Triple Jeopardy: Race, Gender and Class Politics of Women in Technology

In this paper, I consider how class, race, and gender influence perspectives regarding information technology (IT). I do so by considering how participants in a community technology center located in an inner city neighborhood conceptualize IT, and how their standpoints shape their beliefs in the opportunities and rewards that are enabled by IT. Using the metaphor of ascension, their narratives constructed IT as a mechanism for liberating entire classes of women economically and socially. These findings suggest that the perspectives regarding IT held by the women participating in this study contradict the findings presented in prior IT and gender studies that generally take as their focus highly educated, middle-class women working in the IT profession and women studying at universities in disciplines that prepare them for entry into the IT profession. These divergent findings suggest a need for additional research that specifically addresses the joint effects of race, class and gender in contexts beyond the IT workplace environment, and with a broader diversity of women.