Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for Women at the Intersectional Margins

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings present barriers and opportunities around access of under-resourced women of colour into makerspaces. We present these findings through four themes: first impressions and visual representations; dimensions of the enabling environment; role of community partnerships; and intersectional identities of women. We conclude by discussing three contributions this paper makes to the HCI and CSCW literature, with supporting lessons and recommendations so that makerspaces no longer encode the involvement of only certain types of users (predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of women at the intersectional margins. If makerspaces can facilitate an enabling environment appropriate to be inclusive of women who face intersecting oppressions, the benefits of the maker movement can expand substantially.