Challenging the "normal" gender order in society

By Ann-Christin Nyberg, gender and innovation researcher.

I bought my first Macintosh in the 1980s when I was an engineering student. It was radically different from all other computers I had seen: user friendly with an appealing design but also very expensive for a student like me. I really desired and loved it, as I later have come to desire and love other inventions brought to the world by Steve Jobs and others. Inventions that many of us now take for granted and use almost every day, innovations that have made an impact on society. That technology, intertwined with society as it is today, is often made by men for other men is problematic for many reasons. For instance, the shaping of society is not very democratic when women in general have so little influence.

What if Steve Jobs had been a woman? Would it have made a difference? When it comes to technology, women's talent has often been overlooked in society, and it still is sometimes. Men are often, on the other hand, expected to know technology by nature rather than by training and experience. Discriminating norms and practises concerning gender and technology still persist. Hence, probably none of Steve Jobs' brilliant ideas would have come to exist if he had been a woman. She would have encountered many additional obstacles that Steve probably never even would have imagined existed.

«The shaping of society is not very democratic when women in general have so little influence»

There are of course always exceptions to the rule. Some women have indeed succeeded in extremely male dominated contexts, despite opposition and structural barriers. Hence, there is a slight chance that Apple’s brilliant inventor and charismatic business leader could have been a woman. Today there are some women at high levels in the ICT industry, for example Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, President and CEO of Yahoo. Women in technology are important since they challenge to some extent the “normal” gender order in society where technology is considered to be a men’s thing. They bring hope that discrimination can be brought to an end and a more egalitarian and meritocratic society can be formed.

There is a lot to gain for society, its organizations and individuals from making the ICT industry more inclusive. Due to their marginalised position women may well be “the rebels” who see things differently today. As Steve Jobs put it: “The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” With access to technology on equal terms, the Steve Jobs of tomorrow may just as well be women as men. Let’s make it happen! “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

An overview on women in tech (and on this blog)

By Judith Astelarra, emeritus professor, Department of Sociology, Autonomous University of Barcelona.

I must say that when I was invited to participate in this debate several months ago I did not like the question. Now I think that it was a provocative question that lead to very interesting answers. However, I still have doubts about the question because I feel that if what we want is to analyze the absence of women in the sector of technology, do we need to play this provocative game of making a transvestite of Steve Jobs?

Steve Jobs was an outstanding creator, everybody has agreed on that. Traditionally the creators in any field, had been considered beings who had an exceptional individual talent that was emphasized in its work. However, individual genius can only be put into practise and recognized in social and cultural contexts. It is society that allows the creative talent to be developed and, what is equally important, is responsible for the recognition of the value of the creation. Gender is part of this social context related to creation, but there are other factors as well.

«We can look at the women that are now in these fields, even if they are a minority, to see if they make a difference»

Most of the answers to the question about Steve Job have spoken about how the gendered dimension of society and culture, characterized by inequality for women, have been an impediment for women’s incorporation in the technological field in terms of creation, production and recognition (the “icon”).

Others answers have stressed the individual characteristics of technological creation be it men or women. Only a few have dealt with Steve Jobs as a creator and tried to relate it to gender. In this sense, I liked very much the analysis made by Gillian Marcelle. In describing Steve Jobs as a woman most of the answers either spoke generally of the situation of women, or plainly admitted that they did not know whether it would make such a difference. Henry Jenkins spoke about Bill Gates, what was very interesting because here we deal with two men, in the same field and time, who shared gender but were different.

All these answers could have been just the same if Steve Jobs had not been in the question and all we were dealing was with the issue of women and technological creations. What makes me uneasy about it is that, even if it is not the intention, the proposal of replacing Steve Jobs by a woman leads to a sort of confrontation between men and women.

«Finding places in which both genders can collaborate is also part of the feminist proposal of creating new realities»

I have been a feminist from the late 1960 and early 1970 when I was doing my PhD at Cornell University. When we started, women’s inequality was not even a social, cultural and political issue. We needed to be loud and confrontation was part of it. But now, the situation is different. Obviously inequality still exists and we need lobbies and political movement to deal with it. But the problem is now recognized and there are women now in the fields from where they were excluded. We can evaluate what we have done to correct inequality and look for new things to do. But, we can also look at the women that are now in these fields, even if they are a minority like in the technological field, to see if they make a difference. Not just give hypotheses of “what if” that cannot have rigorous answers.

I liked very much the answers that stated the need of social innovation in technology, no matter what the person’s gender is. I think that finding places in which both genders can collaborate is also part of the feminist proposal of creating new realities. Here we can play the game “what if”, not changing the past but looking at the future, because in this case imagination can be used. Starting from the problems that the TIC have today and the new lines that should be developed in the future, we can think of a woman (even if imaginary) that can play the role that men like Steve Jobs played in the past. We would not be using a man as a reference, we would be using women’s experiences and realities today. An endeavor that can be shared between this new outstanding woman and the men of her time. A pluralist proposal that does not discriminate anybody.

But in spite of my doubts with the question I really think that the debate has been very interesting.

Towards a new generation of versatile "Jobs"

By Isaac Mao, co-founder and director, Social Brain Foundation; philosopher at Sharism.org

CC Joichi Ito

I never had an Apple product for my daily use, but I did buy some of them for my family members, including my 7-year-old daughter VV and my father. I believe Apple really fits those people who are afraid of using a computer, or are trying to touch base the digital world. So it’s not difficult to imagine why China is now the biggest market for Apple products. 

Each time VV shows me some new apps on her iPad I can’t help praising: "it's really an exquisite toy", and my daughter always nods back. Once she even said: "(iPad is) like a pretty princess". I had to agree. The sense of touching the screen and the borders of Apple’s products really prevails the feelings I get on my Google tablet. Then, I reckon I would be not surprised if Apple's products were designed by some deft women. 

Even though we still remember Steve Jobs as the man that enabled those exquisite toys, Masha Ma, one of the top fashion designers in China, told me she always thought Jobs had a female heart. That might be the reason why he could transfer the view of ICT products from lame machines into soft fashion devices.

«After Steve Jobs, the combination of both aggressiveness and sensitivity is inexorably indispensable in industry»

After Steve Jobs, the combination of both aggressiveness and sensitivity is inexorably indispensable in industry. If any other “Jobs” wants to copy his success, he or she can’t be merely a designer or an engineer, but should be both. Last March, Masha just finished her show in Paris, which included very cool 3D printed earrings in her new seasonal collection. I see this combination of design and ICT on her work as well: apart from being a designer she also has a geeky heart. And more interestingly, she is now learning how to use Python (a programming language) to code her next season's design work. 

I don't know what would have happened if Steve Jobs had been a woman. In fact, Jobs' gender shouldn't matter, only his legacy. In the coming maker's age, as author Chris Anderson predicted, future may present us more versatile "Jobs", and surely they will be indistinctly called Steve or Stephanie.

ICTs are not synonymous with knowledge society and woman is not synonymous with gender

By Gloria Bonder, Director, Gender, Society and Policies Area, FLACSO Argentina

Women, in Latin America and in most regions, are a minority in technology production, and this is one of the most significant digital gender divides. The research we have carried out from the UNESCO Chair in Women, Science and Technology in Latin America confirms this. However, the results enable us to state that gender inequalities in this field do not only concentrate on this issue. Age, ethnicity, educational and socio-economic level and area of residence (urban/rural) are some of the determinants that have a significant influence on the construction of this techno-cultural environment.

Only an uninformed view would lead us to state that the first step has to be increasing the number of women in technological production. Looking more closely, we realize that change does not start there.

«Creating technology with gender awareness is a first step towards a society that is more receptive to both women and men's ways of thinking and innovating»

Encouraging the interest of more women in technology careers, reversing the stereotypes that associate ICTs with the male world, promoting the full participation of women in technology-based enterprises and encouraging strategic appropriation of ICTs by both women and men, are some of the links of this chain that must be strengthened.

Having (more) women in technological production does not ensure an information/knowledge society that is more inclusive, diverse and attentive to their needs, desires and interests. However, if the person who creates technology (either male or female) does so with gender awareness, we will have taken a first step in overcoming inequalities, and in the construction of an information/knowledge society that is more receptive to everyone's ways of thinking, innovating and transforming, both men and women.

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, perhaps the only difference would be the Apple logo.

Will we welcome a Stephanie Jobs any time soon?

By Juliet Webster, Director, Gender and ICT Programme, IN3-UOC

International Women’s Day is inevitably a time for a gender equality progress review. As the excellent, thoughtful, angry, optimistic, and often witty responses to the question “What if Steve Jobs had been a woman?” show, achieving gender equality in ICT is a very complex project. From the socialisation of kids and the cultural expectations of girls and boys, through to the management cultures of innovators and the employment practices of ICT companies, there are many interlocking reasons why there has to date been no female equivalent of Steve Jobs. This matters enormously: ICT is a site of major employment growth and opportunity in industrialised societies. The people who do this work create the tools which we all carry around, work with, manage our lives with, and perhaps even define who we are.

«When senior politicians and corporate leaders declare women’s role in ICT to be important, women are treated more seriously»

So, if gender equality in computing remains elusive, what is to be done to advance it? Over the past three years in the IN3 Gender and ICT programme, we have analysed a string of initiatives designed to advance and support women in ICT in several countries. Loud and clear from our analysis comes the conclusion that a vital ingredient in the success of these measures is high-level, consistent, sustained, political support with resources to back it up. When senior politicians and corporate leaders declare women’s role in this work to be important, women are treated more seriously. This is not the only factor, but it is a key one.

Unfortunately, in an economic crisis, the ‘trickiness’ of doing gender equality becomes a reason for retreating from it. Decision makers, who remain primarily male, are too inclined to treat gender equality as an option. The retreat from a commitment to equality has been evident, for example, in the resources and priority it is receiving in the framing of the European Union Horizon 2020 programme¹. As the strategy for European research, science and technological development for the next seven years, it is a vital mechanism for ensuring that gender equality is fundamental to such activities, indeed to all knowledge creation. It has been remarkably silent on this question.

«Action on gender equality becomes even more urgent during a crisis. How are we going to recover any kind of social or economic capacity, if we do not build new social arrangements?»

If anything, action on gender equality becomes even more urgent during a crisis. How else are we going to recover any kind of social or economic capacity, if we do not build new social arrangements? The existing social ― and gender ― relations have so shamefully destroyed so many lives. But we need political support to help us shift the social and cultural framework within which we all live and work ― to transform the provision of education, to support working women, to hold employing organisations to account on equal pay, training, and career progression. If we cannot achieve these changes, then the ‘hyper-masculine’ domination of the computing world ― indeed, the world as a whole ― will take much longer to undo.

To take this challenge forward on our own patch, the Gender and ICT Programme at the IN3 will soon start work as the leader of a substantial EU project. This project will build a new community of global activists and practitioners working in the field of gender equality in science, technology and innovation ― activities which will be vital for our individual and collective futures. GenPORT, as our project will be known, will allow people to share their knowledge and resources, develop gender equality tools together, learn from one another, and build pressure for change. This blog will give you more news, and when we begin work, we invite you to join us.

1 European Commission 2012, Enhancing and focusing EU international cooperation in research and innovation: a strategic approach (COM 2012) 497.

ICTs and a new opportunity for women's empowerment

By Lindsey Nefesh-Clarke, founder and managing director of Women's WorldWide Web (W4)

During her recent visit to Barcelona (Spain), Nefesh-Clarke kindly agreed to answer live and in front of the camera the heading question of this blog. She was one of the guest speakers at TEDxBarcelonaWomen event, celebrated on December 1^st 2012. We would like to thank the organisers for this contribution.

«We have an unprecedented opportunity to make a new wave of women's empowerment: a strong movement of community-driven collaborative change»

Genius is gendered: what would happen if Steve Jobs had been a woman?

By Gillian Marcelle, Associate Professor, Wits Business School

The invitation to write this blog on what would happen or have been different if Steve Jobs had been a woman proved to be too enticing to turn down. This despite the fact that I had left off my serious work on gender and ICTs for nearly a decade. Different themes emerged as I played with the idea of gender transformation and Steve Jobs. I am not sure whether I can cover all these themes here and so perhaps this invitation will lead to future work on the subject.

From the point of view of development studies, I would argue that we need more people like Steve Jobs, and it really does not matter if they are male or female, except if there are biases, whether structural, institutional or psychosocial that stand in the way of the emergence of female Jobs like figures. The point is that Steve Jobs stands at one level as a standard bearer for successful entrepreneurship and transformation and he has become the touchstone for success.

«A woman with a similar balance of negative and positive personality traits was very unlikely to have succeeded in formal business settings»

This then leads to my take on Jobs from a management science perspective. Steve Jobs’s approach to steering a company and its innovative process includes: single-minded dedication to “specification”, ruthlessness, setting standards very high and not compromising about how these were achieved, being unaccepting of industry standards and setting out to be disruptive. He is characterised by enormous self belief, arrogance and a spectacular willingness to take risks. Steve on all accounts is legendary for is attention to detail, keen observational skills and an ability to improve new possibility outside what currently exists. This latter feature has been hailed as him having a reality-distorting ability and this applied to the product features and design of Apple products and services.

From all accounts these “positive” qualities and characteristics were wrapped up in personal attitude that made Steve Jobs an exceptionally challenging human being, in both his personal and professional lives. It is his personality and human characteristics that have meant that he is revered and loathed with great intensity. Before his death, the negative and challenging aspects of his personality were spoken of in hushed whispers. Jobs the mythical path breaker occupied much more airtime than the man who insisted on a paternity test for his first child, refused to reconcile with his biological father, and regularly reduced managers and employees meeting with him at Apple to tears and even attempted suicide. Since his death, the accounts and reports have become more revealing and dare I say insightful. There have been many analyses attempting to reconcile the positive and negative aspects of his personality and to understand the implications for practice.

This is where the gender issues are stark. My sense is that a woman with a similar balance of negative and positive personality traits was very unlikely to have succeeded in formal business settings, let alone to have been celebrated and venerated as a management icon. She would be more likely to have been burnt at the stake! Reality-distorting women who buck traditions, set their own standards and insist on dragging followers on the path they have set out for them and have that confidence of conviction more on grounds of personal self belief and branding that norms and moral standards.

«Is society reproducing female and male Steve Jobs clones rather than developing alternatives?»

I don’t know whether we will even be able to test the hypothesis that a female Steve Jobs would not have been allowed to survive as against the counter hypothesis that a female leader in the ICT sector world is unlikely to have the same balance of “offensive” and positive personality traits. I certainly cannot think of a female powerful figure who is associated with single handedly setting new benchmarks for an industry, hero worshipped and venerated. These are some reflections on Steve the man.

As far as the products produced by Steve Jobs and Apple, I wonder about whether a woman of a similar age, cultural, racial and political background would have produced a set of technologies that had the same characteristics.

Industry domination, lock-in effects, propriety standards are central to the Apple success story. This is a technological leader model per excellence. If we are to separate out particular personality traits, we still have to ask the question whether the propensity to adopt strategies with these features is gendered. Do female leaders eschew strategies with these characteristics and do they have a high propensity to adopt alternatives? We don’t have any evidence to answer this question. Are female leaders, whether they pursue paths of business diversification and growth that differ from that pursued by Apple likely to be as successful? This would also need to be answered in the future. In considering these issues, it may be helpful to ask whether female executives operating in these settings actually have definitions of success and power that are fundamentally different from their male counterparts. Do put this differently, would a white, educated, middle class female in a wealthy country have either the option or desire to manage success and power in a way that differed significantly from Steve Jobs. Do we have processes of selection in place that effectively means that a female computer science or business student hoping to catch the eye of a mentor or to climb the ladder of success is more likely to perform management in a Steve Jobs like fashion than not. Is society then reproducing female and male Steve Jobs clones rather than developing alternatives? The recent opting-out and missing generation debates in the US suggest that these issues and questions are not that farfetched.

I want to also make some comments relating to design and functionality. If a Steve Jobs like character in female form were to emerge and survive would she make design and be successful by products that sought to have seamless integration across data from personal/private and professional aspects of life. Personally, I find the aspect of the Apple i-range of products quite irritating and somewhat disturbing. While I love the convenience of the i-Pad and the i-Phone for network connectivity, posh email features, I resist quite strongly the possibility and practice of blending/merging any aspect of life in one device. I am not certain that this is inherently female, especially since we are supposed to be so much better off multitasking than men but I do not regard that blurring of boundaries as healthy and/or desirable.

«Steve as icon not only sets the standard but has probably set back feminist advocacy in this field for many decades to come»

Finally, I want to tackle the politics of the situation. In my work as a gender equality advocate with a focus on the ICT sector, I argued that unless a critical political analysis was made of the integration of social, political, institutional and structural processes that led to patterns of gender inequality, the situation would continue. The advocacy positions of the groups with which I was associated called for concerted efforts within the ICT sector and in the policy space to end exclusion and inequitable access to and control of ICT systems and industries on a gendered basis.

Several years on, although I am not as familiar with the academic, policy or civil society work in this area, I certainly have the impression that there has been no major breakthrough in terms of wrestling into these issues and making transformational changes.

And in that sense, Steve Jobs’s success at Pixar and Apple, his wealth creation, his bad behaviour, and hyper-masculinity means that he is the robber baronesque figure of the 21st century. Steve as icon not only sets the standard but has probably set back feminist advocacy in this field for many decades to come. By contrast, Bill Gates is a mild-mannered, happily married, philanthropy inclined, not particularly macho man, who is very wealthy. But he has not attracted the same love-hate reaction (except in Open Source circles).

If there was a level playing field and the world had really become a fundamentally different place, perhaps a warm-hearted, fuzzy, female leader with a heart of gold and on her best behaviour would have emerged to lead a firm that was concerned about triple bottom line issues, making useful ICT product and services in collaboration with users and competitors that addressed human needs as well as advanced private motives.

Until then we have Steve...

How to promote female 'geek' vocations

By Cristina Ribas, Associate Professor, Pompeu Fabra University

Could Linux, Facebook, Apple and Google have been created by women? I think they could, but the fact is that the most visible faces on the internet right now are still men. Does this have anything to do with women's reluctance to consider themselves, and indeed refer to themselves, as brilliant or ‘genius’? Or is that geek culture is too distant from the prevailing sexist education? I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to the reasons, though I'm sure that both of these have an influence. What is clear is that the consequences of the fact that very few women are creating and influencing technology are very negative, both for women themselves and for society as a whole. As is the case in so many other fields, not only is it unfair to limit decision-making powers and participation by relegating women to simple consumer status, but also shutting women entails a huge waste of talent which could be focused in new and innovative directions. What can we do to make the culture and vocation of technology more appealing to women?

«It is unfair to limit decision-making powers and participation by relegating women to simple consumer status, but also shutting women entails a huge waste of talent which could be focused in new and innovative directions»

First of all, greater visibility needs to be given to the female protagonists of the history of technology to shatter the image of their presence as unusual or impossible: Ada Lovelace, the mathematician daughter of Lord Byron, regarded as the first female programmer; Betty Jean Jennings and Fran Bilas who, amongst other things, programmed the first ENIAC computer in the 1950s; plus all those anonymous women who worked tirelessly at Bletchley Park deciphering codes during the Second World War, who cyberfeminist Sadie Plant paid tribute to in her book Zeros and Ones. In the same way that the industrial revolution was woven by the hands of women in the textile factories, so digital workers were also women, according to Plant.

We can also find women in senior management positions in many iconic internet companies, such as Marissa Mayer, who shone at Google and since July has been president and CEO at Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg one of the most successful executives in the digital business, currently at Facebook. It is also worth pointing out that even though there has been a drop in the number of engineers and computer technicians in the United States, we are seeing innovative start-ups led by young entrepreneurs, as explained by this article in USA Today.

«Something is not working in the educational system because there are very few girls with a geek vocation, who want to become programmers»

Who knows what we might be losing if there are fewer women programmers and entrepreneurs, as we need new strategies to help us transform the world, society and the economy, with the help of ICTs. This happened in the field of primatology, which had a before and an after, when three women introduced a new study method by sharing the habitats of groups of chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The "trimates" —Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birutë Galdikas― managed to understand the behaviour of these simians which are most closely related to humans as never before. One of the keys to this was that they considered human integration in the group of animals, a method that had not occurred to any male researchers.

There are many more examples of women's input in traditionally masculine sectors. For example, many years ago the sociologist Carme Alemany found that the washing machines designed mainly by men had numerous wash programmes, of which only two or three were ever used, while solutions to practical problems, such as how to make a wash stop if the colours start running —which are technologically simple to resolve― were dreamt up by women designers. Some engineers, such as the Colombian Inés Restrepo often think along different lines in order to tackle the same problem. Restrepo dreamt up a system of harvesting water in local communities using small gutters built in a network by each inhabitant, without the need for huge, costly and environmentally-damaging dams, which had been put forward as the only solution by the (male) engineers in her country. All of us benefit from new solutions from fresh perspectives. Another contribution might be a change of leadership, from the purely transactional short-term and predominantly masculine perspective to a transformational type of leadership with other goals that focus more on creating long-term value, as explained by doctor Sara Berbel on the subject of women's leadership.

Caption from the EU video campaign Science: it's a girl thing!

Furthermore, we need to move away from the stereotypes featured in campaigns such as the European Union initiative to promote scientific vocations among young people. This controversial video, which ended up being withdrawn, showed women among make-up and microscopes, as if they had to trivialize research to make it appealing to women. Psychologist Gemma Altell, on analysing this case, highlights two important questions. On the one hand, what do we need to change in the educational system to make girls more interested in science and technology? It is obvious that something is not working because there are very few girls with a geek vocation, who want to become programmers. And, furthermore, how can we stop fuelling the prejudices that make us judge women —and not men— by their appearance, and how do we reinvent what it means to be a man or a woman in the 21st century, casting aside the androcentric models generated thousands of years ago.

The European Women’s Lobby on the Role of Recognition

By Signe Kristine Nørgaard, guest writer for The European Women’s Lobby (EWL).

Could a woman do Steve’s job? Yes, of course. But the status and fame she would acquire are unlikely to bring her anywhere close to the adulation accorded to Steve Jobs, as Siri Hustvedt pointed out in her contribution to this blog. Whether we talk about pioneers at the frontiers of innovation or culture-bearing institutions, we witness the same tendency: when women enter a new (or old) male dominated field, the mysticism evaporates along with much of the status and pay. Consider how prestige and status have escaped historically masculine bastions such as education, the arts, politics and medicine proportionally to the degree of ‘feminisation’, the causality of which has been discussed superbly by Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman.^[1]

What excludes women from IT is not the hype and mysticism, but the gendered exclusivity which they symbolise. Inclusion on the other hand means breaking the gendered spell and a subsequent drop in prestige. Of course it is not all that black and white. This could not be further from a biological or essentialist argument. IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain. It matters little if we are talking about IT or other prestigious sectors dominated by men or rather, masculine values and attributes. The IT sector is symptomatic of the issues worth investigating here. No more, no less.

«IT is a vast and rather abstract ‘sector’ hardly reserved for men, but there are forces at play which de facto makes it mainly a male domain»

Having provided certain insights into the past and current situation, the pressing question is what we can do to change it. As has been brought up several times on this blog, taking to task gendered stereotypes and role models is an important step towards increasing women’s stake in the sector. And we must go beyond that. Comprehensively overthrowing gendered stereotypes requires that we confront the gendered value system itself. From this perspective, asking what it would take for a woman to do Steve’s job and win his glory is not good enough. Can we even imagine the same hype, prestige and monetary value attributed to, say, an outstanding woman working in the care sector? We might not yet be able to envision this scenario, but the point is we need to develop that ability!

IT or care economy. We know that the first sector does not exceed the latter in economic or societal importance. But we also know that the societal valuation of the contributions of these sectors by no means reflects this reality. This discrepancy can be linked to the age-old political discussion about production vs. reproduction on the one hand and on the other it is a pressing socio-economic problem. Above all it is a gender issue. The gender segregation in the IT and care sectors is not a law of nature, nor are the distorted valuations of these sectors’ respective contributions or associated gender pay gaps. Therefore the most tangible benchmark for progress is the level of gendered pay and pension gaps and of gender segregation in the labour markets. But the solution must be found taking a more ethereal road through our minds. So long as society (women and men) subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige.

«So long as society subscribes to masculinised ideals, women’s work, regardless of the sector, will remain undervalued in terms of pay and prestige»

This is not a battle between the sexes, but merely a matter of how recognition operates. Recognition, like respect, is not something one can claim, but something one must be given; the double meaning of recognition being key here: the way men successfully achieve recognition (acknowledgement) from each other is to a great extent dependent on their societally-rooted culture for mutual recognition in the sense that they ‘recognise’ (know, see and understand) each other. A woman achieving a position equivalent to Steve Jobs’ depends on affecting profound social change, but also on women’s ability to strengthen mutual recognition on their own terms by affirming what we already know: the deep awareness of the indispensable role of our contributions whether they are productive or reproductive. All the proof we need is already there. We need to operationalise this evidence and start formalising the means (institutional, capitalist, symbolic, communicative etc.) to give ourselves the recognition we know we deserve.

Footnote:
1. Her profound investigation of gendered culture, symbols and values is synthesized in the work Genus – det stabilas föranderliga former (the mutable shapes of stability). She develops a 'gendered power system' which refers to historically embedded, set of gendered values and symbols, which permeate our daily language and norms. Due to this inherited symbolic system "the masculine" is automatically attributed greater value than the "feminine". What is understood as 'masculine' and 'feminine' can change radically, but the gendered power system remains stable because power, value, prestige and status accrues to the ever 'masculine'. According to this logic attributes with feminine connotations can later on be adopted as 'masculine' attributes and so switch from low to high status, only now they are no longer 'feminine'.

Paddling against the wind

By Teresa Torns, professor, Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, that woman would have been an excellent student, since that was the essential passport to being something more than a good mother and wife. Given her good grades in mathematics and her interest in computers, perhaps she would have chosen to study engineering. But arriving at university saw her encounter some unexpected surprises. Firstly, that of discovering that very few girls had joined her in her choice, with most of her classmates being boys. Secondly, the absence of female teachers. Small disadvantages that dispirited her, given that she would rarely be able to talk about the issues of interest to a girl, like her, whose life was organized and designed exclusively by ICT. The overall memory of those years is that the university environment was too boy-friendly; an environment that she learned to overcome with a survival strategy of invisibility which included concealing her excellent grades.

However, these grades were what got her her first job in a company in the technology sector; a job that she did not hesitate to accept, even though that was the moment when the surprising of the young student doubled. This was mainly because the excitement of landing her first job soon vanished when the working conditions and her salary were not what she was expecting. In the beginning, she blamed these disappointments on the crisis that was affecting her country, but she soon suspected that perhaps that was not a very good explanation. Colleagues with inferior academic records who endured such drawbacks because they were juniors had, after the first five years, a better professional career, more recognition and a better salary.

«At university, a female Jobs would have encountered some unexpected surprises, such as the scarcity of female classmates and the absence of female teachers»

After consulting with a few specialists, she relaxed. She learned to put a name to what was happening to her. It was the glass ceiling, a form of employment discrimination that affected women who were professionally best-placed, particularly female engineers in the field of ICT. So she realised that what was happening to her was nothing unusual and she was able to think of new and better solutions. In the short term, there was no need to increase her availability at work, putting her relationship at risk, as well as her plans to be a mother again, and even her health.

The best thing would probably be to change jobs. She would look for a company that used the potential of ICT to support teleworking. Or she would explore the possibility of becoming a web-based professional, so that she would always be able to combine her everyday life with her knowledge and capabilities. She was lucky to live during the age of the internet, where it was said that everything was possible. Thanks to the blog she had created during her first maternity leave, she had heard about the project launched by “Les Pénélopes” which, using ICT, offered support to immigrant women employed in informal sectors.

«She would have suffered the glass ceiling, a form of employment discrimination that affected women who were professionally best-placed, particularly female engineers in the field of ICT»

Colleagues had told her about the shortages in long-term care services. Perhaps she could explore the organisation and management of these services through an internet application and offer it to social healthcare companies. Or perhaps she could start a consultancy to promote the use of ICT among rural women. She knew about the existence of the digital divide. Perhaps she could increase ICT use by bringing the possibilities it offered to the daily needs of those women. She would only need to persevere and be optimistic. European statistics from She Figures 2012 show how, between 2002 and 2012, the proportion of female engineers and technologists employed in the public sector had increased, for the first time. She would just need to forget about surprises and get to work.

Risks and costs of innovation: thinking outside the box

By Mary Evans, Centennial Professor, Gender Institute, London School of Economics

The question around which this (and other) blog is organised is that of the difference it might have made if Steve Jobs had been a woman. Now this question invites the usual comparisons between the lives of Shakespeare, Einstein and lots of other famous (and infamous) men and their sisters, the conclusion being that the males of the species had a much easier time in making their names in the public world… not least because they were expected to. Men live, as Kathleen Lynch has so rightly and clearly pointed out, ‘care-less’ lives.

«When responsibility for providing material support for others is denied, men carry a burden of personal failure, but life is difficult for both
men and women»

But at the same time as we know this we also know that millions of men shoulder expectations of care that are no less onerous than those of women: the responsibility for providing material support for others. When this responsibility is denied (for example in great swathes of Europe at the present time and for much else of the world for a lot of the time) men carry a burden of personal failure. But this comment need not take us to the equalising conclusion (life is difficult for both men and women) let alone to competitive assumptions about who has the most difficult time. What we should address is who profits from particular needs in a particular place at a particular time.

«The communications industry in which Jobs succeeded had no particular interest in his explicit gender, but it did have a financial interest in innovation»

In this way we come to address not the individual cases of success but the underlying circumstances which create opportunities for success. The multi-billion dollar communications industry in which Jobs so clearly succeeded had no particular interest in the explicit gender of Jobs (or Brown or Jones or Smith) but it did have a financial interest in innovation. Thus we need to ask questions about the ways in which the risks and the costs of innovation are gendered: the questions are about who we expect (and indeed allow) to think outside the box. I think that if we can begin to consider these questions then we get beyond the binaries of worse for women/better for men and reflect on the gendered constructions through which we challenge, take risks and innovate.

Innovations by, with and for women

By Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Comission

If Steve Jobs had been a woman, millions of girls and women might have a different attitude to technology today, both towards careers in technology and life as an entrepreneur. Of course many women were inspired by Steve Jobs anyway —his gender didn't change his greatness—. But it is striking that very few of the recent technology gurus —the people who built global empires out of nothing but their ideas— have been women. It's not because there aren't great women —we've even seen them lead major tech companies— but it shows us the digital world is underperforming compared to its potential.

There are role models out there we can do more to support, and I've had the pleasure to meet some of them, people like Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg or the UK's Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox. But we shouldn't just focus on today or on one or two names. Women have a great technology story: too many forget the first ever computer programmer was Ada, the Countess Lovelace in the 19th century. And the way forward is to get millions of women interested in technology, not to get one global technology company led by a woman.

«Demand for ICT professionals outstrips supply, and with women underrepresented in this sector means we need to ensure they feel careers in this sector are good options for them»

At a time when millions need jobs, there is one sector where demand outstrips supply: ICT professionals. With women underrepresented in ICT, that means we need to do much more to ensure women feel training and careers in technology are good options for them.

We must shatter the image that ICT is about geeks programming complex code in their lonely bedrooms. Not very attractive for many girls and women —or men! The image is not helpful and it's not true. These days, ICT is not just about coding, it's about connecting and creativity. It's not just about competitive games, winning, violence; it's about innovation, sharing and learning. Its not about judging new devices on their vital statistics, on how big your RAM is or how powerful your ROM; its about how sleekly they are designed, how easy they are to use, how attuned to what ordinary people actually need.

Second, I know a lot of women are concerned about work-life balance. A perfectionist like Steve is not a realistic role model then for most women. But for nearly everyone technology can help you work better around your family and social needs. That's true whether you are using e-Bay to set up a home business, a smartphone to send emails while looking after a sick child, or using Skype to meet colleagues from the comfort of your living room.

«By creating material that is of interest to women, and letting women create stuff for themselves, we can really show everyone that ICT is for them»

From another angle, we should value role in the ICT user community, and respect women as a market for ICT products and services. By creating material that is of interest to women —and letting women create stuff for themselves— we can really show everyone that ICT is for them. Women and families are increasingly the customers for the products of new technology. Tech-enabled wonders like Toy Story —which, of course, Steve was involved in— certainly keeps my grandkids happy. The modern internet can also offer safe online playgrounds for kids: somewhere where they can learn and play, create and connect with friends and family. Plus more and more sites —such as bloggers' networks like the English language Mumsnet— are targeted at and used by women.

Here there is a virtuous circle: because the more women see the online world as for them, the more they'll want to get involved in that designing —and the more they'll see ICT as something that needs and welcomes them—. Then we'll really see more innovations that are by women, with women and for women.