Slides from a talk given at the workshop ‘Gender and Science Communication: Is there equality in the way we talk about physics?’, Physics Communicators and Women in Physics, Institute of Physics, London. June 21st 2013.

1. Communicating to who?
Configuring the gendered user
in science communication
Georgina Voss
Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art
Institute of Physics, June 21st 2013

2. Overview
• Many factors restrict the professional aspirations of girls
and young women, causing them to avoid high-status
careers in mathematics and science.
o …and what about the women who are already working professionally in STEM?
• Notion of „configuring the user‟ provides insights into
which people are seen as using STEM workplaces, and
how.
o Which „users‟ is STEM communication designed around?
• Problem of configuring the user according to
stereotypes and normative expectations of gender.
• Instead, consider configuring communication around
lived experience.

3. Context:
Self-confidence and efficacy
• A confidence gap between male and female STEM
students.
• Self-confidence: strength of belief in one‟s abilities, and
plays important role in academic experience of STEM.
o Positively associated with likelyhood of entry and later
success.
• Women exhibit lower confidence in their skills and
knowledge (despite higher academic achievement!).
o Downplay their educational and work experiences.
o Present themselves as „ready to work hard and
learn‟, eventually becoming a valuable asset.
• Men see themselves as already equipped and valuable
in their own right (Chachra and Kilgore 2009).
• How are these factors designed (or not) into STEM
communication?

4. Configuring the user
• Design cultures conceputualise the user sociologically
and semiotically (Oudshoorn et al 2004).
o Specific image of who the users are (or are not).
• Technologies become scripted to certain groups of
users, even if they are not involved in the design process
(Akrich 1992, Woolgar 1991).
o Preferences, motivations, tastes, competencies.
o May create new identities, or transform/reinforce existing
ones.
• Problem of configuring user as „everyone‟ – flattens
out real difference (and power).
o „Neutral‟ and„male‟ often default to each other.

6. ‘Neutral’ users and technologies
• Not recognizing that how users are often
configured, by default, as male is problematic.
o Makes female an „add-on‟, different.
• “Not knowing” why fewer women participate in
STEM is a form of ignorance; gender and sexual
politics typically work through practices of invisibility
(Franzway et al 2009).
o Gender roles gain their power by appearing natural and
eternal.
• „Critical Mass‟ thesis is useless if it only allows for a
mass of female users who „fit‟ into the designed
system (Knights and Murray 1994).
o Assimilation can be survival.

7. Stereotypes and
hyperfemininity
• Targeting a stereotyped notion of „women‟ and girls‟ often results
in a demeaning „dumbing down‟ of the system so that women
can participate (Sommers 2008).
o Gender stereotypes remain present in many elements of education
reform.
• Media analysis:
o Shifts from attractive junior women in romantic relationships…to attractive
hardworking women in senior positions (and rarely working mothers)…
o …but still presents women being underestimated, objects of desire and
harassed by men (Bergman 2012, Steinke 2005).

8. Technologists vs workplaces
• Increased focus away from women as site of solutions, to
addressing workplace culture (Mills et al 2006)
• STEM workplaces can be seen as „value neutral‟ – once
barriers and discrimination removed, women free to compete
on equal terms.
o Outcome is emphasis on introduction and „remediation‟ of
women, not change in working practices (Blickenstaff 2005, Rosser
1998).
• „Family friendly‟ policies can stigmatise women as
„different‟, alienating women whose acceptance is conditional
on adapting to masculine norms within a „gender neutral‟
workplace.

9. Adaptation vs difference
• Women can align – or reject! – masculine values and
workplace norms (Bastalich et al 2007).
• Alignment: emphasis on need to fit in, ignoring
sexism, depersonalize emotion, confront masculine
modes of behaviour in direct and assertive
manner, succeed within accepted workplace norms.
o Depends on and recirculates ideas about women as
„emotional‟, ie.qualities associated with femininity and
devalued within this workplace culture.
• Difference: Were aware of need to be „one of the boys‟
and critical of female/tech contradictions. Strain of
work, over-compensating “female-ness” outside, ignored
if not conforming to male styles of communications.

10. The category of ‘female’
• Issue with associating masculinity with objectivity and science
o Femininity mutually exclusive with science….
o Science mutually exclusive within „feminine‟ traits –
subjectivity, emotion…
• BUT also propagates normative ideas of gender!! Masculinity
and femininity are cultural constructions, and not mutually
exclusive.
• Problematic to lump women together as homogenous group
(Brickhouse 2001, Gilbert and Calvert 2003).
o Low-income; race; sexuality; culture; children.
o Potential for different forms of exclusion, identity management.

11. Conclusions
• STEM culture not neutral: embody masculine values and identities.
• Critical awareness needed of which users are designed in – and
out – of STEM workplace and communication, and how..
• Avoid stereotypes and normative ideas of „women‟, and
associations with feminine tropes.
o Also notion that „women‟ are a homogenous group.
• Recognise STEM workplace culture, and which users are
rewarded within it.
o Recognise lived experience of women in STEM, especially around self-
confidence and efficacy.
o Reflect on success, be clear about flexibility.

12. Any questions?