Contextual dependencies and gender strategy

Abstract

Analysts are often asked to help deliver systems that have a great mix of performance and features. Unfortunately, problematic organizational gender related issues have sometimes been degraded and treated as unrelated to technological issues. While information systems development in general is trying to ensure support for businesses, we might in the future expect more than just a gender-ignorant quality measure in the way the IS works to meet organizational demands. In this paper it is proposed that an interpretative and contextual analysis would support ISD in the creation of a necessary level of understanding of each specific business. The intention with an inquiry into contextual dependencies is that it helps to identify some methodological limitations which result in traps unconsciously biasing analysis of investigated problem spaces. This paper introduces a contextual analysis highlighting some contextual dependencies that are typically ignored in existing works or analysis. An initial framework is proposed using gender as an example of an inquiry into some existing contextual dependencies. Information systems analysis, contextual dependency, contextual analysis, gender strategy. © 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.