"Kan man särskilja kompetens från personlighet?" En genusvetenskaplig studie av kompetens och ideal i fyra IKT-forskningsorganisationer

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to describe how ideals and competence in four ICT-research organisations can be understood from a gender perspective. The four organisations are the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Interactive Institute, SICS Center for Networked Systems, and Mobile Life VINN Excellence centre (Mobile Life). The material consists of semi-structured deep interviews with 18 members of the organisations, seven women and eleven men. They are analysed from the themes Ideals and Competence. This is being done through a doing gender perspective (Fenstermaker & West 2002; Gunnarsson et al. 2003), and with help from theories and research on gender and technology in general, and computer nerds in particular (Turkle 1987; Kendall 1999, 2000; Wajcman 2001; Olofsdotter 2009; Mellström 2009) and theories and research on both competence in general and competence and gender (eg. Ellström 1992; Gunnarsson 1994). In the organisations research ideals are described through a hard-soft dualism, and ideals for researchers (the computer nerd and the interaction-focused researcher) are placed on either side (the computer nerd on the hard, the interaction focused researcher on the soft). The computer nerd is a highly masculine ideal, but the interaction-focused researcher is not gendered to the same extent. Competence is understood both as abstract and as concrete. When defined as abstract it is formal and gender neutral, but when described as concrete it is non-formal and have gendered connotations through the ideals for the researcher. Thus, the abstract definitions hide the gendered reality of competence. Gender norms connect ideals and competence in the organisations. If you do not fulfill the ideals, then you are not competent and you do not belong in the organisations. As such, the ideals are productive normative standards (cf. Butler 2006) at work within the organisations, producing reality and comprehensibility. Through ideals for research and researchers, and through understandings of competence, gender is being done within the organisations (cf. Fenstermaker & West 2002).