Digital DIY and women: how are you living it?
The DiDIY (Digital DIY) Project studies the nature of the DiDIY phenomenon and its long-term impacts on all sectors and levels of society, from education to work, creativity and ethics. The hypotheses in the initial proposal for the DiDIY Project include the expectation that:
"new technologies may contribute to improve women's participation in technology and science, and DiDIY might play an important role. The 'Maker Movement' and Maker Faires have given a platform to a number of female role models in engineering and entrepreneurialism, such as Limor Fried, founder of AdaFruit, and Ayah Bdeir, founder of Littlebits. The movement has also led to convergence of traditionally more masculine and feminine creative pursuits, such as engineering and crafts1
This Project will take into account the issue to identify how the spreading of a DiDIY-based culture may help in facilitating a wider participation of women to science and technology. Potential threats in the same direction will also be investigated to supply policy makers and decision leaders with information on the topic."
After its first year of activity, the Project now aims to intensify its activity on this specific topic, working directly together with all women interested to discuss the following point, and share their experiences about it:
is life for women interested in participating to the Makers Movement, or any other Digital DIY activity harder than it should be? If yes: how and why, exactly? For example: What are the factors, from former education to stereotypes, economic means, being a first generation immigrant, or anything else, that constitute the bigger barriers (or advantages...)?
We are really interested to hear your opinions and experiences in this field, and to organize meetings and other events on the same topic! Please let us know on Twitter, Facebook or through our contact form, and if you can translate this invitation to other languages (*)... thank you in advance!
(*) except Italian, because an Italian translation is already available here.
Image source: collage of Wikipedia images
