I’m not a “woman engineer”, I’m an engineer: Representations of women coders in the golden age of television

Little, Hannah; Olsen, Ariana

Abstract

Historically, there has been a stigma around the presence and capabilities of women in computer science, as well as a lack of women coders as role models both in fiction and in the real world. With the growing information age and the “golden age of television” triggered by the success of online provision, several recent TV shows have been produced with coders at the centre. These shows have ranged from series about startups and silicon valley (e.g. Silicon Valley, Startup, Betas, Leap Year, DEVS), hackers and informational security (e.g. Mr Robot, Intelligence), game development (e.g. Mythic Quest), and the personal computer revolution (e.g. Halt and Catch Fire). Research has argued that a key factor in combating negative social attitudes towards women in certain contexts is representations of women in the media; normalising their role in male-dominated arenas. Knowing this, television producers face the dilemma of whether they should use their shows about coders to represent the male-dominated reality, or represent women in ways that help rectify persisting stigma, and therefore potentially the gender gap. In this contribution, we analyse the presence of women coders in recent TV shows and the tropes associated with these women, and how women are presented in comparison to their male counterparts. We will argue that while there has been notable recent efforts to represent women as coders and sometimes even executives, there are issues with representations being limited in both their number and diversity. Broader representations of both men and women in tech, with diverse physical attributes, personalities, and abilities to empathise and interact, may stop the othering of women in tech spaces, and reinforcement of problematic masculine traits that may be threatened by the presence of women programmers.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Popularizing STEM: Science and Technology in 21st-Century US Popular Culture
• Start Date: Nov 15, 2021
• End Date: Nov 18, 2021
• Deposit Date: Sep 4, 2021
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7741815