Feminist Hackerspaces as Sites for Feminist Design

Abstract

This paper describes the work I have conducted with colleagues in and around feminist hackerspaces -- workspaces that support the creative and professional pursuits of women. Through action research, interviews, and participant observation, I have explored the motivations, activities, and ideals of people organizing feminist hackerspaces. Additionally, I have begun to investigate what feminist design of technology might look like through the facilitation of a series of design workshops in two of these spaces. Through this work, I examine the feminist ideals that develop in these spaces as both discursive and material phenomena that shed new light on what counts as hacking, technology and collaboration.