Ellen Balka - Böcker

This volume contains selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Women, Work and Computerization (WWC 2000), which provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers, practitioners and users in the field of information technology. The conference was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in June 2000. Generous support for the publication of the proceedings was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In this book, the authors discuss how different areas of society are being transformed by computer technology. Authors have placed particular emphasis on women's experiences as computer scientists, and the mechanisms through which approaches to system design and, system design methodologies contribute to the gendered nature of computing. Other areas of emphasis include gender differences in computer use, the use of computers in everyday life, and discussions about the use of computers to promote citizenship.With the move of computers progressively into our homes, authors have increasingly looked at the use of computers to work, and learn, from home.

This book brings together the vast research literature about gender and technology to help designers understand what a gender perspective and a focus on intersectionality can contribute to designing information technology systems and artifacts, and to assist organizations as they work to develop work cultures that are supportive of women and marginalized genders and people. Drawing on empirical and analytical studies of women's work and technology in many parts of the world, the book addresses how to make invisible aspects of work visible; how to recognize women's skills without falling into the trap of gender stereotyping; how to engage in improving working conditions; and how to defend care of life situations and needs against a managerial logic. It addresses challenges for design, including many overlooked and undervalued aspects, such as the complexities involved in human-machine interactions, as well as the need to create safe spaces for research subjects.

This book brings together the vast research literature about gender and technology to help designers understand what a gender perspective and a focus on intersectionality can contribute to designing information technology systems and artifacts, and to assist organizations as they work to develop work cultures that are supportive of women and marginalized genders and people. Drawing on empirical and analytical studies of women's work and technology in many parts of the world, the book addresses how to make invisible aspects of work visible; how to recognize women's skills without falling into the trap of gender stereotyping; how to engage in improving working conditions; and how to defend care of life situations and needs against a managerial logic. It addresses challenges for design, including many overlooked and undervalued aspects, such as the complexities involved in human-machine interactions, as well as the need to create safe spaces for research subjects.

This volume presents the proceedings of ECSCW’09, the 11th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Each conference offers an occasion to critically review our research field, which has been multidisciplinary and committed to high scientific standards, both theoretical and methodological, from its beginning. These proceedings represent discussions and contributions to ongoing challenges. One challenge comes from emerging new technologies connected to ‘social computing’, gaming, as well as applications supporting citizen participation in their communities. As boundaries between home and work erode with the increased movement of work into home environments, and new applications further blur the once separate conceptions of work and leisure, our intellectual community faces challenges in the ways we think about and study work. Other challenges result from transformations of the world of work itself and the role of IT in these. They have been taken up in in-depth studies of design practice, software development, and manufacturing, as well as in the growing body of research on health care contexts and applications. Finally, there is the question of what is the European perspective in our community and whether it is worthwhile to anchor our research more firmly in such a perspective. Of high relevance to our field is the strong grounding of technology development in an understanding of human activity. The nineteen full papers, four short papers and one discussion paper selected for this conference deal with and reflect on some of these challenges, thus representing the lively debate currently ongoing in our field of research.

In addition, as the first Women, Work and Computerization conference of the new millennium, we hoped to encourage the broad community of scholars that has made past Women, Work and Computerization conferences a success to actively engage in imagining--and working towards-- a better future for women in relation to computers.