"Outcast among outcasts": Identity, gender, and leadership in a Mac users group

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. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]