Minority women in low-income communities perceive information
technology (IT) as a means of escaping poverty - their first step on the
road to upward mobility, says Lynette Kvasny, assistant professor of
Information Sciences and Technoloogy (IST).
In contrast, highly educated, middle-class and professional women view
IT as offering fewer opportunities for advancement, suggesting that IT and
gender studies shouldn't focus on women as a homogenous group, Kvasny
said.
"If you're talking about developing programs in technology training,
it's important to understand the history and culture of the people you are
working with and not just implement a standardized curriculum," Kvasny
said. "Populations of women have different and competing perceptions about
technology's potential impact on their life experiences."
Many IT and gender studies have looked at women as a collective and
generalized from the experiences of middle-class women in the IT
profession or studying at universities, Kvasny said.
These primarily white women feel marginalized in the white
male-dominated IT workplace. In their perspective, technology skills and
IT training may not lead to advancement or greater opportunities.
The women Kvasny interviewed, many of whom were single parents and had
incomes below the poverty line, believed that IT skills would empower
them. They noted how their training would lead to higher paying jobs.
But Kvasny sees potential for IT skills to produce a different kind of
empowerment for minority women. IT can improve minority women's lives by
giving them the skill set to organize to get a bus stop in their
neighborhood, discover how to take a bad landlord to court or learn how to
file for child support.
"IT skills can be taken beyond the workplace to transform and shape
inner-city communities," Kvasny said. "Technology can build people's
capacity to learn and to discover their communities' assets."
Kvasny based her findings on interviews with African American women
participating in a 14-week computer training program in 2001 in a southern
city. The research is detailed in a paper, entitled "Triple Jeopardy:
Race, Gender and Class Politics of Women in Technology," given today
(April 12) at the Association for Computing Machinery's "Freedom in
Philadelphia: Leveraging Differences and Diversity in the IT Workforce"
conference.
Minority women also saw their technology training as helping them
better connect with their children, who were being exposed to computers in
day care centers and schools.
Drawn to Biblical imagery and the Exodus metaphor, minority women
consider Cyberspace as a promised land of economic betterment and societal
inclusion, Kvasny said. In that worldview, IT access and skills will
enable the overcoming of the barriers of poverty and social alienation
that have shaped many minority women's existence.
"Technology is like a beacon to these women who live in turmoil,
uncertainty and danger; It offers a different version for them," Kvasny
said. "However, their enthusiasm masks the reality of the IT workplace.
Unlike middle-class women whose job opportunities include positions as
programmers and systems analysts, these minority women in my study will
work in the service sector. But the new skills will keep them from being
left further behind and help them progress." *mh*
