Research suggests that a deeper understanding of our dominator social system might clarify why women are underrepresented as developers, users, and beneficiaries of technology.  From one feminist’s perspective, Metropolitan State University (USA) professor Mary Kirk suggests moving beyond the attitude of simply providing access to the more encompassing goal of co-creating a partnership social system.

In her upcoming book release Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership, Kirk offers a vision of what partnership in IT might look like in relation to media, language, education, and business.  She believes that the best of technology efforts to increase the partnership of women as developers, users, and beneficiaries of technology will be broad-based, multifaceted, include many perspectives, and involve all of our social institutions.

“This approach will increase the participation of women, as well as other currently underrepresented populations, in information technology,” writes Kirk.  “In the end, co-creating a partnership global IT industry is about building relationships founded in an attitude of empathy and caring that informs all of our human relations.”

Kirk believes that breaking through false assumptions about the purpose and relevance of women’s studies and feminist science studies, along with perspectives from many other disciplines, is the key to exploring a rich mine of ideas about how our current social system operates and how we might work together to co-create a more hospitable social climate for all.

(Portions of this article are excerpted from Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership by Mary Kirk.)