DonesTech/Código Lela (Lela Code), an activist research about the current relations between womyn and technologies: www.donestech.net
DonesTech is an informal group created in June 2006 in Barcelona. It is composed of womyn and men that share some common background in relation to activist research, mediactivism, technological practice and gender/feminist perspective.
From the start, we have been researching and taking actions to know how womyn access technologies, which software and hardware they use, under which conditions they work, which practices they develop with technologies and, finally, what are their main wishes and dreams for the future.
Our research and practice inscribes itself inside a cyberfeminism that challenges and interrogates the sexism embedded inside scientifically and technological practices and theories (González García, M y Pérez Sedeño, E, 2002). We reveal again the non-neutral character of technologies as artifacts that mediates our relation to the world by establishing possible ways of building upon it, and at the same time their development impedes the emergence of possible alternative pathways. In that sense, our research meet with a set of cyberfeminist reflections stating that through this interrogation we challenge the control and power mechanisms rooted inside technologies, and we contribute to a common empowerment of womyn by trying to subvert the gender relations at one of its core.
We introduce below the basic ideas we agreed to be part of our manifesto, a text that works as a shortcut to explain how and why we engaged inside this activist research about the current relations and representations between women and technologies. Afterwards we expose a brief summary of thedata we manage to found, gather and create ourselves on womyn and technologies. Finally, we are glad to present some of our main results regarding the collective and individual memories perspectives gathered throughout the research and that includes the dreams and wishes of the womyn that have participated to it.
Lela's Code Manifesto
“An investigation that arises from the desire to elucidate certain questions to transform research into a useful knowledge reserve to all those people worried about inequalities among genders and for people oriented to social and political transformation.
A space to rethink technology and its representations, its connection with the body and subjectivities and its relation with new forms of production, work, affections, identities, knowledge, desires, feelings, actions...
A study that comes from the analysis of data, information and existing research at an international level and that approaches real and everyday practices
A research that wants to echo projects, iniciatives, personal and collective practices in relation with technologies, but above all from womyn who currently participate and develop tools for information and communication tecnologies
A critical attitude because we want to know and have access to the running and mechanisms of the tools which we work with. For that reason we opt to use free software, open tools that facilitate collective learning and give autonomy in collaborative work and with the machines
A creation that is spread under free licenses because we believe that freely sharing and distributing information and knowledge facilitates social and political transformation
An interest to identify attitudes, representations and practices that discriminate womyn in the world of ICT from the experience of womyn that have managed to overcome those inequalities.
A visual, sonorous and cartographic path of the routes, actions, looks and reports as an active political work form.
A way to entangle us more...more...and more”
From Data....
For most of under-studied subjects one common denominator is the lack of available data, that is why our first step has been to establish which was the actual panorama of available sources of statistics related to the uses and practices of women with ICTs. We concentrated on the Catalan and Spanish state1 but also took in account some European and Worldwide statistics. All studies would show a lower access and rate of participation of women with ICTs, inside technological studies and in relation to working occupation defined as technological. This overview conducts us to several reflections: How those statistics were built?, Which visions and definitions were they carrying out?, Which aspects where they avoiding?
Throughout their analysis we saw that the gathering of data lack of openness in their consideration of “other” technological professions and activities, and they “strangely” invisibleness the ones that are less socially considered, and generally, less monetary valuated. We could also see that those statistics sticked into a quantitative vision of ICT use (number of computers, broadband access, number of hours spent..) but generally didn't take in account the qualitative aspects of such uses and practices. So we felt that we had to create our own data, in order to counter-balancer and experiment around this issue, considering the creation of data as a performative practice to empower our subject of study.
So besides “setting the scene” we intended by descyfering the “lela code” to shed light on other patterns of access and use of technologies by women. We intimately knew about “alter-realities” that didn't appeared in those data, and thus we were surrounded by women that were doing great things with technologies, all this was harshly known and was under-represented inside our daily channels of information and communication, and inside our imaginaries and collective memories.
to Memories...
The research tried to deliver collective knowledge about past referents, inspiring women and groups which used technologies to empower themselves, to improve their professional practices, to develop their creativity and/or to achieve social transformation for justice and equity. We felt how necessary it was to make visible those practices, memories, narratives driven by the women doing and interested by technologies.
Adopting a vast understanding of what stood behind the concept of “technologies” helped us to re-interpret its specificities in relation to gender issues. We intended to determine the characteristics of those artifacts relaying upon the intimates experiences of the women that did participate and contribute to this research. In that sense, the Lela code tried to twisted the generic perspective developed by most cultural studies devoted to this issue. It tried to transform the understanding of the lack of women inside technological fields by avoiding an approach beginning by “why aren't women participating?”, towards a view that would insist in the identification of “women already doing, contributing and participating” to those fields.
This mapping has used several methods to insure its development. In one hand, it has settled its strength in a continuous identification of events being developed around the world and relating somehow, women, technologies, feminisms and activisms. On the other hand, we have tried to reinforce this mapping by the identification of the informal groups, networks and formal organizations that were developing those events, driving us to settle a bookmark account on those initiatives and groups. Finally, we have organized, or taken part, to discussion groups and other events where our research has been presented and that allowed us to gather in-depth interviews with women present over there. All this, has conceded us an amount of precious audio and video material that we have used in several ways: it has constituted our primary materia to develop our analysis, its has been transformed in online interviews and in a documentary on this issue, it has constituted roar substance to create geopoetic maps about personal and collective memories, and about the several existing patterns that women developed in order to learn and get engaged with ICTs and technologies.
Methodologies... results...
All this mapping and analytical exercises have been developed taking in account activist research guidelines, willing through this collect of narratives to identify some keys, and pathways, that could be used by other women willing to participate and engage more with technologies. In that sense, the research process in itself had to create waves of social and political transformation in ourselves and also in the womyn we would come across. This would be the specificity of the <lela code>: descyphering receipts and methodologies that have worked for women, try to deliver them by taking in account their local and contextual specificities, conducive to empower ourselves, and improve our capacity to empower others, in order to accomplish more gender equity, and justice for all.
Even if we prioritize to bunch up subjective narratives, we don't stage that the understanding of how and why women initiate their interest, and technological practice, is enough to understand how they succeed. We have additionally to take in account factors such as the social, cultural and economical characteristics of each women. That is why we included inside our online survey some questions about their socio-demographic profiles. Our statistical analysis was based on a sample of 302 women and the profile established upon them made visible a “techie women”: “that leaves in a city upon 100.000 inhabitants, with an average of 35 years old and who had a first experience with technologies before being 20 years old. She has an occupation and her income is around 1000 euros. Half of hers have cursed a technical career, half, haven't. Generally she is single, without persons at her charge, with some free time which she highly dedicated to technologies practices. She uses proprietary hardware, and at least half of hers also uses free and open source software. Half of those women consider themselves as developers and creators as well as users of technologies, and generally they don't practice with technologies strictly alone”.
Besides this we have to relate this profile to the existent top-down policies developed by the public institutions, as much as, to the emerging self-organized grass-roots initiatives coming bottom-up. Both intend to attain a better inclusion and empowerment of women through their greater participation to the fields of technology and science. Taken in account all together they draw the current panoramas of inclusion/exclusion experienced by womyn in their possibility to accede, use and improve their technological skills and knowledge.
We decided to don't engage in this research from a pre-quoting of technologies avoiding a locked conception of what is a “techie womyn (and therefore who might not be). Even if our survey highlights a socio-demographic profile, we understand that it is biased in several ways but nevertheless, and maybe in a paradoxic way, it is useful as it provides with “unexpected” results, such as the amount of womyn already using FLOSS, or at least strongly interested with them. Inasmuch as our study aimed to include all women that did consider themselves as “techies” it lent to shed light on the “invisibilized” practices that womyn were carrying. This was made possible by our initial intention to avoid any segregation or exclusion of specific areas, domains or tools. This positioning has pointed out a diversified set of uses and practices taking place with womyn and information and communication technologies, but also with biotechnologies, audiovisual, educational and domestic technologies also.
This exercise of “reframing” and “reshaping” the practices of womyn and technologies as also showed us, at least in what refers to the sample2 of womyn that participated in the descyphering of lela code, that it exists a high heterogeneity between hers. They come from a variety of backgrounds and are linked in several ways, they are national residents, immigrants, nomads, they are young and old, they come from urban and rural places, they are students and also used DIY knowledge processes, they are activists, scientific, researchers, designers, djs and vjs, developers, journalists, producers.... But they do also share some perspectives and views: they are curious, they want to empower themselves in order to gain autonomy, they generally distrust and dislike power relations being embedded inside technological and scientific advances, they intend to have a critical attitude and a creative relation to technologies, they will to share their knowledge with others. They are the various aspects composing our lela code, a receipt for common empowerment by adapting grass-roots research to the creation and sharing of knowledge by all, for all.
> (2008) Lela's Code Article Published in a collaborative book " Are you talking to me? Discussions on Knowledge Production, Gender Politics and Feminist Strategies
h.arta and Katharina Morawek (eds.)
Loecker Verlag, Vienna
2008" Edited by: harta (Maria Christa, Anca Gyemant, Rodica Tache) and Katharina Morawek (english). Loecker Verlag, Vienna
2here we sum up the women that did answer to our online survey but also almost 60 women that we did interview in-depth face to face