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Hacking patriarchy: the first #femhack experience

Document Citado por Related
Vincent
AutorGema Manzanares
Páginas199-202

Page 199

See note 83

Some weeks ago, we started to plan the Nicaragua femhack: we made a public announcement inviting women with diverse backgrounds to propose seminars and workshops. The announcement spread across social media and reached a group on programming in which most participants were men. "Are there women programmers?", "It sounds weird to me, I’ve never seen women doing this", "It’s something I’ve never seen; I haven’t even met many docile women in the computing ield" were some of the comments. Is anyone surprised?

"Science and technology provide fresh sources of power, that we need fresh sources of analysis and political action"

- Donna Haraway (1991)

What is the source of this inability to see and acknowledge women involved in technology, science and engineering? I think of many reasons: educational programs where girls socialize to achieve order and where they rarely have the opportunity to disassemble and reassemble things; indifference towards women’s contributions to technology and science throughout history; contempt for women’s abilities; among other.

Page 200

But it’s the idea of the female technophobia what troubles me the most. When they say that women are simply "afraid" of using/creating technology, they are blaming us and justifying a social system of disadvantages. They are conveniently overlooking that there are huge access gaps, between men and women, to basic rights such as education; and that the system delegates to women household responsibilities, so they have less time and income to dedicate themselves to their own interests. Just to illustrate my point: according to ECLAC, in 2013, two out of three people without Internet access worldwide were women.

But there are women who can indeed be found in these places: women who live on the Internet, women programmers, developers, women studying engineering, women who learn to repair computers and cell phones; and we see that the path is not an easy one. In a context where practically all our interactions take place through the screen, women have to deal with trolls and bullies, who target them for their attacks just because they are women.

A cyberfeminist proposal

A lot has been written about cyberfeminism and yet not enough. Cyberfeminism acknowledges technology as a key element for the social changes of the last decades and it proposes to build fairer and more equitable societies through the Internet. As cyberfeminists, we believe that technology is not...

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