Demystifying the Relationships between Women and Maps
Yuwei Lin
Lecturer in Future Media,
School of Arts and Media
University of Salford, UK
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
- Scientific knowledge is not neutral or value free
- Technologies are socio-politically constructed
- Social Construction of Technologies
- Mutual Shaping of Society and Technology
The Politics of Maps
The Gendered Knowledge about Maps
Why women cannot read maps and men lose their keys - Women's difficulty in reading maps and men's uselessness in finding things under their noses could be explained by new research, scientists claim.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent (The Telegraph, 24 Feb 2009)
Putting Gender on the Maps
- Gender mapping: Mapping of georeferenced information with emphasis on gender. Gender mapping offers an important step toward greater awareness of the diverse gender roles in different socio-technical or political systems
- What can be displayed on a map
- Acknowledge different and diverse roles and practices in innovation systems
Free/Libre Open Source Software
- Freedoms to view, study, change, disseminate source code
- 'Free' does not mean 'gratis', but 'freedom' -> misconception of the 'gift-giving' voluntary culture
- Myth about anti-commercial
- Licences: General Public License (GPL), Creative Commons License (CC)
- FLOSS at large: FLOSS-inspired phenomenon e.g. open innovation, open science, open data, open cultures
FLOSS-related Research
- Diversity of knowledge in a FLOSS community
- How people exchange and share knowledge through solving problems collectively
- A practice-based approach: situated problem-solving
- Local and Tacit knowledge (learning and knowing)
- Mutual learning, collective action, reciprocity
- Dynamics in learning and knowledge creation processes
Motivations for participating in FOSS
- altruistic
- just for fun
- gratification
- reputation
- mutuality
- for work (protestant work ethics)
- to fix a problem at hand (pragmatist)
- god told me so
Kasper's story
"My reasons for creating Open Source software was like many others the "personal itch". This is still a true motivator in my life in all areas. The personal itch means that you have a problem that nags you and you set out to solve it. This is a trivial human motivator. But the term just underlines that Open Source is not started from anything more extraordinary than something every human being experiences on a daily level. The difference is the mentality you harbour about what to do with your solutions to personal itches. Traditionally "the world" tells us to protect our intellectual property so we can maximize our personal benefit from it, make it into a sellable product, license it to others for money but don't let anyone use you by sharing it for free. My mentality was much opposite. Around the time I had a product ready for release to the public I luckily had a strong conviction that the talent in me that resulted in this product was not meant to serve my own purposes only. Rather - as a personal christian - I believed that it was my gift from God and something meant to serve the world around me. My talent should be a blessing to people."
For amusement only
The former Personal Ad of Richard Stallman
[This was last updated in early 2009. The ages are out of date now.]
I'm a single atheist white man, 55, reputedly intelligent, with unusual interests in politics, science, music and dance.
I'd like to meet a woman with varied interests, curious about the world, comfortable expressing her likes and dislikes (I hate struggling to guess), delighting in her ability to fascinate a man and in being loved tenderly, who values joy, truth, beauty and justice more than "success"--so we can share bouts of intense, passionately kind awareness of each other, alternating with tolerant warmth while we're absorbed in other aspects of life.
My 25-year-old child, the Free Software Movement, occupies most of my life, leaving no room for more children, but I still have room to love a sweetheart if she doesn't need to spend time with me every day. I spend a lot of my time traveling to give speeches, often to Europe, Asia and Latin America; it would be nice if you were free to travel with me some of the time.
If you are interested, write to rms at gnu dot org and we'll see where it leads.
Lack of Women's voices and motivations
- Cyberbulling & trolling, sexist & discriminative languages
- Unfriendly and inhumane online environment (e.g. RTFM)
- Gendered role in FLOSS development - inequality of different types of knowledge & women's reduced role
- Housework (child-rearing) – lack of time
- Lack of role models, mentors and support
- Education (access to knowledge outside the bedroom cultures)
- A male-dominated competitive worldview (reputation, flame wars)
- Any other reasons that differ from culture to culture, nation to nation, region to region?
The two groups I studied
1. The Eclectic Tech Carnival is a gathering of women interested in open source technology. It is usually held once a year, in a place where there is an interested group of women willing to host it, and is usually about a week long - but every /ETC is different!
2. The Debian Women project was founded in May 2004. We seek to balance and diversify the Debian Project by actively engaging with interested women and encouraging them to become more involved with Debian. We will promote women's involvement in Debian by increasing the visibility of active women, providing mentoring and role models, and creating opportunities for collaboration with new and current members of the Debian Project.
Mapping parties
Crisis mapping
Summary
- Diversity of knowledge
- Situated practice and local knowledge
- Tacit knowledge and creation of mutuality between people
- Dynamics in knowledge creation processes
Implications
- How can we include more diverse knowledge in online communities?
- local and tacit knowledge which are embodied and embedded in situated practices
- blurring line between experts and lay (challenge the conventional idea of 'professionals')
- How can we encourage interactions/negotiations in online communities?
- situated practice of actors: problem-based learning
- technologies that fit into users' situated practices