Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership

The exponential growth of technology and concurrent information revolution is creating a tremendous cultural shift on a global scale. However, the direction of that shift is being determined by those privileged few who participate. Women and people of color remain underrepresented as developers, users and beneficiaries of technology. Using gender as a starting point, Gender and Information Technology: Moving Beyond Access to Co-Create Global Partnership offers an interdisciplinary, social systems perspective on how shifting from a dominator social system towards a partnership system--as reflected in four primary social institutions (communication, media, education, and business)--might help us move beyond the simplistic notion of access to information technology towards partnership in co-creating a real digital revolution worldwide. This significant, compelling title defines core roots of the problem while proposing solutions in which we can all participate.

Mary Kirk is an associate professor in the individualized, interdisciplinary & lifelong learning department at Metropolitan State University where she also teaches in the women's studies program. She also taught at the University of Washington, Bothell for four years in the computing and software systems program. Kirk has convened panels on women in science and technology at conferences such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, National Women's Studies Association and Conference on Computing in Small Colleges. She has published articles on women in science and technology in journals such as the Journal of Computing in Small Colleges and the NWSA Journal and a chapter in Goran Trajkovski's (2006) Diversity in information technology education: Issues and controversies.