This book brings feminist philosophy, in the shape of feminist ethics, politics and legal theory, to an analysis of computer ethics problems including hacking, privacy, surveillance, cyberstalking and Internet dating. Adam claims that these issues cannot be properly understood unless we see them as problems relating to gender. For the first time, these issues are put under the feminist spotlight to show that traditional responses reproduce the public/private split which has so often reinforced the causes of women's oppression.

"This two volume set includes 213 entries with over 4,700 references to additional works on gender and information technology"--Provided by publisher.

As yet there has been relatively little published on women's activities in relation to new digital technologies. Virtual Gender brings together theoretical perspectives from feminist theory, the sociology of technology and gender studies with well designed empirical studies to throw new light on the impact of ICTs on contemporary social life. A line-up of authors from around the world looks at the gender and technology issues related to leisure, pleasure and consumption, identity and self. Their research is set against a backcloth of renewed interest in citizenship and ethics and how these concepts are recreated in an on-line situation, particularly in local settings. With chapters on subjects ranging from gender-switching on-line, computer games, and cyberstalking to the use of the domestic telephone, this stimulating collection challenges the stereotype of woman as a passive victim of technology. It offers new ways of looking at the many dimensions in which ICTs can be said to be gendered and will be a rich resource for students and teachers in this expanding field of study.

Abstract: "This book explores the interwoven construction of gender, expertise, and information technology by starting from three positions of information systems development in Finland -- male computing pioneers' autobiographical accounts, women developers' oral histories, and an office workers' study circle with related interviews -- and, fourthly, from the codes of ethics of international computing professionals' associations ACM and IFIP. By applying Dorothy Smith's theory of conceptual practices of power, information technology is understood as textuality in which texts, e.g. programs, professional journals and electronic messages, are produced and interpreted through people's particular practices and by using particular knowledges of information technology. Both practices and knowledges -- the expertise of information technology -- are organized within materially-based social relations. Gender intertwines with information technology through social practices. Gender is studied on the level of social -- often textually mediated -- relations, in terms of gendering hierarchies and divisions of labour, but also -- inspired by Donna Haraway -- at the level of subjectivity, in terms of definitions of information technology made by subjects. The second major aim of this work is to participate in the development of methodologies on gender and technology research. The study pays attention to persistently male tendencies of information technology but it looks for spaces available for women as well. The computing professions inherited strict gender hierarchies from the punched card systems of the 1950s, and those were strengthened by fraternities of former army acquaintences, in everyday practices of systems development, in public worlds of professional journals and associations, as well as within images of identity. In this setting, the view of male experts and managers gained a status of objective truth. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ideas of flexible management and work design made space for participatory approaches towards systems design. At the same time, large numbers of women entered information technology professions in Finland. Yet, that view of objective truth has not been thoroughly challenged, and there has been little room for textualities developed from women's or any other particular groups' standpoints within information technology expertise. People such as office workers can develop technologies based on their everyday life situations, and this is a real opportunity for challenging both the gendering and the expertise of technology. However, the work done in particular settings does not translate to publicly available textuality."

"This two volume set includes 213 entries with over 4,700 references to additional works on gender and information technology"--Provided by publisher.

This volume collects key influential papers that have animated the debate about information computer ethics over the past three decades, covering issues such as privacy, online trust, anonymity, values sensitive design, machine ethics, professional conduct and moral responsibility of software developers. These previously published articles have set the tone of the discussion and bringing them together here in one volume provides lecturers and students with a one-stop resource with which to navigate the debate.

Written in an accessible style with comprehensive coverage, the Handbook of Gender and Technology provides an excellent foundation examining gender equity in technology fields. Covering the state of the art, chapters consider three key influences – environmental, identity and individual – to highlight interventions to address the gender gap in technology.