In conversation with... Dr Siân Brooke, LSE Fellow in Computational Social Science in the Department of Methodology speaks to LSE undergraduate and DSL columnist Kara Jessup and shares her insights on the technology sector for women, what it means to be a programmer and memes!
Siân has dyslexia and dyspraxia, so if you want to get in touch with her regarding being an academic with learning difficulties, access any outreach or anything else related to programming or academia, then please feel free to send her an email at s.j.brooke@lse.ac.uk.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and what exactly you do at the LSE?
I’m a Fellow in Computational Social Science at the Department of Methodology and will soon be a Leverhulme ECR Fellow, meaning I will be starting my own research project. My research focuses on gender inequality, mostly to do with technology although not exclusively. My work encompasses gender and online cultures generally, leading me to study some rather strange bits of the internet, things like memes, stereotypes and jokes, and how prejudice works in anonymity.
You don’t often hear about an academic studying memes! What exactly was you research focusing on?
Well I didn’t begin with memes, I originally studied Political Science and Philosophy at the University of Portsmouth. I was interested in decolonization and feminism in Sub-Saharan African constitutions. It was really interesting to me that the way we applied gender theory in a grand manner to populations that were seen as so distant was also so everyday in jokes around gender online. For example, seeing women as valuable in terms of sex whilst also being detested in their sexualisation spanned both grand theory of culture and the ridiculous jokes of memes.
In 2016 I completed my Master’s on Reddit, and how gender norms were acted out on a platform where everyone was anonymous. There are no clear gender cues on Reddit, including in the username and profile picture, so how are gender norms and stereotypes enforced and referenced in memes. I found that these grand theories of inequality were in these mundane, silly spaces that academia had frankly ignored. It’s something I find really interesting and have continued looking into.
How do you use digital skills in your role and how do they help you?
Under the umbrella of digital skills, I would include social research on the platform and technical skills such as programming. Words such as “digital” can be frowned upon by programmers, seeing it as less than technical but I disagree. In terms of social methods, I employ ethnography in online forums to understand how people are talking with each other. I can supplement this (qualitative) sociological approach with algorithms in those spaces to think about how to scrape (collect automatically) data. The researcher can be an observer in a digital space, but so can an algorithm. Under the umbrella of digital skills, there is both the ability to engage with this community in a more sociological way, understanding the theory, understanding how boundary-making works in this space, through both computational and qualitative approaches. I think they’re seen as incompatible, but the mix opens up a lot of really exciting and lucrative opportunities for research.
I saw that you are currently working on increasing gender equity in the technical sector. What do you see as the biggest obstacle women face when looking to gain the necessary skills to enter the technical sector, and what do you think are the major steps that can be taken to tackle this?
When I wrote my doctoral thesis, I had two literature review chapters. The first one was the social history of computing. It highlighted how women are the original programmers. Initially, coding was seen as low skilled administrative work, only suitable for women because of how sexism viewed them. Then when it suddenly became very profitable, it was simply not fit for women, because we can’t have women earning money, that would be ridiculous! The gender association of programming has shifted before, and there is no reason it cannot be made more equal.
Despite programming and computing constantly evolving, it is seen that there is something really natural in men to do with computers as if they’re born with a USB slot in the side of their heads. If we frame technology as being naturally masculine, then we don't really have any hope for equality, it's just immediately cancelled out. Let’s say Google have a problem where, regardless of what capacity a woman is doing her work in, they will label her as a user interface (UI) developer, which means that she's doing all of the pretty bits because aesthetics has to be done by women, that’s what sexism tells us women are better at. It can be assumed that she is working in UI, regardless of what she is actually doing in her role. However, when her title refers to UI (irrespective of the context of her work) she gets paid less because that's less valued than the user experience and programming side of it. I think the main barrier is just these complete nonsense associations that we have between gender roles and programming, and the idea that there is somehow a link between your ability to use a computer and your assigned sex.
The dominance of men in tech is perpetuated by the complementary idea that the technology sector is a meritocracy. If you believe tech is fair and open, then you believe that the startup geniuses are exceptional. It then follows that you don’t need to challenge the sexism because the smartest people are already in the room. The position is that men end up at the top because the system is fair, and because the system is fair it does not need to change.
I believe that any effort to get women into technology, or rather challenge sexism, is valuable. But with incremental change, we normalize what was once so controversial, to a point where it is a harder to undo it. However, this does not mean that we should ever disregard large scale changes just because they aren’t small. It means that we can promote what we already have available to us. For example, having teachers in computer programming and statistical methods that are women can be really impactful. Lip service to equality or passive listening is not difficult, but going into your class to learn python on the first day of term seeing someone who looks like you, standing at the front of the room can be more powerful than I think many realize. Let’s be clear, seeing women in programming roles is not just good for students who are women, but it is good for everyone to see someone other than what they have come to expect in a position of knowledge and authority.
If you had one piece of advice to offer students while they’re still here at LSE what would it be?
First of all, your colleagues and your peers are your friends, look at each other’s work! It helps you learn about new things in a collaborative way. It really helps people feel like they are not out on their own, and that’s a powerful thing.
Secondly, there are two key elements to larger projects such as your thesis that you need to think about. First, what do you want to showcase from your degree? What is the one thing that you want to show people or employers that you did? Secondly, you should take the time to think about what you are interested in. Believe me, if your thesis is boring as all hell, you are not going to be reading it over and over again, paying lots of attention to it for the nine months it’ll take you to write it. I acknowledge that that's coming from somebody who managed to write a thesis on memes, but there is a way of fusing a skill you want to showcase, like machine learning or some technical expertise, with some old theory that you're really interested in. You don’t always have to compromise, so being able to think about your thesis or capstone early will ultimately help you write a project that your proud of.
Go and talk to your peers, your friends, and your teachers. Especially before you have a clear idea, that’s when conversations are most useful. In programming, we call it rubber ducking, which is where you talk to something like a rubber duck to find a solution, and I think that can help. Finding that sweet spot between an interesting topic and a viable thesis really just benefits you in terms of grades and your experience of University.