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Article Excerpt
Abstract: Studies about women and technology continue to lament the lack of women involved in the design process, a key area for leadership development in technologically based organizations (Liker, Hadda, & Karlin, 1999; Lorber, 1993; Stein, 2006; Turkle, 1997; Wajcman, 2000). In cases where marginal technologies and members (e.g., Macintosh and females) are present, how participating members discursively and materially construct leadership identities among a myriad of other possibilities (e.g., expert technology user or programmer, student, technological consultant) deserves attention. We used a grounded theory approach to analyze interviews, field observations, and online archival data. Findings indicate that members' constructed competing and often contradictory Macintosh and gendered identities and identifications as well as tension-filled micropractices that both replicate and disrupt the gendered order.
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Donna Haraway (2000) discussed how individuals' productions of lived experiences through language shape collective social realities. Social realities include not only the ways in which technologies affect and are affected by the fabric of social culture, but also the ways in which specific groups, such as specialized users and creators of technologies, exist. Language naturalizes identities and social culture. Although Haraway directed attention to women's work and use of language in technological contexts, her call also echoed women's struggles to form and enact productive identities in multiple and intersecting communication contexts (Acker, 1990; Borghi & Sborgi, 2000; Lorber, 1993; Perry & Greber, 1990; Stein, 2002; Wajcman, 2000).
One such site of struggle is women's leadership, particularly women's involvement in, direction of, and meaning making in technology-based organizations (for leadership overviews, see Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996; Hickman, 1998). To date, research has focused on the tensions, difficulties, and opportunities that women have experienced while developing credibility and enacting leadership in the workplace, elected or appointed positions, and professional groups and organizations (e.g., Acker, 1990; Aldoory & Toth, 2004; Bormann, Pratt, & Putnam, 1978; Bunyi & Andrews, 1985; Jamieson, 1995; Johnson, 1994; Jorgenson, 2002; Sullivan & Turner, 1996; Wood & Conrad, 1983), but relatively little research has examined these processes in less formally structured and in technology-focused contexts. Even less scholarship has studied women who are in the process of learning how to craft and be called upon to play different identities out of myriad leadership and membership possibilities (Kondo, 1990). As a major aspect of and process in leadership, gender must be studied concerning women's roles in technological contexts. For it may be in less established contexts that some younger or less experienced women not only test and learn how to negotiate their leadership identities, but also enlarge or constrict their repertoire of identity possibilities in concert with other organizational members.
As such, we examine how some young women come to understand and navigate choices and contradictions that may surface in their leadership identities in a context that is traditionally instrumental (in role and organizational culture), alternative (in its structural location, history, and "progressive" interests), and inclusionary (in its recruitment, retention, and promotion of local members as well as historical corporate membership and appointment of leaders). (1) In such a context, many women might expect the usual overt and covert biases against women in power to be lessened or absent (e.g., Haslett, Geis, & Carter, 1993; Lorber, 1993) and the power-sharing and nurturing styles characterizing many women' s leadership approaches to be celebrated (e.g., Fine & Buzzanell, 2000; Helgeson, 1990; Rosener, 1990). Specifically, we examine the case of an unfunded university campus group that draws members because of its mission to promote and support alternative (non-Microsoft based PC) technologies; a group that sustains membership because of members' passion for this alternative technology and that eschews university funding to retain its integrity as an independent agent.
Literature Review
We begin by providing the context for our study, the technological milieu of Macintosh, then provide an overview of socially constructed membership identities and women's leadership and technology. We conclude with our research question.
Macintosh: An Apple of an Alternative Flavor
When addressing Macintosh as a technology one must consider the ideology purported and sustained by its creators, culture, and users. It probably comes as no surprise that Macintosh often is viewed as more than just a computer. As an operating system (software) Macintosh was developed for Apple computers (hardware) in the late 1970 to mid 1980s. While studying at Penn State University, Jef Raskin developed the Graphical User Interface (GUI), moving the computing world from expert-only textual and binary computer interfaces to more user-friendly graphical displays. Raskin worked with Apple co-creators Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and a small group of developers "in an effort to create a lowcost, easy-to-use computer" (Pang, 2000a, [paragraph] 1). In the wake of IBM's super computer (Big Blue), which could only be used by computer experts, Apple sought to develop the first-ever personal computer (Stein, 2002; Wozniak, 2005) and Raskin's Macintosh software program became the means to help non-experts use computer technology. Thus, in the words of Raskin (1979), "Macintosh is a communications device" ([paragraph] 2).
Apple's focus on personal, more grassroots organization, Mac computers gained a following, coined by Steven Howard (1988) and popularized by Kahney (2004) as the "cult of Mac." When considering its groundbreaking communication structure (through the use of graphics rather than text-based computer language), Macintosh was "responsible for sparking new movements in computing" (Pang, 2000b, [paragraph] 1). In addition to the individual user focus, Apple promoted an ideology that "encourages innovation and supports creative thinking" (Raskin, 1981, [paragraph] 2). Such technological and human resources creativity was highlighted in the In Search of Excellence (Peters, 1983) video spotlight on Apple. As a product Apple focuses not only on creating efficient systems, but also on nurturing the kind of talent that would produce meaningful aesthetics to enhance the user-friendliness of that system.
Apple promoted products by creating sign and symbolic identification with its users (Stein, 2002). Apple not only used aesthetically pleasing programs and hardware, but it also promoted itself as a rebellious, free-spirited underdog in the computing world (Pang, 2000c; Stein, 2002). Although Apple developed its image through rhetoric of freedom and revolution, its ads were "used to constitute consumers, not rebels" (Stein, 2002, p. 169). There was a sense of showpersonship and secrecy involved in product unveilings that only enhanced Apple's mystique (Wingfield, 2006). Apple earned itself many dedicated supporters and a buzz of interest about what might be the next technologies to be unveiled-qualities that have allowed it to survive over the last few decades and to attract the original as well as new younger users. A member of the University of California, Berkley Macintosh User Group (BMUG, the first university Mac users group) Louise Kohl (1988) noted, "perhaps the most important [criterion] for the Mac's longevity [was] the near fanatic partisanship of those early users" ([paragraph] 6). Mac was known for the loyalty of its users.
Although criticism existed concerning Apple's deployment of its ideals (Kahney, 2004, 2006; Stein, 2002), Macintosh User Groups continued to sprout up all over the country. The first user group BMUG, which began in 1984 at the University of California, Berkley, seemed to echo the Homebrew Computer Club, a group that was started by Lee Felsenstein and included such members as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. This first group was complete with a computer Bulletin Board System to help members network information. BMUG member Bernard Aboba (1998) claimed, "the purpose of a User Group is to give away information" ([paragraph] 11). Specifically, BMUG perpetuated a consistent philosophy, regularly exchanged software programs, offered insider information concerning Apple, and aided new Macintosh users (Seidel, 1984). In an interview with Macintosh historian Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (2000d) founding member Chris Espinoza stated the Mac users groups "were there to teach other people about computers, which was a great social purpose, and it was a great place to share knowledge and get your questions answered" ([paragraph] 39). Although BMUG did draw many different types of people to its organization, its primary group members were programmers (Jones, 1988). As a result many of the founding members, such as Reese Jones, Raines Cohen, and Tom Chavez, all built on Apple software and hardware all formed other networking companies, such as Farallon and Netopia, as well as (Pang, 2000e).
Technological and Gendered Identities Constructions
Apple has historically and currently been a mix of entrepreneurial thinking, talent development, grassroots organizing, and aesthetics, blending information-sharing, and efficiency abilities within user-friendly hardware and software packaging (Aboba, 1998; Rushkoff, 1997; Stein, 2002). In these respects, Mac may appeal to both women and men's sense of complex gendered and other identity(ies) constructions as individuals look for and use technologies that express and support their changing interests, lifestyles, and values. Theorists argued that, in the technological age, media expose people to many different lifestyles, from which they construct self-identities that are coherent, fragmented, and locale-specific (Gergen, 1991; Kuhn, 2006; Turkle, 1995). As a "people's source of meaning and experience" (Castells, 1997, p. 6), identity acts as a means to interpret the outside world and to understand cultural changes. It is a subjective response to different contexts in order to form a coherent understanding of social relationships and one's participation in these relationships. Identity negotiation, then, becomes "a process whereby one attempts to maintain, retain or retrieve custody and authority over defining the self despite knowing that one cannot control how one's self is socially understood" (Jackson, 2002, p. 245). In cases where individuals identify strongly with particular groups and these groups' values and objectives, such as Mac users' identifications with the products and Apple or Macintosh ideologies, the pull toward particular identity constructions is strong.
In the pull toward particular manifestations of oneself, identity has contextual value (Kuhn, 2006; Minh Ha, 1984). The self is constantly shifting and adapting to the new contexts one encounters that may contribute to an individual's struggle to form a consistent self-conception. At times and places, people may express an affinity to a particular group or cause. At other times and places, individuals' commitments may be placed elsewhere. The process by which these identities are formed, enacted, resisted, performed, and altered may be similar to bricolage, or individuals' abilities to "think through the problems using the materials at hand," to adapt to particular contexts (Turkle, 1995, p. 51). In these ways, identity construction, negotiation, and enactments are dynamic, contextually-bound processes formed through language and social interaction in both stabilizing and seemingly contradictory ways (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Heywood & Drake, 1997; Kondo, 1990; Weedon, 1987, 1997).
As identities are formed and labeled by the self and others, individuals sort through "a multiplicity of self-investments" (Gergen, 1991, 74)--they invest themselves into teaching, mothering, brothering, mentoring, partnering, working, learning, and the many other everyday roles and other possibilities. Individuals attempt to enact fluid identities that can respond to different contexts. However, identities and, in particular, identity labels, may hold people to certain expectations and standards. Individuals may struggle to adapt to and feel tom by static identity labels (Stone, 1996). For instance, sex, gender, occupational, and other socially (re)enforced patterns may produce identities, behaviors,...
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