tolerated. The exception, as well as the rule [of equality across the board] are to become part of [this] organization’s very fabric.25
Thinking or voicing that women otherwise are different in any other respect, whether supported by evidence or not, does nothing to advance women in corporate management and leadership positions. In fact, voicing such beliefs has had a decidedly negative effect in certain milieus.
In January 2005 Lawrence Summers, a PhD in economics, former cabinet secretary (Treasury) and former World Bank president, spoke to the Harvard University faculty. Summers by then was the president of Harvard. Addressing the question of why women had such a poor record in tenure and promotion as faculty in the sciences and in mathematics at Harvard, Summers wondered whether there were “innate” or “biological” differences between women and men and whether those differences accounted for differing tenure and promotion rates. Summers questioned women’s desire and ability to work the late nights and weekends necessary to do the research and write the articles and books that bring tenure and promotion. In reaction, one female Harvard professor felt so ill at Summer’s pronouncements that she had to leave the room while Summers held the floor.26
Ultimately, as a result of the incident and the unrelenting furor that ensued, Summers resigned as president of Harvard. Nonetheless, leading U.S. business publications, as well as Summers himself, later wondered what the furor had been about.27 They believed it demonstrable that women do not compare to men in visuospatial skills and in interests in math and science. Why should there have been a reaction? Why the fuss?
Any such view, whether inherent in any theory of feminism or in male chauvinists’ declarations, has to be rejected as anathema to what we are attempting to achieve and maintain in our society, namely, fairness and equality for all, and not some subgroup of our population.
On a lighter note, it seems as though the advocates of certain of the radical, Marxist, and other types of feminism are akin to headmistresses “at a re-education camp, typing with one hand and sharpening their machetes with the other.”28 Neither extreme, willful blindness (or at least tone deafness) by those in business on the one hand, or militancy by certain theorists and feminists on the other, will contribute to an understanding of the problem and possible approaches to solve it.
From a collectivist standpoint, the views of the liberal feminists as modified by those of the existentialists seem most relevant to a discussion of female leadership in information technology. Explaining and attempting to apply other views and schools of thought would be akin to trekking down a rabbit hole, beyond the scope of a work such as this. The intent of this chapter has been modest, to alert readers to the existence and variety of perspectives that inhabit a universe ordinarily regarded as separate and apart from business leadership and corporate governance topics.