Women Fighting Gender Stereotypes in a Gender Egalitarian Culture

Despite the increased importance of technology, at current rates it will still take hundreds of years to achieve gender equality in technology across western countries, even in the Nordic countries, which are recognized as some of the most gender-egalitarian nations in the world. Challenging this situation requires knowledge about how women in fact come to participate in fields of information technology (IT), which is the topic of this book. This chapter presents the framework for the book, including the overview of the theoretical and methodological perspectives, the empirical material from a series of studies in Norway, and some of the relevant debates that the book engages in. The research presented here is rooted in a tradition of feminist technology studies and inspired by feminist studies of contexts where women face gender barriers and challenges in identifying their belonging.