Cyberfeminists at Play: Lessons on Literacy and Activism from a Girls' Computer Camp

Cultural Assumptions and the Beginning of the Digital Mirror Camp

In an early advertisement for the Apple II, a white man sits at the kitchen table intent on his computing task, looking lovingly at his machine, while his wife cuts vegetables near the kitchen sink and looks lovingly at her husband. Although the computer itself is certainly dated—an historic relic when compared to today's mobile devices—the gender roles surrounding the use of these tools are admittedly less so. As demonstrated in the more recent Apple campaign where a cool, hip young man-as-Mac constantly one-ups an uncool, unhip aging man-as-PC, computers are more often than not portrayed in the media as a "guy thing." Certainly, women are portrayed as users of technology in the larger culture, but as a number of scholars have suggested, the use of various technologies has had a "deskilling" impact, with women potentially "excluded from a knowledge of the overall process of which they are a part" (Murray 98) or stereotyped as a result of that use. Cheris Kramarae's classic collection Technology and Women's Voices suggests that everyday technologies, from the telephone to the washing machine, have both helped and hindered women's material conditions. Yet male technology use is also stereotyped. Ask a group of students for an image associated with the term "computer geek," and they'll describe the typical male student with glasses, alone with his machine. A Google image search for the term yields similar visual results, and additional male stereotypes appear when one does a similar search using the term "gamer."

Given such stereotypes, it's no surprise that according to the American Association of University Women's (AAUW) 2000 publication Tech-Savvy, girls begin to lose interest in technology around the middle school years—and not only because of the perception of social isolation associated with computers. In their foreword to Tech-Savvy, the AAUW asks a compelling question: "What changes are needed in the computer culture to improve its image, repair its deficits, and make it more appealing to girls and women?" (iv). That such culture isn't as appealing to girls and women is perhaps most evident from statistics documenting the limited numbers of women entering STEM areas. The AAUW's 2010 study, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, suggests that even though girls and boys have equal aptitude for math and science, the larger cultural assumption that boys are better at math than girls has a profound influence on girls' own self-assessment of their own abilities for STEM-based careers (Hill, Corbett, and St. Rose).

Equally significant are the connections between STEM and cultural diversity. As the Why So Few? study notes, "Students from historically disadvantaged groups such as African American and Hispanic students, both female and male, are less likely to have access to advanced courses in math and science in high school, which negatively affects their ability to enter and successfully complete STEM majors in college" (Hill, Corbett, and St. Rose 5). As the AAUW has suggested, the absence of women in such career paths is more than just a gender issue; it is, in fact, an economic issue as the United States shifts to a twenty-first century ecology in which information technology, nanotechnology, and biotechnology drive current national initiatives such as the president's Strategy for American Innovation, designed to create jobs and maintain the competitiveness of the United States in a climate of global economic development.

Ironically, despite the technological advancement that has led to an era of iPods, texting, and social networking, girls don't receive the same message about technology-based career options that boys do, and not all children have the same ubiquitous access to technology. Although the AAUW acknowledges that math and science fields are culturally presumed to be male-dominated while humanities fields are presumed to be female-dominated, the question of change is one that all educators...