De-Gendering informatischer Artefakte: Grundlagen einer kritisch-feministischen Technikgestaltung

Abstract

Gender studies in computer science was only recently established at German universities. This research area is often understood as either addressing the problem of getting more women into IT professions or focussing on alleged gender differences in the design and use of IT. In contrast, the main objective of this dissertation is to identify and systemize gendering processes in products, theories, methods and assumptions of computer science (i.e. computational artifacts), in order to propose technology design methods, which aim at de-gendering these artefacts. The thesis focuses on three topics of inquiry: 1. Theoretical foundation: How can gendering and de-gendering processes of computational artifacts be theorized? 2. Practices of gendering: What are dimensions and mechanisms of gendering computational computational artifacts? 3. Methodological concepts for de-gendering: How can computational artefacts be designed, which can be characterized as de-gendered technologies