Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 13 submissions in the queue.

Feminism and Programming Languages

posted by Blackmoore on Thursday October 23 2014, @03:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-we-just-use-Esperanto? dept.

bradley13 writes:

Arielle Schlesinger, from HASTAC, is working on her thesis: Feminism and Programming Languages

a feminist programming language is to be built around a non-normative paradigm that represents alternative ways of abstracting. The intent is to encourage and allow new ways of thinking about problems such that we can code using a feminist ideology. ... I realized that object oriented programmed reifies normative subject object theory. This led me to wonder what a feminist programming language would look like, one that might allow you to create entanglements."

Are there any insights to be gained here? Or, is this yet another social theorist questionably applying critical theory to the sciences?

For those who RTFA, be sure to read the comment on the article by Juliet Rosenthal. She brings up the obvious questions that leap to the mind of any computer scientist, and formulates them well without being needlessly confrontational.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Feminism and Programming Languages | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 109 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:32PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:32PM (#109181) Journal

    HCI research has shown that only 10-15% of the population is good at thinking in terms of hierarchies (which is why they find things like directory structures hard to get to grips with).
    [...]
    This isn't a specifically gender issue, but there is a bias towards men in the 'can think in terms of hierarchies' subset of the population.

    I'd be really interested in seeing this research, but If you're speaking from memory and have no clue where to find the source I totally understand. I'm also not sure if you meant to imply that the gender gap is also backed by research, or if that part of your comment was speculation.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:42PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:42PM (#109190) Journal
    Unfortunately, it was a paper that I read during my PhD (quite a while ago now) and, since it wasn't even vaguely relevant to my research, I didn't keep track of. The gender bias was part of the study - I don't recall the exact numbers, but it wasn't huge - something like a 40:60 split in favour of men, I think.
    --
    sudo mod me up

    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:56PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:56PM (#109197) Journal

      Cool. A 40:60 split seems totally explainable by cultural factors.