This special issue of IEEE Software focuses on diversity and inclusion in software development, presenting research results and best practices for making the field equitable for all. It is well ...documented that the industry does not provide evenhanded participation conditions. Research has shown that implicit gender biases significantly impact hiring decisions, 1 women disengage faster than men, 2 Palestinian tech entrepreneurs do not have access to Internet-based distribution and payment platforms, 3 software developers with a visual impairment lack tools to navigate code editors, 4,5 and women are sometimes less likely to get their code accepted. 6 Tools, processes, products, and education are not inclusive. Dimensions such as geography, gender, socioeconomic politics, age, ethnicity, and disability shape who can participate in creating technology.
Civic technologies have the potential to support participation and influence decision-making in governmental processes. Digital participatory budgeting platforms are examples of civic technologies ...designed to support citizens in making proposals and allocating budgets. Investigating the empirical case of urban biking activists in Madrid, we explore how the design of the digital platform Decide Madrid impacted the collaborative practices involved in digital participatory budgeting. We found that the design of the platform made the interaction competitive, where individuals sought to gain votes for their single proposals, rather than consider the relations across proposals and the larger context of the city decisions, even if the institutional process rewarded collective support. In this way, the platforms’ design led to forms of individualistic, competitive, and static participation, therefore limiting the possibilities for empowering citizens in scoping and self-regulating participatory budgeting collaboratively. We argue that for digital participatory budgeting platforms to support cooperative engagements they must be
revisable
and
reviewable
while supporting
accountability
among participants and
visibility
of proposals and activities.
We propose equity-focused institutional accountability as a set of principles to organize equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts in computer science organizations. Structural inequity and lack of ...representation of marginalized identities in computing are increasingly in focus in CSCW research – and research institutions as well as tech organizations are struggling to find ways to advance inclusion and create more equitable environments. We study humor in a computer science organization to explore and decode how negative stereotypes create unnecessary and avoidable barriers to inclusion and counter efforts to creating a welcoming environment for all. We examine the humor embedded in sociomaterial artefacts, rituals, and traditions, and uncover the stereotyped narratives which are reproduced in formal and informal spaces. We argue that these stereotyped narratives both pose a risk of activating stereotype threat in members of marginalized groups, and of normalizing and reproducing ideas of who belongs in computer science. We situate and discuss the complexity of institutional accountability in the context of a traditionally participatory and collegial model of governance. As a way forward we propose three principles for an equity-focused approach to accountability in computer science organizations: 1) Examine organizational traditions and spaces to critically evaluate challenges for inclusion; 2) Normalize critical reflection in the core practices of the organization; 3) Diversify and improve data collection.
This is an open access book that covers the complete set of experiences and results of the FemTech.dk research which we have had conducted between 2016-2021 – from initiate idea to societal ...communication. Diversity in Computer Science: Design Artefacts for Equity and Inclusion presents and documents the principles, results, and learnings behind the research initiative FemTech.dk, which was created in 2016 and continues today as an important part of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen’s strategic development for years to come. FemTech.dk was created in 2016 to engage with research within gender and diversity and to explore the role of gender equity as part of digital technology design and development. FemTech.dk considers how and why computer science as a field and profession in Denmark has such a distinct unbalanced gender representation in the 21st century. This book is also the story of how we (the authors) as computer science researchers embarked on a journey to engage with a new research field – equity and gender in computing – about which we had only sporadic knowledge when we began. We refer here to equity and gender in computing as a research field – but in reality, this research field is a multiplicity of entangled paths, concepts, and directions that forms important and critical insights about society, gender, politics, and infrastructures which are published in different venues and often have very different sets of criteria, values, and assumptions. Thus, part of our journey is also to learn and engage with all these different streams of research, concepts, and theoretical approaches and, through these engagements, to identify and develop our own theoretical platform, which has a foundation in our research backgrounds in Human–Computer Interaction broadly – and Interaction Design & Computer Supported Cooperative Work specifically.
Prior research documents how the use of national cultural differences when used as an argument for failed collaboration is problematic and makes information technology (IT) companies blind to the ...challenges in global software development (GSD). Nevertheless, we still witness how issues in GSD work are kept explained, applied, and predicted through generic descriptions of national cultural behavior. Based on two ethnographic studies conducted within two large Danish IT companies, we extend prior work on implicit bias. The paper presents empirical examples on the widespread practice of using racist and stereotypical rhetoric in GSD, which initially motivated us to look for alternative strategies for analyzing the actual and locally situated collaboration‐related problems within organizations involved in GSD. Our contributions are threefold: (1) We show how the widespread practice of using negative stereotypical rhetoric is weaved into the fabric of GSD engagements; (2) we present the empirical results of attending to implicit bias as an approach to explore and combat pervasive practices that deploy static cultural narratives and stereotypes in GSD; and (3) we propose three areas in GSD that software organizations should investigate to identify and address the implicit biases that potentially challenge or shatter their distributed collaborative work.
In global software development (GSD), issues and challenges are often explained, applied, and predicted through static descriptions of national cultural behavior and negative stereotypes. Based on ethnographic studies within two large Danish IT companies, we unfold and present the empirical results of attending to implicit bias as an approach to explore and combat stereotypical rhetoric in GSD. We proposed three areas that software organizations should investigate to identify and address the underlying biases and challenges that shatter their distributed work.
Open Design is an emerging area of research that seeks to connect and extend the culture of making, social innovation, open-source software, and open-source hardware. A cornerstone for Open Design is ...to broaden participation in technology innovation by allowing people to use and contribute to publicly shared resources. Makerspaces are important access points to share and contribute to these resources. However, prior to entering the physical door of a makerspace, makerspaces' social media presence serve as the 'front door' for Open Design activities. In this paper, we examine different 'front doors' of Open Design, asking: What are the characteristics that produce makerspaces' social media presences, and how do these representations shape potential access to Open Design activities? We manually collected and qualitatively analyzed 500 public posts on the Facebook sites of five makerspaces in Copenhagen, Denmark. By choosing the same geographical area, we were able to explore the characteristics of makerspaces' social media presences for the same potential population of Open Design participants. Our analysis identifies three main characteristics of makerspaces' social media presence, which together shape access to Open Design activities, namely reach, transparency, and discourse. The display of these characteristics produce openness and availability in unique ways, and is constitutive for how Open Design activities are produced online. In this paper, we do not argue for or against specific social media representations. Instead, we argue that the specificities and differences between makerspaces' social media presences in the same geographical region have the strength of producing different identities across spaces, allowing for a broader definition and potential participation in Open Design.
Our five-year ethnographic study of Palestinian tech entrepreneurship provides a unique case that examines the interplay between technology, politics and power dynamics. In this paper, we trace the ...formation of the Palestinian tech entrepreneurial public and analyse how it has transformed from being a counterpublic to serving as a beacon for the development of the Palestinian economy while under Israeli occupation. Despite its apparent success, the foundation of the Palestinian entrepreneurial public is fragile, as it is stuck in a repeat and rewind cycle involving the eternal application of the lean startup approach and the associated business models, which encourage the mimicking of Western design solutions. We develop the concept of a
public of erosion
to characterise how the Palestinian entrepreneurial public has been produced and shaped by the attrition stemming from the interlinked infrastructures created by donor agencies, powerful billionaires, the government and the Israeli occupation. A public of erosion is characterised by heavy dependencies on factors outside its immediate control, and is shaped by processes that constantly dismantle resources, leading to the wearing down of its foundation. The concept of a public of erosion is intended to provide researchers with a new language and a lens to apply when investigating digital technologies in the Global South. Finally, we demonstrate how the current structural conditions result in producing bounty hunters and real estate projects, rather than a strong digital ecosystem necessary for the development of sustainable digital technologies.
In this paper, we explore the role technology plays in online workplace harassment as it emerges in the legal verdicts of labour law courts. Analysing 106 official legal verdicts on labour law ...violations, we demonstrate how technological traces are used as evidence for both indictment and the defence. We find that chat technologies risk providing a platform for online workplace harassment which extends beyond the boundaries of work and into private life. In contrast to online harassment on social media sites, online harassment in the workplace exists within situations of known audiences in hierarchical organisational structures. Thus, speaking up against a violator can have severe financial and social consequences for the survivor. Our data show that chat technology, by capturing and documenting abusive behaviours, makes harassment visible, allowing survivors to hold the harassers legally accountable. Furthermore, we find that online harassment, because it extends beyond the physical workplace, extends the legal and ethical responsibility of the employer. We argue that research on computer-supported co-operative work should consider how the design of co-operative technologies can help survivors speak up, as well as inhibit violators’ abusive behaviour. We also propose that design strategies must consider employers’ extended responsibility for moral and ethical conduct.
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