In summary, your technical capital has been acquired through your increasing economic, cultural and social capital – they’re all intertwined aren’t they? I find Halford and Savage (2010) discussion of the feminist critique re technical capital quite interesting too – they say:
“…science and technology are produced by, and constitutive of, masculine identities and male power” (p.941).
Thank you for the comments on my post, Noreen. I started to respond in the comments, but I agree that this warrants a short follow-up post. So apologies for any duplication of thoughts, here!
I’ve started to notice a strange tension in our field between those that can do the technical/design piece (often perceived as real, hard work) and practitioners like me that gravitate toward soft skills (pedagogy, learning design, critical approaches, i.e. a bit abstract, easy work). I’d never considered that it had patriarchal underpinnings, but delving a bit deeper into this reading got me thinking. Reflecting on recent project work, I’ve had many colleagues of both genders sneer about our accomplishments, as much of the work was focused on creating resources, writing, webinars, outreach, etc. I even had to put together a timeline of achievements to help justify my accomplishments, especially in response to some colleagues that can only identify or place value on work more concrete work, such as improving classroom technologies or managing a VLE project. I think there’s a bit more to explore here beyond this short follow-up post, so I’m highlighting this for my own notes. Roles in learning technologies/instructional design/educational development vary so much, and the skills people bring to them can vary widely, so I’m wondering if it’s just a case that more value is placed on power and identity that aligns more toward perceived masculine attributes? Of course, this has also shifted throughout Covid as many of us have had very different types of work to support.
the broad argument persists that science and tech- nology have emerged in ways that ally them with masculinity – albeit not in any fixed or pre-determined way – and that this will persist unless and until there is a fundamental shift in the power relations that produce the forms of scientific practice, technology design, control and management of technology, and so on, whether women have access to science and technology, or not. (p. 941)
For my first few years in higher ed, I was part of a team of five learning technologists, all women, and we were led by a woman. I don’t think that any of our team was in the role due to any policies promoting women to enter STEM careers, rather, we all possessed different skill sets that led us to the third space supporting teaching and learning. While I was proud to be part of that team, I’m looking back with a different lens now. The person with an overall say in our work was our male director, and much of the work we did was dictated by various university committees and managers. We had some limited control, but ultimately important decisions were made by others. It’s also worth thinking about the power imposed on us via technological design. I’ve rarely reflected on the tools and technologies that our team used. Who designed these tools, and who were they designed to benefit? It often felt that our work as a team was to support staff with their technical/pedagogical/design queries, but also to shoulder the emotional labour of supporting them and empathising with their needs and anxieties. While our director made high-level decisions, he was often unaware of the work ‘on the ground’ and how adaptable we often needed to be to whatever situation was thrown at us! I’m also keen to reflect more on gender attributes. As I explore my recent work and context, I note that my colleagues and I would tend to possess a variety of skills and attributes that would confirm that “essentialized conceptualizations of gender, whereby fixed attri- butes and identities are attached to ‘man’ and ‘woman’” are not “objective and static categories” (Halford and Savage p.941)
In my previous post, I touched on the social media capital that I’ve (somehow?) seemed to build over the last number of years. I’m aware that I was a bit dismissive of its worth, but then as I started to work on this post, I was reminded of the networks that helped foster that capital. One is certainly the #femedtech network. I’ve curated the account twice, and the people that make up that community have helped to amplify my voice and my work. The network has done what it set out to do in that space, and its value is in the sum of its parts.
So much of what you write here resonated with me as a former learning technologist in a university – both what you say about what is valued around technology roles and what is considered important when implementing technology in educational contexts. I did a programming subsidiary course at university – I was one of only two females in a class of 30! Despite that, I did as well as the males because despite the prevalent belief that programming requires mathematical and technical skills, my theory is that it actually requires logic and language skills, both of which I possessed. That early experience in a ‘male field’ gave me loads of confidence with computers later in my career. I am not a programmer but I understand how it works and there is no mystery or status to being able to do that rather than understand how to apply it to learning situations. It has been suggested that the same male approach is used in teaching Sciences – the topics and the methodology are developed around what suits men, what they consider important and how they like to approach things. Fortunately things are changing…!!