Knowledge Production and Gender: A Reading Through Women's Geographic Information Technology Experiences

Abstract

The process of knowledge production and actors who produce knowledge from the past to the present is represented by male dominance. The exclusion of women from the knowledge production process and the criticism of the trivialization of the knowledge produced by women have been discussed in the scientific world in the last few decades. The identification of women as emotional and men as rational has made the direction of the relationship between knowledge and gender more visible in the current age of technology and knowledge. In this context, this article discusses the impact of gender roles in knowledge production processes through the experiences of female geographer academics using Geographic Information Technologies. The aim of this research is to examine the effects of gender roles and hierarchies on the knowledge production process and to understand these effects through women's use of technology.The research was designed according to the qualitative method. The data were obtained through in-depth interviews. The sample of the study comprises female academicians who are GIS users in the discipline of Geography. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 8 female faculty members working in geography departments in different cities of Turkey. The interviews were conducted online with the researchers and participants. The findings obtained from the interviews reveal that the sexist prejudices that women academics confront in their academic career stories deepen in technology-supported fields and that this situation negatively affects their academic learning and production processes.