Keywords

Introduction: Space Invader Experiences

The previous chapter explored what had enabled women to enter university-level IT programs. When focusing on positive drivers and turning points that enabled and contributed to women’s arrival at the start of a career in IT, gender remained mainly unspoken. Yet, gender was inextricably entangled in the women’s experiences. Few others than the foreign women recounted experiences where being a girl had led them onto a pathway to IT. In the Norwegian women’s narratives, gender rather came up when they described their uncertainty about studying IT, with questions such as: if you only see men, will I fit? This chapter takes a closer look at how IT was perceived as a gendered space wherein being a woman made a difference to and shaped their experiences. The questions pursued here are: how do women navigate the gendered landscape of IT? How were they challenged by and how did they themselves challenge the gender structures and stereotypes of IT?

The analysis of the women’s navigation of the gendered spaces of IT is inspired by Puwar’s concept of space invader as a metaphor for women and racial minorities entering historically male and white spaces that had previously been less available to them (2004). While male bodies appear to represent neutral positions, the space invader metaphor highlights how such reserved spaces are shaped “through what has been constructed out” (Puwar, 2004, p. 1). The paradox of the space invader appears when “bodies out of place” enter these reserved spaces; being there, enjoying it, but not fully belonging there (ibid.). Challenged by the culturally constructed norm, the space invader often meets doubt about her belonging and “super-surveillance” questioning her skills (Puwar, 2004, p. 11).

Here I use this concept to explore the women’s experiences when entering higher education in IT in disciplines within technology and sciences departments, that is, spaces of IT inhabited mostly by men in Norway (The Norwegian Universities and Colleges Admission Service, 2022). Many of the women shared the feeling of disturbing a masculine norm of IT, of not fitting the main narrative and the expectations to inhabitants of such spaces. The women’s experiences thus reflect research illustrating how being a woman and interested in IT appear as a contradiction in most western cultures (Chow & Charles, 2019; Nentwich & Kelan, 2014). Gender stereotypes not only challenge young women’s association with and self-efficacy in IT (Borgonovi et al., 2018; Chavatzia, 2017; Frieze & Quesenberry, 2019; Watts, 2009) but also their ability to identify female role models (Arnold et al., 2021; Corneliussen et al., 2019). The women are, however, not passive bystanders. By disturbing the norm, they contribute to identifying the social construction of the male spaces of IT. Simultaneously, they challenge the masculine norm by suggesting new ways of understanding IT, what it represents, and who can pass as expert in the field.

Below I will start by exploring how the women’s understanding of IT changed as they developed their knowledge about the field and how this affected their perception of the gendering of this space. The women also negotiated the gendered norm, finding ways for bridging the seemingly contradictory positions of being a girl and being involved in IT.

Gamers, Geeks, and Hackers—Identifying the Norm as Masculine

Few of the women we met in the previous chapter had recognized IT as a study or career option at lower or upper secondary school, and some not even when starting at university. One reason for this was that their initial understanding reflected narratives recognized in previous research, of IT as a world mainly populated by men and little inviting for women (Faulkner, 2009; Lewis et al., 2016; Sørensen, 2011). The women’s perceptions developed over time and with experience, and their later understanding supported a revised vision of who belongs in spaces of IT. When the women developed their sense of belonging in this field, it was entangled with their reconstruction of IT as a more open and inclusive space. However, their initial understanding provides important insights into how the women negotiated their belonging in IT as space invaders disturbing what they perceived as a masculine norm of IT, thus highlighting some of the main features of the historical and conceptual constructions of IT as a gendered field (Puwar, 2004).

The women’s different pathways to IT analysed in the previous chapter illustrated that most of them had limited experience with IT and therefore recognized their lack of knowledge about IT as a discipline and occupation when they entered university. Most of the women therefore had to navigate the educational landscape based on their initial understanding that included stereotypes defining IT as a masculine field: “It has become more like a boy’s subject, and it seems like only guys do computing and stuff like that” (Berit). The male characters that women expected to find in IT programs were labelled “gamers”, “geeks”, or “hackers”, and they were assumed to have an intense but also a narrow interest in video games and programming, as Elise illustrates: “I really expected [the study environment] to be a little more monotonous with the typical nerd and hoodie and the ‘gaming all day long’ type”. This combination of nerd, hoodie, and gamer that dominated women’s initial understanding of IT had made it difficult for them to imagine themselves in IT: “I associate it with people who like to game a lot, who sit like that in their room […] So I thought it wasn’t for me at all” (Gunn).

This gendered pre-understanding in the women’s narratives can be described as a storyline following a certain pattern (Søndergaard, 2002): boys play games; gamers need to learn to program; boys develop programming knowledge before entering higher IT education. Girls and women do not fit the image of young men in hoodies. This initial image, which dominated the women’s perception of IT, did not leave much space for the young women to imagine their own belonging in IT. Furthermore, lacking the background associated with the male gamer was perceived as an obstacle by most of the women, since they could not recognize themselves as correctly equipped to enter IT: “I had never programmed before in my life” (Ingrid). While trying something new might be scary, doing so along fellow students that the women assumed were already skilled programmers added strain to the situation. Thus, the women did not talk much about interest in IT as shaping their decision to study IT. Instead, they pointed to the double challenge they experienced, of neither fitting the image of the male insiders in spaces of IT, nor holding the skills or competence they associated with this position.

Claiming Visibility—Claiming Space

Gradually, as the women came into closer contact with IT and the relevant environments, they developed their perception in ways that redefined IT as a place where also women could belong. The process by which the women started to define their own belonging was targeting their initial perception, including the male-dominated storyline, in several ways; by claiming women’s visibility in spaces of IT, and emphasizing alternative interests, strengths, and competences as important. While the women challenged the hegemony of the male storyline by participating in spaces of IT, their narratives illustrate that this was not a simple or straightforward process, but rather one including a risk of backlashes where a male norm was reinstated. For some of them, such as Tove, the first meeting with university still seemed to confirm their initial feeling of not belonging there: “When I showed up the first day, I didn’t feel like I fit in […]. There were a lot of typical gamers there, and I’ve never played videogames in my entire life, right. So I didn’t really feel at home at that point” (Tove).

For most of the women this image gradually changed. A first step was to identify other types of people than the gamers among their fellow students. Several of the women pointed out, with a certain surprise, that they had found “normal people that you can talk with” (Berit) and “people like me” (Tonje) among their fellow students:

When I started, I was a bit like “no, these are computer people, they are not the ones I hang out with, I am not a gamer”. Because I imagined a bunch of gamers, but it was rather like “I can actually fit in here”. People are so different here. So yes, it was completely different from what I expected. (Gunn)

While the hooded gamer still played a part in the women’s perception of IT, also other types of people came into view. For most of them, a presence and visibility of other women was important for them to feel welcome: “When I started studying, it was very important for me to see other women. When I saw them there, I felt that I could be there too” (Sofie). Finding other women in spaces of IT enabled the women to start developing their own sense of belonging. Several of the women had initially expected and feared that they would be the only woman in an all-male space of IT. Seeing other women in IT made a big difference, because “you do not have to feel like you’re a complete outsider even if you’re a girl: you feel that you can be part of a group of girls”, Gunn said. Several of the universities had acted as a facilitator for developing a community of women:

The first day we had a girls’ day, where all the girls got to meet and to know each other […]. From day one I felt like I was almost going to class with only girls. Because they are the ones I mostly talk to and sit together with. I can’t say I think much about it really, that there are mostly boys here. (Ingrid)

Whether formally organized or reflecting informal practices, most of the women appreciated and participated in communities of women when they started studying IT. The high visibility of women contributed to normalizing women’s presence while also reducing the visibility of the male dominance: “We don’t notice [that there are few women], since the girls are the ones that you see in the reading room, so it doesn’t feel like there are fewer girls than boys here” (Berit). While many of the women appreciated the surprise of finding a rather large group of female students, the same was not the case for the staff at the IT departments. This reflected a generally low percentage, with less than 20% female professors in technology disciplines at Norwegian universities in 2020 (Steine et al., 2020). Noticing this, the women expressed disappointment about the lack of women among professors and lecturers as well as among student assistants and study group leaders. Anna had been “upset about how few female group leaders and seminar leaders there are”, while Tove was proud to become a student assistant “because a girl has never been a student assistant before.”

Different from Kanter’s notion of “token” pointing to professional women’s experience of being devalued because they are seen as representing women, rather than a profession (Kanter, [1977] 1993), several of the women used their visibility in a more assertive way, as an advantage: “If I am the only woman in a conference hall, then everyone knows who I am, even though I do not know who they are. If I say something then, I will be heard” (Camilla). Putting themselves in the limelight in male-dominated IT contexts became a tool for making women visible:

I’m one of those who raise their hands in class […] I make up nearly 20 percent of all the girls in the hall, whereas you never see 20 percent of the boys speaking in class. […] So I take on that task; I raise my hand, even though it may be a little unnecessary at times. (Anna)

The visibility of women in IT reading rooms and lecture halls, as lecturers and role models, contributed to a collective feeling of empowerment among the women, justifying their presence and participation in spaces of IT. Acts such as raising their hand or their voice in male-dominated spaces of IT had become a conscious way of flagging that women were participating, both as women and as professionals.

Women’s visibility was vital for the women to consider themselves as qualified for studying and working with IT:

It was very important for me to see that others with whom I could identify, people similar to me, achieved things here. Because if you only had the stereotype of these men, then I don’t think I had felt that this was suitable for me, because my subconsciousness would have been like “no, perhaps you don’t fit here”. (Gunn)

Seeing other women with a career in IT communicated a message about the possibility for women to succeed: “you feel that if they can make it, then maybe I can make it too” (Gunn). Many of the women emphasised the importance that not only men, but also women, were available as role models for technology professions: “if you only see men […] it is not so easy to imagine ‘being him’ some years from now” (Ingeborg). Female role models in male-dominated spaces represent counter-stereotypical images that can work as door openers for young women who find it easier to associate themselves with other women rather than with men (González-Pérez et al., 2020). Female role models are important because girls “have a very different pathway—it is very different to be a girl” facing the male-dominated world of technology, Ingeborg explained.

Cracking the Code of Being a Girl in IT

The women’s experiences as “bodies out of place” in the masculine spaces of IT had made women’s visibility important, and female role models were also vital for cracking the code of being a girl in IT. In Chap. 3 we saw how Ingrid had been struggling with bridging the positions of being interested in IT and being a girl, which for her had appeared as mutually exclusive. A woman featuring as a female role model in a recruitment event targeting young women, had helped Ingrid to start thinking differently about how to make these positions meet. She was still wavering between “being a girl and not really having an interest in it” and of “having an interest” that was made possible by the thought that it was “not only technology that defines you” (Ingrid). Gender and interest in IT are closely knitted together in the gendered norm of IT, illustrating the challenge for girls and women entering spaces of IT when the masculine norm seems to disqualify them simply for being female. For Ingrid, seeing a female role model who had not only succeeded in a tech career, but also expressed her interest in technology, was instrumental for her vision of the possibility of bridging these seemingly contradictory positions. This example also illustrates the potential effect that female role models can have for girls who had never fully realized that the combination of girls and technology was an option.

The importance of female role models was confirmed by most of the women. Female role models in technology have, however, not been readily available for many of the women: “I haven’t really had a role model, such a female role model, because it hasn’t existed” (Camilla). Some women resort to “substitute” role models from other fields and areas of life when they cannot identify women as role models in technology (Corneliussen et al., 2019). Others rather found female role models on social media, such as the following illustrates:

After I started at the programming degree, I have sought out many role models online. On Instagram, for example, there have been several female programmers […] When seeing that they are doing so well, that has been a major inspiration for me to continue […] So whenever I’ve felt insecure about my choice, then I’ve kind of looked at them and felt a little more confident. (Liv)

Even for the women who could identify with a stereotypical male trajectory to IT, growing up with gaming and programming, it was important to identify women as someone like her to support their feeling of belonging in IT.

Although most of the women appreciated the visibility of women and female role models, their narratives indicate that women had not been particularly visible outside the arenas of IT education. As we saw in Chap. 3, only two women emphasized recruitment activities involving female role models, and none of the women referred to meetings with other organizations or networks for women and technology. This relative invisibility of women in tech is one of the mechanisms that makes it necessary for each new generation of young women to establish a relationship between being a girl and a career in IT.

Alternative Interests, Motivations, and Competences

While the women’s experiences paved the way for a wider notion of participation in IT, the image of the hooded gamer still appeared important in the women’s perception of IT. Gaming leading to programming was still assumed to be important and formative for the level of skills among students. Reinforced by a widespread perception of programming as a core field in IT, this remained an insurmountable challenge for those women who did not have a similar background, because they could not see themselves competing with men in this field: “There are two or three boys in my class who had a lot of experience from before. They are not the majority, but they are so skilled that it feels completely unattainable to be as good as them” (Lene). Paradoxically, it was programming that made many of the women fall in love with IT. Anna, for example, illustrated this when saying, “I can’t explain the joy I got from my first programming class”. Many of the women expressed pleasure, fascination, and spoke of becoming “hooked” on programming. This was followed by an expression of their sadness for not having learnt it before, as illustrated by Gro: “If I had known about the possibilities before, I would have sat down and started programming right away”.

The women’s limited background with IT was also reflected in how they considered themselves suitable for working with IT. None of them identified themselves as being good at IT and few described programming as one of their strengths. Yet the women’s self-assessment responded to the key features of the male storyline, which involved interest, motivation, and competence:

I think I fit here because I like learning new things all the time. Without really knowing when I was a kid, I was into everything that was technological and, sort of, doing a little bit myself. […] So, I feel I fit in because I’m motivated […]. Not because I’m the best at programming or the best in math, but I just feel that I have the motivation that is needed. (Gunn)

Gunn’s emphasis on being motivated, and her childhood interest in technology, resembles many of the other women’s descriptions of their interest and motivation—exactly the things that the male storyline ascribes to men rather than to women. However, their interest is not primarily in IT—some even refused having an interest in IT at all, and rather defined it as a more general interest in society or, as Ellen, in the world: “I am interested in the world, and technology is a large part of the world”. The women translated their motivation to learn about IT to a wish of being prepared for the “digital society” (Maja), to participate in decisions with the aim to contain and limit the effects of digital technology, and to be able to solve societal challenges. The value that women identified with IT was thus not limited to technology but rather included a wide range of goals and values, from supporting individuals’ ability to deal with cyber threats to making them able to participate in the ongoing digitalization of previously non-tech disciplines and occupations (Corneliussen & Seddighi, 2022).

A similar picture emerges when they explain their professional strengths; very few of the women identified any background in IT, while most of them identified their professional strengths in sciences and mathematics, or in social sciences or business. For many of the women, this had produced a safe platform for entering IT, as we saw in Chap. 3 when Tonje explained that mathematics made her confident “while learning something new”, referring to IT. The women described a wide set of skills they identified as relevant for IT such as language, arts, or a combination of competences with nearly any field such as the world:

I have always been very good at science. I kind of felt it was the same type of thinking. And I am very good at languages. […] I think in a way that programming is just learning a new language. […]. So I really like the combination. In a way it’s like writing a text that you have to write in the best way possible. At the same time, there is a very hard logic to it. (Ingrid)

The women emphasized that IT can be relevant nearly anywhere, whether you work in a store or in a hospital, many using recognizable female-dominated workplaces as examples.

The women’s descriptions of their strengths can be interpreted as a response to the male storyline as it confirms that also they had interests, motivations, and competences necessary in IT, albeit ones that were different from those associated with the figure of the hooded gamer. The safe platform made it possible for the women to establish self-efficacy by recognizing that their own strengths and competences could also be described as relevant for IT. Furthermore, the alternative platform simultaneously allowed the women to identify their strength in IT without entering into direct competition with the (image of) male programmers. Although many of the women expressed a love and deep fascination for programming, this still remained a male domain where the women doubted that they could compete with the men who “have been programming since they were young” (Elise). By suggesting a wider understanding of what and who were suitable for IT, the women avoided competing with the male storyline. The wider perception of IT reflected the women’s strengths, rather than (only) the image of the male hooded gamer. This new understanding of IT also challenged one of the assumptions that was entangled in their initial understanding, in which knowledge about IT, and in particular programming, appeared as a prerequisite for entering IT education, similar to perceptions identified also in other western countries (Margolis & Fisher, 2002; Yates & Plagnol, 2022). The women’s experiences from university had taught them that it was possible to start from scratch, and some of the women even develop this into a form of discursive protection against stereotypical assumptions about who fits in IT:

Programming is not like any subject I ever had before. […] It was like a whole new thing. And you had all the prerequisites to succeed because it was just completely new. It’s not a subject you can say “no, I’m not going to be able to do this because I’m not good at math”. Or “no, I’m not going to be able to do this because I’m not good at English”. It’s not like you can say that because it doesn’t resemble any of those things. So programming is really fun. (Anna)

Seeing skills in IT as a prerequisite for studying IT had challenged the women’s entry into IT because it appeared to identify their outsider position as one that was impossible to change. However, as Anna illustrates, she not only refused to be judged by her earlier (lack of) experience, but also pointed out that her lack of a pre-study competence reflected that schools had not offered insights into programming. Other women used similar arguments to explain that their lack of early interest in IT was a result of not having access to knowledge about IT or the option to developing skills in programming, because this had not been on offer at school: “At secondary school, we did not even have an IT class. There was nothing. So, it’s no wonder that I didn’t become interested in IT when there was nothing available” (Lene). Several of the women used this technique of identifying IT as completely new, referring to Astrid Lindgren’s children’s book character Pippi Longstocking and her take on life to illustrate their situation: “I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that”.

The women’s descriptions of their alternative strengths and motivations can be seen as a response to the male norm in IT. While most of the women did not challenge the core of the masculine relationship with IT, they rather introduced a reconstructed notion of IT that challenged the assumption that only individuals with a specific background, interests, or gender can succeed in IT. Pippi, the “strongest girl in the world” who would fearlessly take on any task she had never tried before, worked as a motivation and encouragement to take on a new task with an optimistic encouragement for their self-efficacy in a new field.

The Space Invaders’ Penalty Round

Most of the women had initially felt that they did not fully belong, not due to formal barriers, but because of a cultural association between men and IT, which defined it as a masculine space that made the women question their background skills and whether or not they would fit in. This was entangled with the pathways discussed in Chap. 3, of basing their belonging in an alternative field, making the choice accidentally, detours and late arrivals; strategies that can be understood in light of the space invader metaphor. Leaning on a less male-dominated discipline such as social science, humanities, arts, or even mathematics made women’s participation in IT less “gender inauthentic” (Faulkner, 2009). Describing their entry point as random took the edge off the choice, as if they were not competing head-on with the male norm. Some of the women who had not been recruited to or identified IT during their school days and had first started on a less male-dominated education before “discovering” IT, described this almost as a penalty round shaped by the lack of any invitation for them to learn about IT. The women’s experiences, and their unconventional pathways into IT, reflect the gendered structures and stereotypes that specified IT as a male space and a less relevant career choice for young women. While pursuing unconventional pathways to IT is not reserved to women alone, the women’s chronological narratives highlight how their movements from childhood to entering IT at university had been affected and motivated by IT as being inextricably linked to men, gaming, and programming.

The hesitation in many of the women’s entry into spaces of IT involved a double uncertainty; they were unsure whether they would fit among the already skilled male students, but they were also unsure as to whether or not they would enjoy being there, referring to a completely new type of competence that they had not met at school. Arriving as outsiders, and not seeing themselves as fully fit with the available (male) position, made many of the women describe their entry with a certain reservation: “Since I have no experience I do not know whether I will like this or not, and therefore I’m just giving it a try” (Astrid). The women’s uncertainty reflects that they had been lacking insight that could have told them whether they would like to study IT; thus many claim to be “just testing”, appearing as visitors, shopping for new experiences, albeit without investing too much. This rhetoric takes the sting off the intrusion of the space invader’s presence in the space where they do not fully belong. Furthermore, it suggests that many of the women had at first not imagined themselves in an insider position, leading to an uncertainty that was often expressed together with a readiness to move on to something else:

I want to be completely honest and say that I was not very interested before I started […] So it was like, OK, if I absolutely do not like this, then I can always switch to something else. (Gunn)

Being prepared to backtrack their choice worked as a safety net. Some of the women were still not completely sure that IT was a good choice for them. “I probably do not have a very high interest in the subject”, Kari said, as she had started to question her own interest in IT, echoing Margolis and Fisher’s 20-year-old study from the US (2002).

Reviewing the women’s chronological narratives of how they had come to enter fields of IT through the concept of the space invader, illustrates how the pattern of unconventional pathways had been shaped by gendered experiences. Their lack of knowledge and insight in IT, combined with gendered stereotypes and structures that made IT seem a less welcoming career choice for young women, explains their hesitation and their doubt about choosing IT.

Is it Enough to Feel like an Insider?

Most of the women made the initial choice to study IT while they were still seeing IT mainly through a stereotypical perception, including the male storyline of hooded gamers. Furthermore, most of the women developed interest and confidence in their abilities once they entered university and were able to identify their own interests, motivations, and competences as relevant and important for IT, despite being different from the male-centric storyline. They also found support and community in other women, which helped them feel less outnumbered by male students. Their active participation in social and professional arenas to increase visibility and create positive images of women in IT, supported the empowerment of themselves and other women in the field. The women thus gradually changed their notion of IT to a more open and inclusive space that accepted alternative positions where women also could pass as insiders. Some of the women had, however, from the very start approached the IT study with a perception of themselves as suitable insiders. One of these was Liv, whom we met in Chap. 3 and who had a background with similarities to boys’ leisurely and playful engagement with IT that included games and programming. This had made her a more skilled programmer than her fellow students on her bachelor’s degree, all of whom were men. While this made her identify with an insider position in IT, she still found that her belonging was questioned:

There have been situations where I feel that people are looking down at me because I am a girl. They have the stereotype about girls not knowing anything about computing. I often feel that I must prove myself for them and show that I am skilled and know my stuff. (Liv)

Her competence in IT had not secured her position as an insider because she did not conform with the male norm. Being recognized as a girl endangered her sense of belonging in IT, and she felt that she continuously had to renegotiate her position in IT.

She shared this experience with Marte, who also described herself as one of the best in the programming class at university, and who also experienced femininity as a disqualifying feature. People “cannot quite identify me within a specific category”, she said, because they don’t understand “how it is possible that I find it important with nicely manicured nails, and in addition I find programming both fun and easy” (Marte). She did not fit into any of the predefined categories, neither as a woman, because she studied IT, nor as an IT student, because she accentuated her visual feminine features such as her manicured nails. The signs of femininity appeared to be incompatible, not only with the image of mastering IT, but, more specifically, with the idea of her being interested in and enjoying programming. The experiences of both Liv and Marte illustrate the entanglement of gender, competence, and interest in the construction of the norm of IT.

Reconstructions

In Chap. 3 we explored what had enabled, supported, and motivated the women to enter programs of IT, and found that gender was rarely a topic in those stories. This chapter has explored how the women experienced IT as gendered, and these narratives add to our understanding of the pathways as reflecting a gendered landscape, with bumps and potholes for women on their way to IT (Branch, 2016). Here we have seen women’s marginality in spaces of IT constructed with reference to the stereotypical but still effective male storyline, putting women’s non-conformity on the spot. Cultural images of women succeeding and thriving in IT had been scarce for most of them during their childhood and teenage years. Thus, the women’s narratives highlight that most of them had not entered fields of IT because they felt invited; they had done so rather despite having little insight into IT and being conscious of a masculine image of IT that did not appear inviting. The women’s perception changed as they entered spaces of IT, from a place occupied and defined by boys and men, to a place where also women could participate, and engage their “girl power” by building alliances and making women visible. The reconstructions of IT that followed opened the possibilities for women to feel like insiders in a space of IT they recognized as populated by different types of people, accepting various types of interests, and requiring a multitude of skills and competences.

Spaces and bodies affect each other in a two-way relationship, Puwar claims. On the one side, “specific bodies are associated with specific spaces”, and on the other side, “spaces become marked as territories belonging to particular bodies” (Puwar, 2004, p. 141). While space invaders disturb the norm of IT, the space invader identity is also productive: by bringing their norm-disturbing features to the inside, women added counter-stereotypical examples, role models, and lived life to the narratives about what IT is and who can be considered an IT expert.

Those who fit in a space “do not see the tacit normativity of their own specific habitus, which is able to pass as neutral and universal”, Puwar explains, while “those who attempt to name the particular—in terms of gender, race or class—in what passes as universal face the contortions of naming something that is ontologically denied” (Puwar, 2004, p. 131). It was not the formal barriers that challenged women’s participation, but the historical and conceptual entanglement of gender, interest, and competence, where women failed on all three: having the wrong gender, lacking the background experience leading to a certain type of competence, which raised doubts about the depth of their interest. The way women bump into challenges is reflected in their initial doubt about their abilities to master IT and questioning whether they would fit. Their strategies for overcoming these barriers are, however, reflected in the alternative pathways, their emphasis of alternative competences as equally relevant, and in the efforts of claiming women’s visibility. Defining their interest in much wider terms than only in terms of IT reflects the wide impact of digitalization and the relevance of digital technology, like the woman claiming her interest in IT based on her engagement in the world.

Different from dominance of the male storyline that had left little room for other (non-male) characters in the women’s early perception of IT, their reconfigured understanding of IT included different types of people, a variety of competences and interests, and a multitude of uses for IT. The alternative competences and interests, such as engagement in society, sciences, languages, and creativity, were not uniformly gendered, but rather pointed to the universal challenges of modern digital societies. Thus, the work done by these women represents a collective effort to welcome values different from the male stereotype, but not thereby limited to women. The women’s reconfiguration of IT opened the space of IT to “any(body)” (Puwar, 2004, p. 32) who did not conform to the male norm, illustrating that IT appeared quite elastic in the women’s narratives. However, women who are not “the ideal occupants of [the] privileged positions” (Puwar, 2004, p. 11) do not just pass into spaces of IT without resistance. The women had experienced having their competence doubted, being perceived as less skilled due to signs of a female identity, feeling constantly under surveillance, and being scrutinized for whether or not they qualified. This narrative needs to be recognized as a cultural construction, illustrated by those foreign women who had been motivated to study IT because they were women. They illustrate that not all cultures see IT competence as a masculine field or an innate quality in men (Ensmenger, 2012). The masculine space of IT recognized in the Norwegian women’s narratives is not a universal construction, but rather appears with different gendered configurations according to time and place (Blum et al., 2007; Trauth & Connolly, 2021). Although this suggests that the gendered images of IT could indeed be changed, the continuous underrepresentation of women in IT has often been interpreted as relying on girls’ and women’s lack of interest, ambitions or aptitude for IT (Stoet & Geary, 2018). This is an imprecise interpretation for at least two reasons. First, as we have seen above, women do express interest in IT; however, this often takes on a different form than the interest associated with young men. Second, seeking answers to the gender disparity in IT only in girls’ and women’s choices misses the importance of their environments, including potential supporters that should have cheered the young women on to IT, which is the topic of the next chapter.