In celebration of International Women’s Day, let’s highlight a few recent historical works that analyze the role of women in digital technology and see how digital methods can also highlight gender and women’s history.
Author: Valérie Schafer
Valérie Schafer is a professor at C2DH, specialized in the history of computing and born-digital heritage.
Let’s start with some C2DH and UL research, and notably with the Living Book about History related to the History of Women, Gender and Computing (2023) from the 1950s to today, that was produced last year with our students for the Master in European Contemporary History, and notably with Andrew Pfannkuche, who is now a PhD candidate within PRIDE-DTU.
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Let’s also mention the stimulating book Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities (2022), by Prof. Juliane Nyhan (Institut für Geschichte, Darmstadt),who is currently exploring part of the history of Digital Humanities (DH) with our colleague Gerben Zaagsma. There is a history of women in DH, but DH also provides resources and tools to further explore the history of women, as demonstrated in “Twitter and feminist commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising” by Hannah Smyth and Diego Ramirez Echavarria (2021) in the Journal of Digital History, edited by our colleagues Andreas Fickers and Frédéric Clavert.
Let’s also highlight the way the UL Scienteens Lab invite young people and teenagers to discover more about computing while also changing representations and promoting role models.
Last but not least, you may be interested to discover some external resources like the OA book Data Feminism (2020) by d’Ignazio and Klein, especially their introduction “Why Data Science Needs Feminism.”
Abstractions and embodiments. New Histories of Computing and Society (2022) edited by Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick is stimulating and explores how gender and other identities have shaped the experiences of computer workers and users through time and space.
Since we’re on the topic of gender, I’ll also invite you to read two interesting recent books: The Two Revolutions: A History of the transgender Internet (2023) by Avery Dame-Griff and The Digital Closet. How the Internet Became Straight by Alexandre Monea.
Happy readings and happy International Women’s Day !
Bibliography
ABBATE, J., DICK, S. (ed.) 2022. Abstractions and embodiments. New Histories of Computing and Society. JHU Press.
DAME-GRIFF, A. 2023. The Two Revolutions: A History of the transgender Internet. NYU Press.
D’IGNAZIO, C., KLEIN, L. 2023. Data Feminism, MIT Press.
MONEA, A. 2023. The Digital Closet. How the Internet Became Straight. MIT Press.
NYHAN, J. 2022. Hidden and Devalued Feminized Labour in the Digital Humanities. Routledge.
SCHAFER, V., HÖFER, M., NOGUERA. C. 2023. Women, Gender and Computing. Living Books About History. Infoclio. https://www.livingbooksabouthistory.ch/en/book/women-gender-and-computing
SMYTH, H., RAMIREZ ECHAVARRIA, D., 2021. Twitter and feminist commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising. Journal of Digital History, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/JDH-2021-1006?locatt=label:JDHFULL