Discursive Developments within Computer Education

Abstract

Differences between men’s and women’s relations with ICTs received considerable attention during the closing decades of the twentieth century, both within research and in educational institutions. We have already seen the growing concern that girls and women would become the losers as non-users in a society where the importance of ICTs was increasing. However, shortly after the turn of the millennium, the gender gap in both computer access and use was about to disappear in the younger age groups. Since 2000 the gender gap seems to be better described as a combination of gender and generation (Gansmo et al., 2003a). Within computer education, however, the gender gap does not seem to want to release its grip. As we saw in Chapter 1, even recent gender and ICTs research points to how ‘almost thirty years of efforts have failed to produce a sustained increase in women’s participation in computing’, and ‘the situation is not likely to improve any time soon’ (Cohoon and Aspray, 2006a, p. 139), and this is so even in Norway (Wyatt, 2008a). Although we can find the stability argument in relation to other contexts — for instance, about computer use in general ¡V computer education has probably generated most claims about lack of improvement for women, making this one of the most important fields to explore in our search for change and stability in gender-technology relations.