Gender in HCI

By Os Keyes

From “Gender HCI” to “Feminist HCI”, Human-Computer Interaction does not lack for research that discusses gender’s role in computing systems. But what does “gender” mean, exactly, and how does HCI use it?

In this research seminar we will read a mix of HCI and Gender Studies papers, seeking to understand the various lenses through which gender is understood within wider academia, ask how HCI has operationalised the term, and explore the ways in which the field could directly use gender theorists’ work in understanding the way our designs fit into the world. The course takes an expansive and inclusive view of gender, and examines the way it is informed by disability, trans* status, and/or race.

Week 1: Doing Gender

Readings

  1. Candace West and Don H Zimmerman. 1987. Doing Gender. Gender & Society 1, 2: 125–151. http://doi.org/10.2307/189945?refreqid=search-gateway:0e160352d2f46cde0631f08bb64b11c5
  2. Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity. Gender & Society 23, 4: 440–464. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243209340034

Further Reading

  1. Chris Brickell. 2003. Performativity or Performance? Clarifications in the Sociology of Gender. New Zealand Sociology 18, 2: 158–178.
  2. Garfinkel, Harold. “Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an “intersexed” person.” The Transgender Studies Reader (2006): 58-93.
  3. Kristen Schilt. 2016. The Importance of Being Agnes. Symbolic Interaction 39, 2: 287–294. http://doi.org/10.1002/symb.231
  4. Jodi O’Brien. 2016. Seeing Agnes: Notes on a Transgender Biocultural Ethnomethodology. Symbolic Interaction 39, 2: 306–329. http://doi.org/10.1002/symb.229

Week 2: Trans*

Readings

  1. Lain A B Mathers. 2017. Bathrooms, Boundaries, and Emotional Burdens: Cisgendering Interactions Through the Interpretation of Transgender Experience. Symbolic Interaction 40, 3: 295–316.
  2. Helana Darwin. 2017. Doing Gender Beyond the Binary: A Virtual Ethnography. Symbolic Interaction 40, 3: 317–334.
  3. Spencer Garrison. 2018. On the Limits of “Trans Enough”: Authenticating Trans Identity Narratives. Gender & Society 32, 5: 613–637. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243218780299

Further Reading

  1. Jocelyn A Hollander. 2012. “I Demand More of People.” Gender & Society 27, 1: 5–29. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243212464301
  2. Valerie Jenness and Sarah Fenstermaker. 2013. Agnes Goes to Prison. Gender & Society 28, 1: 5–31. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243213499446
  3. Elizabeth P Rahilly. 2015. The Gender Binary Meets the Gender-Variant Child. Gender & Society 29, 3: 338–361. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243214563069
  4. Kylan Mattias Vries. 2012. Intersectional Identities and Conceptions of the Self: The Experience of Transgender People. Symbolic Interaction 35, 1: 49–67. http://doi.org/10.1002/symb.2

Week 3: Race and Gender

Readings

  1. Chavez, Koji, and Adia Harvey Wingfield. “Racializing gendered interactions.” Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. Springer, Cham, 2018. 185-197.
  2. Karen D Pyke and Denise L Johnson. 2016. Asian American Women And Racialized Femininities. Gender & Society 17, 1: 33–53. http://doi.org/10.1177/0891243202238977

Further Reading

  1. J E Sumerau and Eric Anthony Grollman. 2017. Obscuring Oppression: Racism, Cissexism, and the Persistence of Social Inequality. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 4, 3: 322–337. http://doi.org/10.1177/2332649218755179
  2. Vrushali Patil. 2018. The Heterosexual Matrix as Imperial Effect. Sociological Theory 36, 1: 1–26. http://doi.org/10.1177/0735275118759382
  3. Jessie Daniels. 2009. Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment. Women’s Studies Quarterly 37, 1/2: 101–124. http://doi.org/10.2307/27655141?refreqid=search-gateway:67c658e0df1774f77e699fbc8176b803
  4. María Lugones. 2007. Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System. Hypatia 22, 1: 186–209. http://doi.org/10.2307/4640051?refreqid=search-gateway:73be84305c8ed56e853737398981c412

Week 4: Intersectionality

Readings

  1. Kimberle Crenshaw. 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Law Forum: 1–31.
  2. Kimberle Crenshaw. 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43, 6: 1241. http://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

Further Reading

  1. Elzbieta H Oleksy. 2011. Intersectionality at the cross-roads. Women’s Studies International Forum 34, 4: 263–270. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2011.02.002
  2. Ari Schlesinger, W Keith Edwards, and Rebecca E Grinter. 2017. Intersectional HCI. ACM Press, 5412–5427. http://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025766
  3. Sylvanna M Falcón and Jennifer C Nash. 2015. Shifting analytics and linking theories: A conversation about the “meaning-making” of intersectionality and transnational feminism. Women’s Studies International Forum 50: 1–10. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.02.010

Week 5: Disability and Gender

Readings

  1. Thomas J Gerschick. 2000. Toward a theory of disability and gender. Signs 25, 4: 1262–1268.
  2. Nanna Mik-Meyer. 2015. Gender and Disability: Feminizing Male Employees with Visible Impairments in Danish Work Organizations. Gender, Work & Organization 22, 6: 579–595. http://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12107

Further Reading

  1. Russell Shuttleworth, Nikki Wedgwood, and Nathan J Wilson. 2011. The Dilemma of Disabled Masculinity. Men and Masculinities 15, 2: 174–194. http://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X12439879
  2. Sónia F Bernardes and Maria Luísa Lima. 2010. Being less of a man or less of a woman: Perceptions of chronic pain patients’; gender identities. European Journal of Pain 14, 2: 194–199. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpain.2009.04.009
  3. Barbara E Gibson, Bhavnita Mistry, Brett Smith, et al. 2013. Becoming men: Gender, disability, and transitioning to adulthood. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 18, 1: 95–114. http://doi.org/10.1177/1363459313476967

Week 6: Critical Views on Gender in HCI

Readings

  1. Rena Bivens and Anna Shah Hoque. 2018. Programming sex, gender, and sexuality: Infrastructural failures in the “feminist” dating app Bumble. Canadian Journal of Communication 43, 3: 441–459. http://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2018v43n3a3375
  2. Os Keyes. 2018. The Misgendering Machines: Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition. 1–22. http://doi.org/10.1145/3274357 (yes I’m a narcissist)

Further Reading

  1. Teresa Almeida, Rob Comber, Gavin Wood, Dean Saraf, and Madeline Balaam. 2016. On Looking at the Vagina through Labella. ACM Press, 1810–1821. http://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858119
  2. Rena Bivens and Oliver L Haimson. 2016. Baking Gender Into Social Media Design: How Platforms Shape Categories for Users and Advertisers. Social Media + Society 2, 4: 205630511667248. http://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116672486
  3. Oliver L Haimson, Gillian R Hayes, Jed R Brubaker, and Lynn Dombrowski. 2015. Disclosure, Stress, and Support During Gender Transition on Facebook. ACM Press, 1176–1190. http://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675152

Week 7: Inclusive Methods

Readings

  1. Alex A Ahmed. 2017. Trans Competent Interaction Design: A Qualitative Study on Voice, Identity, and Technology. Interacting with Computers 30, 1: 53–71. http://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwx018
  2. Elena Ariel Windsong. 2017. Incorporating intersectionality into research design: an example using qualitative interviews. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21, 2: 135–147. http://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2016.1268361

Further Reading

  1. Jessie Daniels. 2013. Race and racism in Internet Studies: A review and critique. New Media & Society 15, 5: 695–719. http://doi.org/10.1177/1461444812462849
  2. Brian N Larson. 2017. Gender as a Variable in Natural-Language Processing: Ethical Considerations. EthNLP, 3: 30–40. Retrieved from http://www.ethicsinnlp.org/workshop/pdf/EthNLP04.pdf
  3. Munmun De Choudhury, Sanket S Sharma, Tomaz Logar, Wouter Eekhout, and René Clausen Nielsen. 2017. Gender and Cross-Cultural Differences in Social Media Disclosures of Mental Illness. ACM Press, 353–369. http://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998220