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Computaonal Feminism
1 No more hits: 22 April 2017
CumInCAD publicaons database
search term results for ‘feminism’.
Screenshot by authors.
Shelby Doyle
Iowa State University
Leslie Forehand
Iowa State University
Nick Senske
Iowa State University
Searching for Cyborgs
1
ABSTRACT
As computaonal design matures, the discipline is in a posion to address an increasing number
of cultural dimensions: social, polical, and ethical. This paper examines the gender gap in compu-
taonal design and proposes an agenda to achieve gender equality. Data from architectural
publicaons and the CumInCAD database provide metrics for measuring the segregaon between
feminist and computaonal discourse. Examples of feminist theory establish possible entry points
within computaonal design to bridge the gaps in gender equity and representaon. Specically,
the authors re-examine 1990s networked feminism in relaon to the computaonal culture of
today. The paper concludes with a proposed denion of Computaonal Feminism as a social,
polical, and ethical discourse. This denion appropriates Donna Haraway’s cyborg as its symbolic
instrument of equality.
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ACADIA 2017
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INTRODUCTION
Equality necessitates a discourse of disrupon. It requires space
to be made for processes, voices, and ideas where space previ-
ously did not exist. The noon of the cyborg provides this space,
giving a name and agency to the in-between. A hybrid creature,
machine and organism, the cyborg is a being of social reality as
well as science con. In the following account, a new kind of
cyborg occupies a parcular and unexplored space that both
criques and expands the eld of computaonal design. This
disrupve cyborg is the foundaon of Computaonal Feminism.
As a popular trope of feminist scholarship, the cyborg allows
a thing to be “both/and”—a condion that resists the binary
nature of computaonal ones and zeros. The cyborg embraces
emergence and ecologic processes and challenges the modernist
rhetoric of precision and predictability in architectural design.
Background
In 1844, Marx wrote that between women and men: “it is
possible to judge from this relaonship the enre level of the
development of mankind" (quoted in Hearn 1991, 227). Today,
technology is taken as an indicaon of society’s development.
Technology is a broad term but used here to indicate compu-
taonal tools and methods specic to architecture. This paper
advances the argument that technology is a gender equity
issue. Technological changes have everything to do with who
benets and who does not; whose opportunies increase and
whose decrease; who creates and who accommodates. That
being said, it is impossible and intellectually dangerous to claim
a general theory of inequity as caused by technological change.
However, in pursuit of specicity, we can explore the relaon-
ships between feminist scholarship and computaonal design in
architecture as a means of explicang the relaonships between
technological change and gender inequies. For example, in
her essay "Parametric Schizophrenia," Peggy Deamer describes
certain stereotypes of those who aend computaonal design
conferences and parcipate within the eld:
…parametric conferences are populated by young hipsters dressed
in black, showing images of their digitally fabricated screens
or rendered bas-reliefs; BIM conferences by older, suit-and-e
oce-types explaining diagrams of complex buildings, hospital
HVAC systems being a parcular favorite. (Deamer 2015, 179)
While doing so, she implies that these stereotypical gures
are nearly all male. It is well-documented that, as a discipline,
architecture has been slow to fully record, acknowledge, and
incorporate the work of women (Chang 2014). As computaonal
culture evolves, this shortcoming becomes increasingly apparent.
Within the discipline, digital technology is an emerging source of
architectural inuence: those who control the process of design
through technology control architecture and, by proxy, the built
environment. This topic maers because architecture is imbued
with values and ideas that both reect and exert tremendous
inuence over the paerns and quality of our lives.
While many types of inequality exist with respect to technology
and architecture, such as race and class, this paper will focus
on the specic aspect of gender inequality. As technology is
now essenal to the pracce and discipline of architecture, the
ability to create with and shape technology is crical. In some
respect, the lack of women specializing in design technology is
unsurprising given that the pracce combines elds that have
historically been lacking in gender equity: management, informa-
on technology, computer science, and architecture. The goals
of this paper are (1) to reveal gender inequality as an aribute
of the current pracce of computaonal design and (2) to begin
to address gender inequality by moving beyond the anecdotal
and into a construcve research agenda. This paper temporarily
extracts gender equality from the history of queer theory, the
experience of non-white women, and interseconality (the
interconnecon of race, class, and gender). This extracon does
not intend to deny these issues but rather aims to create a well-
scoped and focused analysis that can provide methodologies for
more comprehensive future research.
Context
Architecture has yet to fully acknowledge that its gender equity
problem also extends to those who engage with technology. A
reason for this could be that there is no direct evidence that such
a gap exists; for many in the profession the truth of this proposi-
on is unsubstanated and remains wholly anecdotal. While the
current evidence may be anecdotal, the presence of this gender
gap is supported, in part, by an examinaon of papers from the
Associaon for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).
In the years from 2010–16, 26 percent of all co-authors were
women and only 8 percent of papers had women as the rst or
sole author (Figure 2).
The gender of the authors and parcipants is not the only
asymmetry; rarely are issues of feminism or women in architec-
ture addressed in technology-based architectural scholarship.
CumInCAD is a cumulave index of publicaons about
computer-aided architectural design and includes bibliographic
informaon and abstracts (not full text), drawn from approx-
imately 12,300 records from journals and conferences such
as ACADIA, ASCAAD, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SiGraDi, CAAD
futures, DDSS, and others (CumInCAD 2017). Simple searches
of the available databases demonstrate this imbalance: one
entry relang to "feminism," seven entries reference "women" or
"female," and thirteen entries for "gender." The database is not,
234
however, void of other polical or social ideologies; search terms
such as "polical," for example, agged sixty-one arcles (Figure
1).
Our ndings suggest that a gender imbalance exists in the eld of
computaonal design. This imbalance is not unique to the eld.
Indeed, it is reecve of architecture as a whole. Women in the
United States are historically underrepresented in the building
professions, constung 15–18 percent of the workforce in
architecture, 4.5–13.7 percent in engineering, and 2.6 percent in
construcon (Beverly Mills 2015). In academia, gender parc-
ipaon in technology is dicult to determine. At the authors’
instuon, while 49 percent of architecture students are women,
on average they make up only 19 percent of the students in
technology elecves and seminars. While the number of women
parcipang in architecture is not at parity with men, the number
of women parcipang in technology in architecture appears to
be lower sll.
Although increasing numbers of women trained as architects
during the tweneth century, women in the twenty-rst
century sll remain largely outside the power hierarchies of the
profession. This gender imbalance may at last be successfully
challenged in the twenty-rst century through the mechanism
of technological agency. In 1992, a trend that Mario Carpo calls
the "digital turn" began, marking the integraon of computaon
into architectural design (Carpo 2012). Twenty-ve years into
this turn, architecture has been transformed by new technologies
that oer disrupve potenals in material pracce.
It is the suggeson of the authors that one of the most
fundamental disrupons necessary within technology-based
architectural scholarship is the integraon of discourses
about ethics, and specically related to gender. These
dialogues coalesce into a new speculave space that we term
Computaonal Feminism. Feminist theory has a long and some-
mes-conicted relaonship with technology and digital media.
The next secon introduces several theorecal frameworks that
address the evoluon of the relaonship between technological
and feminist discourses since the 1970s.
Though feminist scholarship has paid great aenon to
technology and its impacts upon a rapidly changing society,
conversely technology (we use the term broadly), and specically
computaonal design, have not shared this interest. Feminist
scholarship can play a role here as it is interdisciplinary by its very
nature. When feminist scholars began to explore women’s roles
in culture and society, and the ideologies that shape women,
these invesgators were forced to draw upon many disciplines—
among them, history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and
literature—all of which were and are engaged in similar pursuits.
While feminist scholarship can make no claim to moral superi-
ority in this regard, it can bring a perspecve to this pursuit that
widens and disrupts disciplinary viewpoints.
ComputaonalFeminismDoyle, Forehand, Senske
2 The graph indicates the number of
papers authored or co-authored by
women in a selecon of popular
architecture conferences. Gender
was idened by the pronouns
used in author biographies.
ACADIA has approximately 20%
fewer women co-authoring papers
than ARCC (Architectural Research
Centers Consorum) or NCBDS
(Naonal Conference on the
Beginning Design Student) and 15%
fewer than ACSA (Associaon of
Collegiate Schools of Architecture).
This percentage has changed very
lile during the last decade. Data
collecon and graph by authors.
2
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ACADIA 2017
| DISCIPLINES + DISRUPTION
BETWEEN FEMINISM + TECHNOLOGY
The following frameworks queson the content, methodology,
epistemology, and values of both elds: computaonal design
and feminism, in search of overlaps: both/and. Technological
determinism argues that the features of technology determine
its use and it is the role of society to adapt and benet from
technological change. The counterargument, drawn from social
determinism, is that society is responsible for technological
development and deployment, as well as the distribuon of
technological benets within a society. Computaonal Feminism
relies upon the narrave of social determinism—that society, and
in this case the discipline of architecture, constructs the how,
why, and who of technology.
1970s–1980s: Techno -Feminism
Techno-feminism emerged in the 1970s out of feminist move-
ments within the sciences. The movement explored three forms
of technological meaning: technology as a form of knowledge,
the social obligaon to understand, create, and use technology,
and its expansion beyond the verbal and mathemacal to that
which required visual and tacle interacons. Early Techno-
feminism focused on implicaons of technological arfacts upon
the lives of women, specically women’s work. Technologies such
as word processors in oces were the focus of early research,
as these machines replaced or altered labor that was specically
female. Housework became the repository for domesc tech-
nologies perceived as liberang women: programmable washers
and dryers, roboc vacuums, and the like. At the same me,
feminist perspecves tended to view most new technologies as
destrucve and oppressive to women: because men dominate
technology, it is in some sense inherently patriarchal.
In the eighes, feminists began to reject the noon of equitable
treatment in technology, dismissing its neutrality and exploring
its gendered character. Arguing that Western technology is
inherently patriarchal, the feminist crique evolved from asking
the "woman queson" in technology, and began to explore the
"technology queson" in feminism, addressing the masculine
dominaon and control of women and nature. Rather than a
neutral technology, feminists argued for technology based on
women’s values (Wajcman 1991). In Joan Rothschild’s preface to
a collecon on feminist perspecves on technology, she writes:
"Feminist analysis has sought to show how the subjecve, intui-
ve and irraonal can and do play a key role in our science and
technology" (Rothschild 1983).
As an evoluon of Techno-feminism, Computaonal Feminism
recognizes that technologies are not neutral and that the
creaon of new and dierent technologies by women is one way
that technology can represent gender, rather than rejecng or
ignoring it. In parcular, computaonal processes and arfacts
authored by women might enhance the subjecve and intui-
ve—a process-driven or indeterminate technology that serves
as a counterpoint to methods and devices that have control as a
mechanism or objecve. At the same me, female computaonal
designers can take up the mantle of “women’s work” as a posi-
ve, rather than a pejorave, and reconnect with cra tradions
such as weaving, sewing, and ceramics through digital fabricaon
and robocs.
1990s: Cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism emerged at mulple discreet locaons in the
1990s and addressed the changing condions of the Informaon
Age. Posed to challenge again the polical and social condions
of feminism, cyberfeminism developed as a range of inter-
venons in response to the noon of society as a networked
condion. Cyberfeminist agendas were vast, ranging from
patriarchy-smashing video games, feminist virtual spaces, and
the recovery of shadow histories of feminist technologists. The
Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century—produced by the
VNS Matrix, a collaboraon between Josephine Starrs, Julianne
Pierce, Francesca da Rimini and Virginia Bara in Adelaide,
Australia—was a mulmedia project that vividly expressed the
emerging polical posion of cyberfeminism. The Manifesto saw
new technology as an opportunity to disrupt society’s patriarchal
norms, and to have fun doing it. At the same me, Sadie Plant, a
cultural theorist in the United Kingdom, began to use the term
"cyberfeminist" to describe her academic focus on technology in
Western society (Reiche and Kuni 2004).
While Computaonal Feminism connects with ideas about
feminine technology and the democrazaon of access, it also
supports and promotes alternave, subversive, and count-
er-agendas towards the diversicaon of computaonal design.
As discussed in a later secon, the noon of the cyborg, as both
a hybrid of human and machine and a post-gendered condion,
factors largely in the ambit of this proposed and latest wave of
feminism.
2000s: Fourth-Wave Feminism
Fourth-wave feminism arose from the growing pains of a
maturing informaon society. An aempt to capture the specic
feminism of the contemporary world, it includes analysis of body
shaming, online media, online misogyny, interseconality, social
media technology for communicaon and online peoning
and organizing, and explores the sharing of individual experi-
ences as a method for achieving a collecve voice and polical
legimacy. An architectural example of the laer is the energi-
zaon of gender discussions caused by the rejected peon to
the Pritzker Architecture Prize that demanded recognion for
236
Denise Sco Brown as an equal in her work with Robert Venturi
(Women in Design 2013). With respect to fourth-wave feminism,
Computaonal Feminism embraces social jusce, which is oen
missing in narraves about technology today. Equality is one
component of Computaonal Feminism, but it also includes the
applicaon of technology towards just ends for the benet of all
and not only a privileged few. Simultaneously, Computaonal
Feminism advocates for the exploraon and producon of joy
and pleasure as opposed to advocang for economies of opmi-
zaon and bravado expressions of virtuosity. Rather than serve
prot or novelty for its own sake, Computaonal Feminism gives
space to experiences of collecvity and wonder.
2010s & Now: Computational Feminism
A renewed interest in feminism’s relaonship to technology can
be seen in books such as The Polics of Parametricism: Digital
Technologies in Architecture, conferences such as the recent
Architecture Humanies Research Associaon's Architecture
& Feminisms, and the work of organizaons such as Equity by
Design (EQxD 2016; Parlour 2016; ArchiteXX 2016).
In an eort to nd a conceptual entry point the authors oer the
following denion, built upon the conceptual frameworks of
tweneth-century feminism:
Computaonal Feminism is a transdisciplinary eld which grew
out of the rst twenty-ve years of the digital turn. It connues
to develop new theories on how polics of gender and other
identy markers are interconnected to resulng processes of
technical change, and the power relaons of the globalized,
material world. It is a descendant of the 1990s discourses of
technofeminism and cyberfeminism that emerged in relaonship to
the development of network condions and theories in architec-
ture and urbanism.
Naming an idea gives it power and provides it with the oppor-
tunity to exist. Thus, Computaonal Feminism iniates an
alternave discourse that advances the eld of gender equality
while harnessing the tools of computaon as tools of social and
economic equality.
Materializing Cyborgs
Feminist discourses manifest dierent visions of cyborgs as a tool
for tesng the relaonships between humans and technology.
In 1985, Donna Haraway, who challenged noons of feminist
focuses on identy polics, urged feminists to move towards
a post-human condion beyond the limitaons of tradional
gender, feminism and polics. Specically, "The cyborg does not
dream of community on the model of the organic family, this
me without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize
ComputaonalFeminismDoyle, Forehand, Senske
the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream
of returning to dust” (Haraway 1990). Haraway’s cyborg is the
"illegimate child" of every binary: dominant society and oppo-
sional social movements, users and used, human and machine,
subject and object, "rst" and "third" worlds, male and female. In
Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + The New Technoculture, Sadie Plant
reclaims technology for women in her depicon of Ada Lovelace,
the disputed creator of programming who is historically absent
from computaonal discourses. Epitomized in Lovelace, Plant’s
cyborg "did everything topsy-turvy, certainly thought to have
come into the world feet downwards," highlighng the female
creave process, and that the absence of these processes was
necessary for the unspoken language of early programming
(Plant 1997). Plant’s cyborg focuses on the necessity of women’s
language, and serves as a keystone of the cyberfeminist agenda.
Emerging technologies and methods provide an alternave to
determinism and eciency while oering new forms of expres-
sion. For example, the computaonal-feminist-cyborg celebrates
the free-owing language of autonomous roboc construcon,
exemplifying Lovelace’s creave processes.
CONCLUSIONS
“…this is a revoluonary agenda, for today very few
people—women or men—control our tools and our work…”
Joan Rothschild, Machina Ex Dea
Women’s relaonship to technology is complicated, contradic-
tory, and itself a social construct. It provokes fresh possibilies
for feminist and computaonal scholarship, and perhaps even
acon. In the twenty-ve years since the digital turn, advances
in technology have delivered unprecedented possibilies to
architects, enabling new expressions, performance, materials,
fabricaon and construcon processes. However, during this
me, more aenon has been paid to the "how?" of architec-
ture’s digital technology and less to the "why?" As computaonal
culture evolves, the moment has come for a new digital turn.
Now is the me to pause and reect upon which discourses
are missing from the narrave of computaonal design and
which are necessary to navigate the future of the discipline and
its technology. Specically, computaon is missing an ethical
narrave, a discussion of the social and polical ramicaons of
developing technologies and the inequalies resulng from their
rapid advancement, both intenonal and unintenonal.
As digital technology permeates the social fabric, these quesons
become increasingly urgent to architecture’s sphere of concerns
and responsibilies. What do we want the next twenty-ve years
to be? What is the next digital turn? Computaonal Feminism
is a provocaon towards a more just and inclusive eld and a
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ACADIA 2017
| DISCIPLINES + DISRUPTION
framework for making space, disrupng entrenched conven-
ons, and considering gender inequalies within the narrave of
computaonal design.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by: the ISU Oce of the Vice Provost for
Research, the ISU Miller Faculty Fellowship, an ISU Women's & Diversity
Grant, the ISU Department of Architecture, and the Stan G. Thurston
Professorship in Design Build. Thank you to our Graduate Assistants
Nakisa Dhpanah and Nasar (Tony) Sagha.
REFERENCES
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Carpo, Mario. 2012. The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992–2012.
Chichester, England: Wiley.
Chang, Lian C. 2014. “Where Are the Women? Measuring Progress on
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CUMINCAD. hp://papers.cumincad.org/ (accessed 22 April 2017).
Deamer, Peggy. 2015. "Parametric Schizophrenia." In The Polics of
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Women in Design. 2013. “The Pritzker Architecture Prize Commiee:
Recognize Denise Sco Brown for her work in Robert Venturi's 1991
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the-pritzker-architecture-prize-commiee-recognize-denise-sco-brown-
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IMAGE CREDITS
All images by the authors.
Shelby Elizabeth Doyle, AIA is an Assistant Professor of Architecture
and Daniel J. Huberty Faculty Fellow at the Iowa State University College
of Design. Her scholarship is broadly focused on the intersecon of
computaon and construcon and specically on the role of digital cra
as both a social and polical project. Doyle was hired under the ISU
President's High Impact Hires Iniave to combine digital fabricaon and
design/build at ISU. This led to the founding of the ISU Computaon
+ Construcon Lab with Nick Senske and Leslie Forehand. She holds
a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of
Design and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of
Virginia.
Leslie Forehand is a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture and
an internaonally experienced architect/designer and researcher. Her
research seeks to nd new soluons in the digital processes, speci-
cally advancing the materiality of addive manufacturing. Leslie holds a
Masters of Architecture from Pra Instute and a BS in Architecture from
the University of Virginia, and her personal and student work has been
exhibited and published worldwide.
Nick Senske is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Iowa State
University College of Design. His research examines computaonal
soware as a cultural arfact and has been presented internaon-
ally at conferences and workshops. He received a B. Arch from Iowa
State University and a SMArchS in Design Computaon from MIT. He
is currently compleng his PhD in Architecture at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor.
