Nuancing the discourse of underrepresentation: a feminist post-structural analysis of gender inequality in computer science education in the US

• Published in: Gender and education Vol. 32; no. 5; pp. 594 - 607
• Main Author: Convertino, Christina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2020; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Accounts; College Students; Computer science; Computer Science Education; discourse; Discourse analysis; Discourses; Disproportionate Representation; Feminism; feminist post-structuralism; Focus Groups; Gender; Gender Differences; Gender Discrimination; Gender inequality; Intersectionality; Latinx students; Marginality; Minority Group Students; Minority groups; Narratives; Poststructuralism; Science education; Science Instruction; Social Isolation; Structural analysis; Structural Analysis (Linguistics); Structural Analysis (Science); Women; United States > US
• ISSN: 0954-0253; 1360-0516
• DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2019.1632417

Drawing on feminist post-structural perspectives, this article shows how the dominant discourses of underrepresentation and gender difference that characterize gender inequality in computer science (CS) create subject positions, which simultaneously mark women as highly invisible and visible. Narrative accounts from qualitative interviews and focus groups with women students of color enrolled in CS at a university located in the southwestern region of the US illustrate the situated ways in which participants materialized these discourses in their personal accounts of 'not seeing and seeing women in CS.' Participants accounts reveal how isolation, exclusion, and connection in CS are contextual, contingent, and intersectional experiences that cannot be collapsed into a single, monolithic meta-narrative. Participant accounts also demonstrate the complex ways that women students of color in CS pushed back on dominant discourses of underrepresentation and gender difference.