A firsthand look at efforts to improve diversity in software and
hackerspace communities
Hacking, as a mode
of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its
extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly
few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically
skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in
industry and academia. Hacking Diversity investigates the
activists engaged in free and open-source software to understand why,
despite their efforts, they fail to achieve the diversity that their
ideals support.
Christina
Dunbar-Hester shows that within this well-meaning volunteer world,
beyond the sway of human resource departments and equal opportunity
legislation, members of underrepresented groups face unique
challenges. She brings together more than five years of firsthand
research: attending software conferences and training events, working
on message boards and listservs, and frequenting North American
hackerspaces. She explores who participates in voluntaristic
technology cultures, to what ends, and with what consequences.
Digging deep into the fundamental assumptions underpinning
STEM-oriented societies, Dunbar-Hester demonstrates that while the
preferred solutions of tech enthusiasts―their “hacks” of
projects and cultures―can ameliorate some of the “bugs” within
their own communities, these methods come up short for issues of
unequal social and economic power. Distributing “diversity” in
technical production is not equal to generating justice.
Hacking Diversity
reframes questions of diversity advocacy to consider what
interventions might appropriately broaden inclusion and participation
in the hacking world and beyond.