This document discusses whether education technology can be considered a feminist space. It notes that while some see the field as supportive of women, issues around unequal opportunities for women in tech careers and algorithmic bias persist. The document advocates for applying feminist concepts and critical frameworks around power, social justice, and the "male gaze" to research and practice in digital education. It argues that developing students' critical thinking around technology's social impacts and biases could help address these issues.

1. Image by Gerd Altmann on Pixabay
Education technology: a feminist space?
ALT-C | Sept 2019 | ‘critical frameworks’ theme
Helen Beetham @helenbeetham

2. Is education technology a feminist space?
What is your immediate response or feeling?
#femedtech

3. Reflection: from “women in edtech” to #femedtech
“…a professional space
that is full of brilliant,
kick-ass, women-
identified and
supportive women…”
“…for social justice and
critical approaches to
technology in
education…”

4. Reflection: from early 2016 to Alt-C 2019
#MeToo

5. Reflection: from early 2016 to Alt-C 2019
“a third of people [42% of
men] believe that feminism is
to blame for making some
men feel marginalised and
demonised”

6. What does this have to do with ed tech?
What are the concepts and
theoretical frames of reference
that can support further critical
research and reflection, and
inform more critically grounded
digital education practices
going forward?

7. What does this have to do with ed tech?
What are the concepts and
theoretical frames of reference
that can support further critical
research and reflection, and
inform more critically grounded
digital education practices
going forward?
Can feminism
provide critical
resources to support
digital education in
theory and in
practice? What are
they?

8. What people talk about as #femedtech
#femedtech tweets from 01/09/2018 to 31/08/2019

9. Louise Drumm, Frances Bell and Lou Mycroft (OER19 presentation)
What people talk about as #femedtech

10. bit.ly/femedtechmap

11. feminist issues in ed tech

12. Equal opportunities in work
Women are:
12% of AI researchers
6% of software developers
13 times less likely to file
ICT-related patents
(UNESCO, June 2019)
Women:
- lead 17% of THE top 200 global universities
- are 25% of the professoriate (92% white)
- work 95 days / year unpaid in UK education
- are 50% more likely to be on casual
contracts (EU) - as are non-white academics
- are 27% of all researchers (G20)
Martin Hawksey/ALT (2019)

13. Equal opportunities in work
“Given the many opportunities that
technology makes available for civic
participation, networking or improving
one’s productivity at work, the unequal
distribution of material, cultural and
cognitive resources to tap into these
opportunities may perpetuate and
even exacerbate existing status
differences”
(Source: OECD 2018)‘‘Access for women is not always
accompanied by changes in law,
policy, or men’s and women’s
consciousness or practices;
therefore, access does not de facto
lead to empowerment.”
(Bailur et al. 2018: special journal
issue on Gender, Mobile and the
Mobile Internet)
Women’s access to mobile
technology is 85% that of men
1.7 billion women are unconnected
most are in the global South

14. 23% of women and 1 in 3 young
women have experienced abuse
online (Ipsos Mori/Amnesty Int)
We are seeing young women and
teenage girls experiencing online
harassment as a normal part of their
existence online. Girls who dare to
express opinions about politics or
current events often experience a
very swift, misogynistic backlash.
Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism

15. feminist resources for ed tech

16. Racism and sexism are part of the
language and architecture of
technology… organisations from
libraries to schools and, universities to
government agencies are relying on or
being displaced by web-based tools as
though there were no social, political
or economic consequences.
Safia Umoja Noble (2019)
Algorithms of Bias
“we are required to classify the world
on the premise that the standard or
normal human being is a male one
and when there is but one standard,
then those who are not of it are
allocated to a category of deviation”
Dale Spender (1980)
Man Made Language
The male experience, the male
perspective, has come to be seen as
universal, while the female experience -
that of half the global population, after
all - is seen as, well, niche.
Caroline Crialdo Perez (2018)
Invisible Women: Data bias in a world
designed for men
Algorithmic bias

17. “Cinematic codes create a gaze, a world,
and an object, thereby producing an
illusion cut to the measure of [male]
desire. It is these cinematic codes and
their relationship to formative external
structures that must be broken down”
Laura Mulvey, ‘The Male Gaze’ (1975)
“All [facial recognition software]
performed substantially better on
male faces than female faces… For
darker-skinned women, the errors
soared to 35%”
“‘The Coded Gaze’ is what I call the
embedded views that are
propagated by those who have the
power to code systems”
Joy Buolamwini, Algorithmic
Justice League (2016)
Algorithmic bias

18. Algorithmic Justice League
Safe Face Pledge

19. Three issues form the context of my
thinking about [ ]
pedagogy: the clarification of the
source and use of power within the
classroom, the development of a
methodology for teaching writing
skills, and the need for instructors to
struggle alongside their students for a
better university.
“A classroom characterised as
people connected in a net of people
who care about each other’s
learning… an important place to
connect to our roots, our history, to
envision the future. The web of
interrelationships in the classroom is
seen to stretch to the local, regional
and global communities.”
Feminist pedagogies

20. Three issues form the context of my
thinking about Black feminist
pedagogy: the clarification of the
source and use of power within the
classroom, the development of a
methodology for teaching writing
skills, and the need for instructors to
struggle alongside their students for a
better university.
Barbara Omolade (1987) WSQ
“A classroom characterised as
people connected in a net of people
who care about each other’s
learning… an important place to
connect to our roots, our history, to
envision the future. The web of
interrelationships in the classroom is
seen to stretch to the local, regional
and global communities.”
Carolyn Shrewsbury (1987)
Women’s Studies Quarterly
“Publishing student writing has been
part of feminist and antiracist
pedagogy at least since the 1960s,
when teacher-poet-educator-editor-
activists… generated a public audience
for student writing”
Danica Savonick (2018)
Feminist pedagogies

21. Mode response on “I am told how my
personal data is used”: neutral
Free text comments concerning
personal data: 20 comments in 16k
Critical thinking about ed tech: the stakes are high

22. Mode response on “I am told how my
personal data is used”: neutral
Free text comments concerning
personal data: 20 comments in 16k
Critical thinking about ed tech: the stakes are high
If students get a sound education in
the history, social effects and
psychological biases of technology,
they may grow to be adults who use
technology rather than be used by it.
Neil Poster, in an interview (1996)

23. How do students develop critical resources?

24. Is education technology a feminist space?
What are your thoughts now?
#femedtech

25. Is education technology a feminist space?
What are your thoughts now?
#femedtech
The classroom with all its limitations
remains a location of possibility. In that field
of possibility we have the opportunity to
labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves
and our comrades, an openness of mind
and heart that allows us to face reality even
as we collectively imagine ways to move
beyond boundaries, to transgress.
This is education as the practice of
freedom.
bell hooks 1994