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Triple jeopardy: race, gender and class politics of women in technology

Published: 10 April 2003 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, I consider how class, race, and gender influence perspectives regarding information technology (IT). I do so by considering how participants in a community technology center located in an inner city neighborhood conceptualize IT, and how their standpoints shape their beliefs in the opportunities and rewards that are enabled by IT. Using the metaphor of ascension, their narratives constructed IT as a mechanism for liberating entire classes of women economically and socially. These findings suggest that the perspectives regarding IT held by the women participating in this study contradict the findings presented in prior IT and gender studies that generally take as their focus highly educated, middle-class women working in the IT profession and women studying at universities in disciplines that prepare them for entry into the IT profession. These divergent findings suggest a need for additional research that specifically addresses the joint effects of race, class and gender in contexts beyond the IT workplace environment, and with a broader diversity of women.

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Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGMIS CPR '03: Proceedings of the 2003 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Freedom in Philadelphia--leveraging differences and diversity in the IT workforce
April 2003
201 pages
ISBN:1581136668
DOI:10.1145/761849
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 10 April 2003

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Cited By

View all
  • (2018)Directions for research on gender imbalance in the IT professionEuropean Journal of Information Systems10.1080/0960085X.2018.1495893(1-25)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2018
  • (2017)Intersectional HCIProceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3025453.3025766(5412-5427)Online publication date: 2-May-2017
  • (2017)Managing Gender‐Related Challenges in ICT4D Field ResearchTHE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES10.1002/j.1681-4835.2014.tb00464.x65:1(1-26)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2017
  • (2016)The Influence of Gender-Ethnic Intersectionality on Gender Stereotypes about IT Skills and KnowledgeACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems10.1145/2980783.298078547:3(9-39)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2016
  • (2016)The influence of ethnicity on organizational commitment and merit pay of IT workersInformation Systems Journal10.1111/isj.1205826:2(157-190)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016
  • (2015)The value of values for HCIProceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3148456.3148500(1-10)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2015
  • (2015)Gender identity and sexual orientation perceived oppressions in digital systems user interfacesProceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3148456.3148466(1-10)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2015
  • (2015)Understanding Career Choice of African American Men Majoring in Information TechnologyProceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMIS Conference on Computers and People Research10.1145/2751957.2751961(41-48)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2015
  • (2012)Embracing intersectionality in gender and IT career choice researchProceedings of the 50th annual conference on Computers and People Research10.1145/2214091.2214141(199-212)Online publication date: 31-May-2012
  • (2011)How HCI talks about sexualityProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/1978942.1979043(695-704)Online publication date: 7-May-2011
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