Straddling between technology and gender boundaries: the identity negotiation of female programmers in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Extending the theoretical framework of gender boundaries, this research investigates female programmers’ IT practices and identity negotiations in a Chinese context. Based on a one-and-half year fieldwork in Shenzhen, China, the article generates a typology of the different identities female programmers have employed in and out of their IT work performance. It is argued that female programmers strategically address diverse and sometimes contradictory identities in their negotiation with gender and technology boundaries. The fluid and shifting gender identities of female programmers may allow them to readjust the gender boundaries and to pose challenges to the patriarchal social arrangement, even if overall male-dominant situations persist.