"Is It Okay That She is a Woman?"

Abstract

The article deals with Russian brainpower's perceptions of gender segregation in a technical university when training both IT-specialists and STEM professionals in general. The theoretical and methodological basis for interpreting the results of the empirical study are the main provisions of the theory of social representations, the concept of habitus and the concept of narrative identity. The assumption used as a research hypothesis is that gender “indifference” or neutrality, rather than gender discrimination, takes place in higher technical education in the Russian technical university. The analysis of the data obtained as a result of the study confirmed that there are gender professional distinctions in the group consciousness of brainpower. In Russian speech practice and culture, a thesaurus of non-binary perception of professional gender identity has not yet been formed. At the same time, there is a shift in perceptions of gender professional identity in IT towards gender “neutrality”, which allows us to expect a relatively “soft” transformation of social attitudes and adaptability of professional consciousness to changes in the perception of gender in IT.