From Profession to Practices in IT Design

Bibliographic Data

ID5337057
AuthorsJohanna Sefyrin (0000-0002-9626-6772, Mid Sweden University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume37
Issue6
Pages708-728
Publication date2012-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243911409957
OpenAlexW2031909559
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

In this article the argument is that in order to find women who participate in the design of IT, it is not enough to analyze gendered divisions of labor in terms of professional belongings but also to analyze the practices behind the professional categories that are involved in IT design. The purpose of the article is to explore how actors in various ways were configured during an IT design project. The article is based on an IT design project, and the empirical material for the study was gathered through the use of ethnographic methods, and analyzed diffractively. This analysis showed that the boundaries between actors shifted, that the actors were placed in several different positions, and that what was done in practices did not always fit with the formal positions. The analysis made it possible to see that in this IT design project, women were important participants on which the whole project depended. If this project is representative also for other IT design projects, the problem of women as outsiders of IT design could be rephrased, and the problem is no longer that women are not included in IT design, but that their participation does not always become visible

Business · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Political science · Public relations · Research design · Social science · Sociology · Engineering · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Innovation, Technology, and Society · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

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