Educators and Technology folk - just a few minutes of your time for a good cause!https://she-learning.org/

CarolineGatti·Feb 16, 2021

Posted in:Favors

I've pledged a donation of € 500 to a charity dedicated to female education on reaching a target goal of 100 respondents to my Master's research surveys. All you have to do is dedicate 7 - 8 minutes of your time to answering a few questions and I will pay forward your kindness by making the donation out of my own pocket. On reaching the target, I will publish the receipt of the donation on the same website that the surveys are on - she-learning.org The topic is gender bias in education and technology, and how that might come together and affect educational technologies - does EdTech end up 'absorbing' some of the gender bias persistent in education and very much present in the technology sector? Hopefully not - women have come such a long way and in such a short space of time, thanks in part to access to education - but we don't want any of that progress being impacted. So, if you work in any technology sector, in EdTech development itself, or are an educator of any level, I would LOVE to hear from you!

Larissa88·Feb 17, 2021

Done. A small note. On the gender question, would suggest having an option for non-binary and ‘other’. Just having men, women, prefer not to say leaves non-binary and other people who are perfectly fine with saying their gender in a bit of a weird spot. It also feels like a bit of erasure, though I know surely not intentional 😊

CarolineGatti·Feb 17, 2021

Thank you SO much for sparing me some of your time. It's really appreciated. About the gender indication, I appreciate you bringing it up, and, truth be told, I re-did that part of the survey a crazy amount of times. What made me eventually opt for just the binary option was the fact that I'm researching bias against women, and that most probably bias against non-binary people has different roots, thought-processes and materialization, that were not represented by the indicators in my methodology, and that in actual fact would require a specific study. But you're right, as it stands, it ends up being exclusionary, albeit unintentionally, and I will correct it straight away!

Larissa88·Feb 18, 2021

Wrote a reply last night but it’s vanished. Argh. For what it’s worth, I understand navigating the world of gender can be scary and I’m still learning it myself. Something to consider is that non-binary people who are female-presenting as defined by society are still going to experience the biases cis women experience. And when it comes to trans women, they may have never experienced the standard bias against women if they hadn’t come out yet and when they do experience bias it may be more to do with their transness than womanness 🤷‍♀️ Good luck with the study! This work is really important and I’m glad people are doing it 🦄

CarolineGatti·Feb 18, 2021

I totally get where you're coming from. But it is complicated - you really need a analytical framework, and that would require a much more seasoned researcher/academic than me. To be honest, I'm not sure I've even come across one yet that would apply. Plus this is just a Master's dissertation - you don't get the word count to get overly ambitious, and in fact, so as not to do some vague box-ticking exercise, I have not even included intersectionality. I would end up spreading everything so thin, that it would be doomed to disaster, and be decidedly disrespectful to boot. So for the moment it is what it is, but I'm heartened by responses like yours. My little effort is just a pebble in the ocean, but I agree with you - it's potentially a very important topic. Big hugs!