Abstract:
Standard accounts of women's relationship with technology stress women's need
to overcome anxiety to achieve competence with computers. Recent studies provide
evidence that this woman-anxiety-technology connection is an oversimplification of
the relationship between women and computers. New literature also suggests that
making computers more appealing will help girls overcome computational reticence.
However, women and girls still are viewed as technologically deficient. Current and
proposed educational strategies focus on helping girls "master" computers in order to
compete in the classroom and workplace. In the following study, interviews with five
women who grew up without computers suggest that, as these women adapted to this
new technology in their lives, the drive for mastery did not accurately describe their
evolving relationship with computers. Instead, a move toward integration emerged in
the patterns of their experiences. After a technological imperative brought the
computer into these five women's lives, each woman struggled to find equilibrium by
making appropriate choices while negotiating her relationship with the machine.
Contextually based learning experiences with coaches or mentors also served as
catalysts toward integrating the computer into everyday life rather than simply
mastering it as a tool When the women in this study befriended the computer in this
way, the ends and means of computing became one. Thus, this study suggests a new
way to examine human relationships with computers-through the lens of virtue
ethics.
