Presentation from Emila Nercessians, PhD, social anthropologist from T

1. GENDER, TECHNOLOGY, AND
REDEFINITION OF POWER
RELATIONSHIP
EMILIA NERCISSIANS
Department of Anthropology, Social Sciences
Faculty, University of Tehran, Iran
enerciss@ut.ac.ir

2. AGENDA
• UNESCO’S Strategies : Base of discussion
• Gender and Technology : Relationship
• Types of Universities : Historical Approach
• Statistics
• Comparative study : UT and AUA
• Concluding Remarks

3. UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy 2002-2007
(31 C/4)
UNESCO contributing to peace and human development in an
era of globalization through education, the sciences, culture
and communication
Two Cross-Cutting Themes
The contribution of information and
Eradication of poverty, especially
communication technologies to the
extreme poverty
development of education, science, culture
and the construction of a knowledge society
Three Main Strategic Thrusts
Developing and promoting Promoting pluralism, Promoting
universal principles and through recognition empowerment and
norms, based on shared and safeguarding of participation in the
values, in order to meet diversity together with emerging knowledge
emerging challenges in the observance of human society through
education, science, culture and rights. equitable access,
communication and to protect capacity-building and
and strengthen the "common sharing of knowledge
public good".
…and 12 Strategic Objectives and international development targets to be met

4. One can conclude:
• Emancipation through Education
• Awareness through Education
• Liberation through Education
• Breaking barriers through Education
• Health through Education
• Friendship through Education
• Hope through Education
• EMPOWERMENT THROGH EDUCATION

5. The relationship between gender
and technology
Troubled and problematic Empowering and liberating
• Technology as reproducing • Technology as liberating
traditional gender power women from their
relations; exclusion of constraints, endowing them
women with powers they did not
• have before
Masculine cultural
dominance of technology • Subverting the intended
purposes of technology
• Women as incapable of • The potential of technology
using technology to challenge gender power
• Women as passive users of relations
technology • Reconstructing technology
• Technology as constructed around women’s interests
around men’s interests • Women and interpersonal
communication technologies

6. Women and the Internet
Reproduction of masculine Empowerment and
dominance
liberation
the embeddedness of the Internet Cyberfeminism, believes that “women
within wider public discourses, weaving the web”: the capacity of
societal and economic power the networked organisation of the
relation as Political economy World Wide Web to erode or
Inferior relationship;Flaming, trolling subvert the culture of masculine
and online practices of sexual . dominance
harassment:
the persistence of traditional Online spaces as “safe” spaces, are
gender power relations and enabling women to evade
domination in cyberspace unpleasant practices
Questions on Women’s status in
developmental contexts: what are
the consequences of women’s Post-modern approaches, towards
online activity for the material cybertechnology is as enabling
conditions of their lives? Have the experiment with a new sense
these conditions changed or of self, gender-free and fluid;
? remained disregarded reconfiguration of gender
.categories

7. By the late twentieth
century, our time, a
mythic time, we are all
chimeras, theorized and
fabricated hybrids of
machine and organism; in
short, we are cyborgs.
• A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of
machine and organism, a creature of social reality as
well as a creature of fiction.
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York;
Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.

8. Efforts to bridge the “Digital Divide”
e-aspects
 e-technology
 e-industry
 e-society
To achieve an
e-society of full
Public actions e-readiness with Individual efforts
citizens of advanced  literacy
 e-awareness network literacy.  media literacy
 e-infrastructure  computer literacy
 e-readiness  network literacy

9. STATEMENT OF
THE PROBLEM
• How the University of Tehran can
promote the use of information
technology, especially by its female
students.

10. The university has to find solutions
because:
 it has to adapt to the global scale shifts
associated with transition to cyberera
 it must adapt to rapid technology changes
 it must adapt to a more participatory and
gender symmetric environment

11. • Electronic learning, and use of information technology
and knowledge management techniques are important for
maintaining the academic excellence and assuring the
provision of quality education to its students.
• They are also important because the university must
respond to the changing needs and expectations of its
stakeholders
• It is especially important for the university to resolve the
problem of technology utilization by both genders because
it has to act as an agent for change in the broader polity

12. Moving From Atoms to Bytes
Machine Computer Brain
Mechanical Power Power to calculate Power to Think/Learn
• Self-organized
• Hierachies • Binary Thinking • Life-long learning
• Cause-effect • Pre-programmed • Network based
• Command and control • Speed & precision • Virtual + Real
• Rengineering Interactions
• Assembly line production,
welfare state organizations • Strategic thinking
• Risk Management
Mechanics Informatics Infonautics (navigation)
Late 19th Century, first Second half of 20th Late 20th Century and first
half 20th Century Century decade of 21st Century

13. Evolution of Universities as Part of Societal
Transformation and Knowledge Transformation
Agrarian Age Industrial Age Knowledge Age
Local National International Global
Medievalism Enlightenment
Modernism Post-Modernism Transmodernism
( Post-Post-Modernism )
Universities Multiversities Transversities
University of Faith University of Reason University of Communication
University of Consilience
Integrative University
1650
Teaching
1850
Service
1950
Research
Integrative Scholarship
Copernicus Kant Peirce Maxwell, Bohm Wheatley
Descartes Darwin Wilbur
Logical Hierarchical Holistic, Organic
13th Century 18th Century 20th Century

14. IRANIAN CONTEXT:
EMPLOYMENT BY GENDER

15. UNEMPLOYMENT RATES; (urban and rural)
Highest among young urban women

16. Women’s employment rate distributions
High among mid-aged women with university education

17. University Admissions
•

18. Applicants for University Entrance
Examination 2006-2011
Year Total # of Male Female Accepted
Applicants % %
2006 1343843 41.4 58.6 410000
2007 1341629 35 65 507000
2008 1335000 36 64 437069
2009 1252000 37 62.7 524769
2010 1286812 60 40 518000
2011 138000 60.5 39.5 ___

19. Number of students

20. Teaching staff

21. University Staff
Mail & Female
Recent Statistics
• Total number in Iran
– 26714 Univ. Staff
– 5714 Female 21.4%
– 21000 Male 68.6%
• University Staff in State Universities of Tehran
– 4512 Univ. Staff
– 743 Female 16.5%
– 3769 Male 83.5%

22. Seven main obstacles which does not let
the usage of ICT
The 7Cs
1. Cost
2. Capacity
3. Content
4. Creativity
5. Culture
6. Conflict
7.Cenorship

23. conclusion
• A two way learning process constitutes the main vision of
this research.
• Female students must overcome all difficulties (problem of
7 C’s Cost, Capacity, Content, Creativity, Culture,
Conflict, Censorship) and learn alongside the male
students, to use technology effectively.
• The university as a learning organization, must learn from
its female students to develop new ways of dealing with
technology (disengendering technology utilization).

24. USE OF IT BY STUDENTS AT
UT
• Internet also used by male students more often than
female students ( %62.5 male and %36.5 female
students)
• Female students send and receive emails, chat, and use
Internet for purchasing and recreation more often than
males;
• Males, use the Internet mostly to get news or to search
for matters of interest

25. GENDER, TECHNOLOGY, AND
HIGHER EDUCATION AT AUA
 A smaller scale investigation, using the same
methodology, was subsequently carried out for
identifying the rate, purpose, and different usage
techniques of the Internet by male and female
students in the American University of Armenia
 The purpose was to identify those differences so as
to try to enhance users’ Internet experiences.

26. • The investigation revealed that majority of the
students of both genders enjoyed using computers
and considered the cyberspace as effective means
for passive as well as active participation in news
groups and accessing enormous amount of
electronic materials.
• Female students were more careful about new things; they
wanted to know more before trying; they were not too inclined
towards innovation and wanted to do things as they had done
before. Male students, on the other hand, considered
themselves as more proficient in computers than females.
• Students in Engineering and Business colleges were more
proficient in computers than those of English and Political
Science.
• Students generally used the Internet as means for improving
their social status, and their career opportunities, and becoming
engaged in social networks.

27. ENGENDERED SMART
ENVIRONMENTS
 Regeneration of masculinity and femininity in smart
environments takes place both through ascription of gendered
roles to technology users and direct engendering of smart
devices themselves.
 A substantive approach on the future of technology in society
must be shaped not just by what the technologies can offer, but
must also take into account factors influencing popular attitudes
and propensities towards utilization of available technologies.
 Context awareness has been argued to be an important factor in
endowing smart environments with communicative and cultural
competences necessary for quick adoption of ambient
intelligent technologies especially where solidarity oriented
ideologies predominate.

28. • Ambient Intelligence refers to a vision
of the future knowledge based society
where intelligent interfaces enable
people and devices to interact with
each other and with the environment.
• The prevalence of cognitivist attitudes towards
intelligence, however, pose a major problem
hindering the progress of technologies related to
intelligent systems and devices.
• With the advent of computational intelligence and
the associated philosophies of connectionism and
situated action, attention has shifted towards more
biomotivated, embodied and collectivist views of
intelligence.

29. • Too much cognitive intelligence and too
little communicative and cultural
competence will make the device utilization
hard and unpleasant.
• It is very important in the case of sociotechnical
systems to determine who will control their actions
and who will benefit from the provision of their
services.
• Networking for change is important not only for
responding to the rapid shifts in our surroundings and
taking advantage of the opportunities created by the
technology via exchanging our theoretical findings and
practical experiences, but also shaping the future path
of technological progress and modes of its utilization.

30. • It can be argued that the networking
approaches, in any learning organization,
are best suited for the contemporary
needs of the academia in a rapidly
changing world.
• From a system point of view the network can be
viewed as an evolving autopoetic system.
• Recent developments in distributed artificial
intelligence and the convergence of new technologies
from telecommunications, distributed computing,
multimedia, and databases now make possible a
network of diverse but interconnected educational
and learning entities

31. enerciss@ut.ac.ir