Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Posting 6

Posting 6 : Posting 6 Dear students please answer these questions and post them in your blog as posting 6. BLOG QUESTIONNAIRE-SKBP 1023 Age: Tutorial Group: LECTURER _____ 1. Do you enjoy blogging? Yes ____________ NO_________________ IF YES OR NO please explain why: 2.Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging? 3.Do you need more assistance to set up your blog ? Yes ____________ NO_________________ If YES Please explain on what aspect : 4.Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog? Yes ____________ NO_________________ If YES Please list which topic ? 5.List 5 advantages of blogging for you 6.List 5 disadvantages of blogging 7.Will you continue blogging after the course? Yes ____________ NO_________________ If Yes or No Please explain why : 8.Do you think that blogging improve your writing? Yes ____________ NO_________________ 9.Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students? Yes ____________ NO_________________ 10.Will you recommend your friend to blog Yes ____________ NO_________________ 11.Can you teach a friend to set up his or her blog Yes ____________ NO________________




Answers




Age: 22 Group: 2 Lecturer: Dr.Zaini Amir






1. Do you enjoy blogging?


Yes, because I have learnt a lot of new things that I did not know before this. Bloging has widen my knowkedge. Other than that, I also enjoy blogging because it is an interesting activity for me that I enjoy myself.




2.Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?


As for me, I feel that blogging could improve the users'writing skills, vocabulary and their general knowledge. In addition, I also learn how to be patient in posting and receiving comments from the others' in our blog.




3.Do you need more assistance to set up your blog ?


I guess no. It is because, I have already learn the exact way of setting up a blog from my Bahasa and Teknologi Maklumat subjrct. In addition, I have also learnt it from my peers and relations on the way of setting up a blog.




4.Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog?


Yes. They are the article on tips to be happy and my favourite poem. These two topic seem to interest me because it tend to release my tense and stress that I used to face throughout this semester.




5.List 5 advantages of blogging for you.


For me, the advantages are:




  • Improve my writing skills, in the sense of vocabulary and exact way of writing.


  • Widen my knowledge, in general and current issue.


  • Teaches me many new features that I am not familiar with before this.


  • Enhance me to communicate in English language.


  • Could make new friends where I can know many people all around the world.


6.List 5 disadvantages of blogging


As for me, I don't think there are many disadvantages of blogging. It might be that way because I am a new blogger. The disadvantages are:




  • In blogging, some bloggers tend to use harsh and rude words that could hurt other people's feelings.


  • Maybe, when we express our feelings and emotions through our blogs, many individuals would know about it. It is no longer private anymore.


7.Will you continue blogging after the course?


Yes, of course. It is because I enjoy blogging and it is a way for me to keep in touch with my lovely friends. Thus, I also would continue blogging to increase my language proficiency level in English language.




8.Do you think that blogging improve your writing?


Yes. It is because it would practice me in using the correct and exact way of writing. Other than that, blogging would also help in a way in enhancing me to use all vocabularies that could be understood by all the readers who read it.




9.Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students?


Yes, because blogging has many advantages that could be very useful for all students in many area. In addition, blogging is also an activity that could reduce our temper whenever we are tensed or stressed in our daily routines.




10.Will you recommend your friend to blog


Yes, because it is a way for me to keep in touch with him or her rather than using e-mais and phone calls. Blogging will also make me close to my friend where I could check and respong my blog daily.




11.Can you teach a friend to set up his or her blog


Yes, but just the ordinary one, because I am not an expert person in setting up a blog. I just know the basic one that have been taught to me Bahasa dan Teknologi Maklumat, my peers and not forgetting my relatives.

Posting 5- Summary of the articles (B)

Article 1

This article is basically about the benefits that the users could gain from concordance. Those benefits are; it could organize and manage immense volumes of litigation data and OCR text, lessen the time and cost of document review with features that import, search and organize e-mail and other electronic devices documents fastly and accurately. In addition, it could also fastly browse all types of litigation documents with power and precision where it has flexible seraching simultaneously. Other than that, it can also manage transcripts more efficiently and perform easy bulk import and export of plain text and PCF files, which retain original formatting. Last but not least, it can also produce accurately formatted, customized reports for fact review and trial preparation, including witness kits, case chronology, privilege logs, questions and answers sets, annotations, production history reports and more.

My own view
In my opinion, all those benefits that has been mentioned above could be effective and beneficial for all those individuals especially students in their learning process. It is because all the benefits are clearly stated and they are all easy to be understood by the readers.
Article 2
This article was taken from a journal. It is about some considerations concerning encoding and concoding texts. The writer inform the readers that diverse needs to be in among those who use
computers in humanities research and instruction but, it tend to have a lot of difficulties. The difficulty, of course, is that significance in one area is not necessarily significance in another. A computationally easy project may be of importance in a particular discipline and should not be assigned cavalierly to the computational hell of the "trivial." In addition, a kind of backlash in favor of computer research in the humanities are to show the largest danger--that of complacency, especially for university students where there is a substantialgroup of computing humanists. Thus, the best way for any project, as well as for this discussion of encoding and concording texts, is Wisbey's observation that it "appears sensible to adapt one's approach to the needs of a particular text, "'where it is being shown primarily by one's intimate knowledge of that text. This requires a much more flexible approach to humanistic computing than is usual. To summarize, it could be said that whatever that is in a text we want or need to encode depends in great part upon what we
wish to do. (MICHAEL J.)

My own view

As for me, based on the article, I feel that the correct and exact work in concording something, it all depends on how we organize it. If we organize in a correct manner, then it would be smooth and understandable and vice verca.


Posting 5- Concordance articles links (A)


Hello everyone,


For posting number 5, I have decided to provide the link of the articles that I interesting on the topic "concordance". Therefore, here are the links of those articles........Happy reading.......








Friday, March 27, 2009

Dinner at Dato Onn College (19 March 2009)

Hye friends,

Well, here are some pictures of mine that I would like to share with all of you. I hope that you would enjoy viewing it and kindly leave comments.
Thank you.

Problems on posting 4

Dear Dr.Zaini,

In order to complete my posting 4, I have a problem on it. It is, I could not find the way to

show
the link for my long articles. Hence, really hope that you kindly consider my problem

and accept
my assignments.

Thank you.

Posting 4- (Part 4)- My own summary of article2

Women's information centers and networks: a development perspective

A vast growth has been observed in the number and types of women’s group and association around the globe. A complex of intercontinental, beliefs, outbound and inbound networks of people and association has emerged. Thus, the recognition of women’s news has increased both in inbound and outbound and so has the need for inclusive and consistent material on women and their concerns. Although news centers and networks apparently appear to be very different, the theory of networking finds them as being part of the same general style. Networks are seen as an important device for growth. Networking is an avenue open to women who search for news about many matters, needs, capabilities and possible solutions, as it is an available strategy which needs few resources. However, if networks are to operate outside their inbound and outbound boundaries, less of resources become more of a limitation. Research and analysis are shown of outbound, beliefs, and international networks. Lastly, the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in this process is well thought-out.

Posting 4- (Part 3)- My own summary of article 1

Emotions in a Rational Profession: The Gendering Of Skills in ICT Work

Information communication technology (ICT) profession is seldom found as a work environment where emotional and social skills are known as the key. However, the workers are growing and that are usually associated with feminity. The valuation of emotionally in ICT workplaces become a well-known perception of the workers is of rather a social and solitary hackers, where the original ICT worker is known in popular and academic literature field. This article simply explore how ICT workers themselves describe the ICT worker, how this ideal is enacted and how far these constitutions are gendered. The writer had explained how the gendering of emotion shifts. In addition, the writer also mentioned the methods applied to conduct the research and discussed how the exact ICT employee is described explored the entire individuals who enact the ideal in the following part. Thus, the writer also did not forget to explain about the gender skills by offering some conclusions. To recapitulate this article indicate that a gender dynamic in relation to skill egalitarian climate where women and men are equal in ICT field. In short, it could be said that the writer has stressed that both genders are neutral in ICT field. (Elisabeth K.Kalen)

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Posting 4 (Part 2)- Online Database [Article 2-LisaNet)


Database


LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts


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Title


Women's information centres and networks: a development perspective


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Author


Valk, M; van Dam, H; Cummings, S


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Source


Information Development; 15 (1) Mar 1999, p.26-31


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ISSN


0266-6669


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Descriptors


Librarianship Cooperation Information centres Women

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New Search Using Marked Terms:

Use AND to narrow

Use OR to broaden

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Add to Current Search:

Use AND to narrow

Use OR to broaden




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Abstract


An enormous increase has been observed in the number and types of women's groups and organizations around the world. A complex of international, regional, national and local networks of individuals and organizations has emerged. At the same time, the recognition of women's issues has grown, both nationally and worldwide and so has the need for comprehensive and reliable data on women and their concerns. Although information centres and networks superficially appear to be very different, the theory of networking identifies them as being part of the same general trend. Networks are seen as an important tool for development. Networking is an avenue open to women who seek information about various problems, needs, capabilities and possible solutions, as it is an accessible strategy which requires few resources. However, if networks are to operate outside their local and national boundaries, lack of resources becomes more of a constraint. Case studies are presented of national, regional and international networks. Finally, the role of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in this process are considered. (Original abstract - amended)


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Features


refs.


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Language


English


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Publication Year


1999


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Publication Type


Journal Article


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Shelfmark


4493.538200


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Update


20020325


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Accession Number


92825


Posting 4 (Part 1)- Online Database [Article 1-EBSCOhost)


Hello everyone. For posting number four, I have divided it onto four parts. they are; part 1 (article 1 EBSOhost), part 2 (article 2-LisaNet), part 3 (summary of article 1( and, part 4 (summary of article 2) Four part 1 and 2, the materials are all taken directly from PTSL. I did not change nor modify any of the contents. My own edition would be on part 3 and 4. Therefore, here are the materials that I got from PTSL last week.

Emotions in a Rational Profession:
The Gendering of Skills in ICT Work Elisabeth K. Kelan

Information communication technology (ICT) work is rarely seen as a work environment where emotional and social skills are key. However, the ideal ICT worker is increasingly said to possess a range of emotional and social skills that are often associated with femininity. This raises the question of how skills are discursively gendered in ICT work. This article firstly shows which skills ICT workers identify as those needed by the ideal ICT worker. Secondly, it highlights how ICT workers construct their own skills. Thirdly, some light is shed on how the gendering of emotional and social skills shifts with different discursive contexts and it is shown what the implications of this are. It is suggested that there is a dynamic at work through which men can appear as a new ideal ICT worker with more ease than women, despite the fact that women are more often associated with social and emotional skills.

Keywords: gender, emotion, information communication technology, ideal worker, discourse analysis

Introduction

In our society, discourses are gendered, and the split between mind and body — as feminist theory has demonstrated — is a binary that identifies men with thought, intellect, and reason and women with body, mind, and intuition. (Halberstam, 1991, p. 439) One may summarise the binary to which Halberstam (1991) refers as the binary between rationality and emotionality, where the former is associated with masculinity and the latter with femininity. In the public sphere, and especially in organizations, rationality has traditionally been valued as Address for correspondence: *Elisabeth K. Kelan, The Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, London Business School, Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4SA, UK, e-mail: ekelan@ london.edu Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 15 No. 1 January 2008 doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2007.00355.x © 2007 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd the central characteristic, with emotions appearing to be of little use. The exchange value of emotionality has apparently risen in recent times: in today’s service-oriented workplaces emotions play a key role. Even in those workplaces seen as the epitome of rationality, such as information communication technology (ICT) workplaces, emotionality has received recognition. The valuation of emotionality in ICT workplaces becomes visible in how the ideal ICT worker is described. While the popular perception of ICT workers is of rather asocial and solitary hackers, the ideal ICT worker is increasingly described in popular and academic literature as having both technical and emotional competencies. If emotionality is gendered feminine and rationality or technical competence is gendered masculine, one could ask if this indicates a feminization of ICT employment, and what this means in relation to those who can embody these emerging identities. In this article I explore how ICT workers themselves describe the ideal ICT worker, how this ideal is enacted and how far these constructions are gendered. I will show how the gendering of emotions shifts with the discursive contexts in which it is deployed. The article is structured in five sections and a conclusion. In the first part I discuss how work has shifted from being perceived as rational, to being perceived as emotional, and how this is related to the gendering of ICT work. In the second part, I outline the methodology used for the present study. In the third part I discuss how the ideal ICT worker is described, before exploring who enacts the ideal in the fourth. Lastly, I show how the ideal skills are gendered, and then offer some conclusions. Hands, minds and hearts — from the rational to the emotional worker? Organizations and people working in organizations have often been described as in need of rationality. This assumed rationality of workers has come under scrutiny, not only in the more popular literature (Goleman, 1996,1998), but also in the academic literature (Fineman, 1993, 2003, 2005;Hochschild, 1979, 1983;Witz et al., 2003). Hochschild’s (1983) groundbreaking
research has shown early on how emotions are commodified in the workplace. Today emotions — alongside other ‘soft skills’ such as social competence— are in strong demand especially because in the service- and knowledge-driven economy interacting with people is central (Castells, 1996).1 One of Hochschild’s (1983) most quoted examples of emotional labour is the case of flight attendants, a job which is often perceived as feminine.2 Much research on emotional labour has indeed focused on so-called women’s jobs (Brewis and Linstead, 2000; Guerrier and Adib, 2004; Mears and Finlay, 2005; Murray, 1996; Smith, 1992; Tyler and Abbott, 1998; Williams, 2003), in which qualities like servicing, nurturing and caring are highly valued. These 50 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATIONVolume 15 Number 1 January 2008 © 2007 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd qualities are often assumed to reside in women, who are thus hired for these jobs. However, emotionality at work is not confined to so-called women’s jobs; much research has shown that emotionality is also central in nongender- associated work (Forseth, 2005; Hochschild, 1983; Shuler and Sypher, 2000; Tracy, 2000) or men’s work (Fondas, 1997; Hatcher, 2003; McDowell, 1995, 1997; Pierce, 1996; Ross-Smith et al., 2005). This is evidence that the importance of emotions is rising, but it also alludes to the importance of the gendering of emotions at work. The gendering of skills refers to the basic gender binary which distinguishes the masculine from the feminine. The gender binary system is upheld through gendered associations in which one side is associated with masculinity and the other with femininity. The binary tends to be hierarchical, in that elements associated with masculinity are valued over and above elements associated with femininity (Gherardi, 1994; Korvajärvi, 1998).
Examples are the public/private, mind/body or rationality/emotionality binaries, where one side is associated with masculinity and the other with femininity. The gender binary is often perceived to be problematic as it is normative and contains valuations. Therefore, diverse gender researchers (Butler, 1990; Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Irigaray, 1985; Lorber, 2000) have tried to render the binaries more flexible or dispense with them altogether. However, the gender binary is still an important mental construct on which people draw to make sense of a situation. The often-cited notion of ‘doing gender’ (Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; West and Fenstermaker, 1995; West and Zimmerman, 1987) is indeed a way through which the gender binary is ‘done’ in everyday interactions. There is now ample research that has looked at how gender is done in a work context (Bruni et al., 2004; Gherardi, 1994; Heintz and Nadai, 1998; Johansson, 1998; Martin, 2003, 2006). Even though some argue that binaries are less problematic as long as they are not reified in dualities (Knights, 1997), what appears to be central is that the binaries are drawn upon to enact and make sense of gender. With this gender binary in mind, one may then ask in how far the rise of emotionality at work means that work is getting more feminine. That the gender binary is very flexible can be illustrated with feminist research on skill at work. It has been shown that whether work is classified as masculine or feminine is highly flexible and contingent (Hall, 1993; Leidner, 1991). It has also been emphasized that whoever possesses the important and valued skill, it is often a question of holding discursive power in a situation and claiming these skills (Bradley, 1995; Cockburn, 1983; Phillips and Taylor, 1980). This body of research argues that men are much better in making important skills their own, which may be linked to the fact that the ideal worker in organizations is often masculine (Acker, 1990; Wajcman, 1998) and that masculinity is conflated with normal business practices (Collinson and Hearn, 1994; Kerfoot and Knights, 1996; Martin, 2001).

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However, what seems to be changing is that femininity is no longer perceived as undesirable at work. Feminine skills are now valued in various jobs. Adkins (2000, 2002) argues that in this light femininity becomes a newly valued currency in the labour market, but also shows that it is not women per se who profit from the valuation of femininity. Adkins (2002) suggests that men are equally good, if not better, in making use of the currency of femininity. Therefore, it seems important to explore in detail how gendering is done in specific occupations, organizations and situations, to evaluate not only how the ideal worker is conceptualized but also who claims these skills and how this process is gendered. A good place to study the rise of emotionality and the gendering processes are engineering workplaces, as these workplaces are rarely associated with emotionality.Wajcman (1991, p. 145) argues that the construction of engineers as masculine works through binaries, in which one side is valued over the other, such as science over sensuality, hard over soft, and reason over emotion. For Wajcman ‘[e]ngineering seems to be the very epitome of cool reason, the antithesis of feeling’ (Wajcman, 1991, p. 145) and exactly that link between reason, rationality and masculinity is used to construct technical work as masculine work. The same seems to be true for high-end ICT workers who have often been portrayed as hackers conquering the world from their solitary confinement in front of their PCs. Those hackers are often presented as being individualistic and focusing only on the computer, as lacking empathy and with no need to socialize (for an analysis see Håpnes, 1996; Håpnes and Sørensen, 1995). This ultra-masculine image of the hacker is far removed from the associations of emotionality at work. This hacker image of ICT work is also said to deter women from entering ICT professions (Faulkner, 2001; Turkle, 1988; Wajcman, 1991, 2004). Men indeed form the majority in ICT work in the west.3 For instance, in Switzerland, 75–86 per cent of the ICT labour force are men4 (Funken, 2002; Huber,
2002). Even if women are present in ICT work, they tend to work in ‘softer’ and ‘less technical’ areas, such as interface design rather than coding (CEPT Consult, 2002; Henninger, 2001; Manske, 2003; Michel and Goertz, 1999; Panteli et al., 2001; Poggio, 2000; Sandberg and Augustsson, 2002). However, what is defined as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ seems to be contextual and contingent. Another gender dimension of ICT work is the long-hours culture and project cycles that go hand in hand with working practices and that are often difficult for women, as well as men with caring responsibilities (Gill, 2002; Grey and Healy, 2001; Henninger, 2001; Liebig, 2003; Perrons, 2003). The general imperative seems to be that ICT workers are flexible and fancy-free (Manske, 2003) and can work whenever and however they are required to. One could thus assume that the working practices in ICT work are modelled on men’s, rather than women’s, stereotypical lifestyles.
However, ICT work is changing. Research has pointed to the constant need to learn to keep up to date and the need for technology workers 52 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION Volume 15 Number 1 January 2008 © 2007 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd constantly to reinvent themselves (Kotamraju, 2002). While ICT work has often been portrayed as providing lucrative and secure employment, the burst of the dot.com bubble, as well as the global trend towards outsourcing to different countries, all mean that ICT work is increasingly precarious. Furthermore, the template of the ideal ICT worker is changing. Modern ICT work is service and teamwork. ICT workers have to be ‘hybrids’ that are good in technology and with people (Woodfield, 2000). In order to provide a valuable service to customers, ICT workers need to be able to interact with both customers and colleagues, for which they have to possess social and
emotional skills. If we again examine the gender binary of emotionality and rationality, we may assume that the new ideal worker could be more feminine than the techno-rational hacker. This gender association has led many to argue that women are particularly good in ICT work, as they bring to the task the social skills so desperately needed (CDI, 2002; Donato, 1990; Funken, 1998; Panteli et al., 2001; Schelhowe, 1997; Woodfield, 2000). However, Woodfield (2000) has shown that there are different consequences for men and women in enacting femininity. When women display femininity this is treated as an expression of women’s essence, while men are rewarded for showing apparently ‘unnatural’ feminine skills. The rise of emotions and their often feminine connotation tells us little about who profits from enacting certain behavior and it is thus important not only to explore how ideal workers are constructed, but also who enacts the ideal worker skills and who is successful in doing so. Therefore, I would like to propose the following way to study the gendering of emotions in ICT work. Firstly, there is a need to explore how ICT workers themselves describe an ideal ICT worker. Secondly, how do ICT workers position themselves in regard to the ideal ICT worker? Thirdly, is the ideal ICT worker portrayed as gendered, and if so, in which situations, and who benefits from such a portrayal? I would like to discuss some of these questions in the following sections, through an exploration of how the ideal ICT worker is constructed, how ICT workers position themselves vis-à-vis the ideal ICT worker, and how these constructions are gendered.

Methodology

In this article the gendering of skills in two ICT companies in Switzerland is shown. The research was based on theories and methods in discursive psychology (Billig, 1988, 1991; Billig et al., 1988; Davies and Harré, 1990; Speer, 2005) particularly discourse analysis (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Potter et al., 1990;Wetherell, 1998;Wetherell and Potter, 1988, 1992). In discourse analysis, discourse is seen as a social practice that is constructed by and constructive of social reality. Discourse is seen as functional, occasioned and rhetorically

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organized (Gill, 2000; Potter andWetherell, 1987; Tonkiss, 1998).

The aim of a discourse analysis is to map out which different interpretative repertoires and subject positions people have access to in a given situation, and what conflicting interpretative repertoires exist (Billig et al., 1988; Davies and Harré, 1990; Edley, 2001; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell and Potter, 1988). In this article the focus is on how people make sense of the changing nature of the ideal ICT worker, how they position themselves vis-à-vis those ideals and how these ideals are gendered. The material was collected through organizational ethnographies in two companies in Zürich, Switzerland. The first company, which I call Redtech, is the smaller of the two, employing just over 50 people and producing business software. The second company, Bluetech, is the local subsidiary of a multinational ICT company selling hardware, software and ICT services. I interviewed 26 people, 16 men and 10 women, and I job-shadowed people at work. Most people at Redtech were programmers and were hierarchically positioned as equals. The variety of job functions was wider at Bluetech, but the largest part of the research was conducted with technical consultants. The interviews covered the work context, relations to technology, biographies, conceptualization of gender and future plans. The interviews lasted about an hour and were fully transcribed5 and the observations noted in field notes. For the analysis the interviews and field notes were coded into three main areas (work, biography and gender) and then sub-coded into various topic areas using qualitative research software.6 The analysis of the material was supplemented — with certain reservations — by debates around what constitutes a good discourse analysis (Antaki et al., 2003; Burman, 2004; Potter and Wetherell, 1987, Chapter 8). All names are pseudonyms and the interview extracts are my own translation from Swiss High German. Conceptualizing the ideal ICT worker When asked about which competencies their jobs require, most answers followed a dyadic structure, in that the ideal ICT worker was often described as having a mixture of two central competencies: on the one hand being technically competent, and on the other hand being emotionally or socially competent. Charlotte, 34 years old and working at Redtech, describes this as a balance: Elisabeth: What does the ideal worker look like? Charlotte: Well, we have tried to identify that in seminars and what you need are things like big ears to hear what is going on, a big heart to feel and to have a nice atmosphere. Then of course the competence, well the technical rucksack, which everybody basically has and which he also needs, to 54 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION Volume 15 Number 1 January 2008 © 2007 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd do his work. And that is for everybody a personal balance between communication skills and his technical skills. While for Charlotte technical competence is a prerequisite to do the job properly, it is also important to listen and to feel, which she describes as communication skills. It is interesting to note that Charlotte refers to ‘ears’ and ‘hearts’ as the organs through which these skills are performed. So the skills are located in the body, and fulfil a quasi-technical function. A similar competence framework was described at Bluetech: Elisabeth:What do you think is important for your job?What do you have to
do to do a good job? Waltraud: (0.6) There are two aspects. The first is the purely technical. You need to have a bit of a flair for this kind of thinking. As I said, or like a medical diagnosis (she compared her job earlier to that of a medical doctor who has to diagnose a disease). You need to have this aptitude. And obviously the training. And secondly, what is very important for my work is to deal with the customer, to make this relationship work. Waltraud (52, Bluetech) describes how on the one hand technical skills are crucial, yet on the other she has to deal with the customer to create a working relationship. In order to construct these skills as a binary, people commonly draw on structures like ‘on the one side and on the other’ or as ‘first and second’. Although both skills are said to be important, they are clearly distinguishable. There is not much that is social or emotional in technology, which seems to exist outside social interactions. Rather than seeing technology and the social as mutually constitutive (Bijker et al., 1987; Hughes, 1986; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999), technology and the social are configured as different. In the following section I look at the facets the ideal worker at Redtech and Bluetech are said to posses and I flesh out how the technical and social skills are constructed. In talking about technical competence, three elements are said to be central. The first is updating one’s own technical knowledge. People stress that an essential part of technology is the ability to stay up to date, and only this ‘fresh’ knowledge is seen as valuable and marketable. Secondly, it was seen as important to understand technology, or at least be able to abstract and apply a methodology. Thirdly, it is stressed that the ideal worker does not have much in common with hackers. Most people in the study identified themselves against a perceived negative image of hackers. This interpretative repertoire is visible in the metaphor of the ‘(silent) cubby-hole’ regularly used at Redtech. One is said to be in a cubby-hole if one has a special area of expertise, immerses oneself totally into technology, and does not talk too much to other people. Many people told me that people in cubby-holes are not ideal ICT workers, as ICT workers need to be ‘proactive’ and have to approach customers and colleagues. This comes close to common stereotypes

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about hackers who are unable to interact with people (Gansmo et al., 2003;
Håpnes, 1996; Håpnes and Sørensen, 1995; Lupton, 1995).

An illustration of problem-solving in relation to technology and the silent cubby-holes was given by Esther, 33 years old and working at Redtech: Esther:Well, my computer is basically only a complicated lamp. If you push the switch and the light is not turned on, then you don’t say stupid world, nasty lamp, but you think that the switch is out of order, or it (the lamp) is not plugged in or the bulb is broken. And with the computer you think in a similar way. Then you say that you now need to think about where you can narrow down the problem and you need to look in the middle if the problem is there already or (emerges) later.... And secondly which is really important, that you are able to communicate, that you are not retreating to a cubby-hole and simply tinkering [with technology], because then it goes wrong.... You need to communicate a lot with people, with customers, who work with you and so on. You really need to be good at that. You can also try to assemble something on your own but often this does not produce good programs.The first thing that one has to be good at is, according to Esther, to be able to trace the problem, and she breaks that down for me, using the example of the lamp. She uses a problem I amlikely to have encountered to show me that her work is not so different. The technical skills do not appear as something detached from everyday life, but as something that can be understood by a layperson. She illustrates how methodology and problem-solving, which are seen as central skills, are put into practice. The second thing that is important for Esther is communication. She distances herself from people who are in cubby-holes and who do not interact with other people. Her description of a solitary person sitting alone in front of the PC seems to be in line with the common perception of hackers. For her it is important to be in touch with people, as otherwise the product is likely to be of low quality. At Redtech this might mean, for instance, producing code that no other person is able to read, where the structure of the program is not well thought through and it fits the programmers’ demands rather than those of the customers. It appears that if one works in a cubby-hole, one does not think about others needing to read the code, one programs only for one’s own sake and one forgets that a particular problem has to be solved. Hackers are portrayed as people who forget that their code is a way to communicate with others. The rejection of the notion of being an anti-social hacker leads directly to the social and emotional competence the ideal ICT worker is said to possess. Emotional and social skills are said to be central in customer and/or team interactions. Most people agreed that technical knowledge alone is not enough for an ideal ICT worker. One needs to able to sell this knowledge on the market, as Günther (32 years old, Redtech) stressed:

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Elisabeth: And which abilities does one need in this job, what is important for the ideal employee? Günther: HEHEHE. He (the ideal employee) does not exist. Er (-) I am convinced, well, maybe he exists after all. (-) I see that at Redtech services are the essential thing. That is how we make money and that is for me the contact to the customers, regardless of whether he asks stupid things from our perspective. Firstly, Günther claims that the ideal worker does not exist, but when thinking about it, it appears that he is able to say a bit more about the ideal worker and even admits that the ideal worker could exist. He defines the ideal worker as being service oriented, and able to do what the customer wants, even though one may not agree with the customer’s ideas. ICT work is constructed as essentially service work and therefore ICT workers have to please customers. It is interesting to note that in this extract, as well as in many others, the ideal worker and the customer are referred to in the masculine form, which is the generic form in German. Although the form is masculine and may indicate a masculine subtext (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998a, 1998b), people seemed to assume that this has no consequences for the ability to be the ideal worker. The importance of customer relations is also stressed in Oliver’s (37 years old, Bluetech) comment:

Oliver: Depending on the position (in the organization) what is also important, if you have a lot of customer contact, is what you can describe as the psychology of communication. That is very important at the moment. All the people who are in touch with the customer have to talk to the
customer....

Elisabeth: Do you mean that it is no longer the classical ‘hacker type’ person, who just sits in front of the machine?

Oliver: Well, it is not the programmer, who gets his objectives and then codes and codes until he topples down or the other who tests and tests until he topples down, or the hardware technician, who runs to the customer and changes disks and, well, the hardware technician can do a lot wrong. If he goes to the customer and makes him nervous and does not give the impression of being calm, like, ‘well, no problem for me, I take the disk and then leave’, but says ‘I never did that before’, then the customer gets nervous and he turns him away, even though he could have solved the problem.... In our service area it is important that we give the customer the feeling that we are there [for customers], that we can do everything, even though this is not possible.

Elisabeth: In the direction of customer management?

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Oliver: Exactly. That is fairly important and in this area women have certainly advantages because they do that sometimes intuitively better than men, who only focus on technology. This part of the job is very important. Oliver points to the psychology of communications, which is central for certain jobs at Bluetech. At first he seems to construct a classic image of the technician as someone with little need to interact with people, but again this changes in the next few sentences, where he concedes that a hardware technician has to be a good communicator to avoid scaring the customer. For Oliver, customer management is important, and he goes on to point out that women are ‘intuitively’ better at this than men. Although he talks about the ideal worker and customers in the masculine form, Oliver here is gendering the skill of relating to customers as something feminine. In doing so, he services the gender binary that men are better with technology, while women have strengths in relating to people. However, the explicit gendering of the ideal ICT worker was rarely used. In general, people talk about social, communicative and emotional skills as being important; but they do not talk about women or men being better at this when talking about the ideal worker. Thus, the ideal worker discourse appears to be gender neutral. Enacting the ideal As I have shown above, the conceptualization of the ideal ICT worker involves technical and social-emotional skills, which are often thought to be two distinguishable aspects. The question now becomes, who can enact those ideals, who claims these ideals, and who is thereby able to match the ideal most closely. In order to trace this process, it seems useful to look at how ICT workers describe their main strengths and weaknesses. In this respect most interviewees enacted one-subject positions: being good with people. Being good with people was enacted by referring to one’s own social skills, and also by saying that one is not too preoccupied with technology:

Elisabeth: How would you describe your personal strengths and weaknesses? Günther: (-) Er, (-) I think that dealing with (-) customers, and maybe not easy customers, that is what I would describe as my strength and I could use this (dealing with difficult customers) several times and for the better. And the interaction with people, colleagues and customers or anyone else. I like to observe people: if there are some people in a room, I like to do this. I am relatively good at this. Er, weaknesses (-) weakness rather in relation to informatics, persistence in solving problems in detail, that is not my
thing.

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Günther (32, Redtech) describes his strengths as lying in the more managerial aspects of work and less in its technical aspects. For him, ‘managerial aspects’ mean communicating with people, while ‘technology’ means to focus on technical details. Others have described their social skills by referring to themselves as ‘catalysts’, who catalyse team interactions (Danielle, 36, Redtech). Andrea (37, Redtech) expressed her social competence more in relation to working with the customer: Andrea: Ahm, a weakness (-) certainly that I am not one of these persons who have the greatest technical know-how, because I amnot a person, who, er, brings her job home and reads a lot there.... Well, I do that at work, but not at home, which means that I am not among the technically strongest people but in the good mid-field. And strengths would rather be in the areaof social competence. I like to talk with customers on the phone about his needs [inaudible]. Because I used to be an industrial clerk [feminine form] I know the business workflow and I have the feeling that I have a flair for understanding the customer. Andrea constructs herself as having a flair for the customer, and thus being able to understand the customer. This is a way to express emotional competence. Andrea does not see herself as the strongest person in the technology area, because she does not spend her private time reading new things about technology. In this extreme case formulation, it appears that being one of the technologically strongest people would involve reading many technology books in her spare time. Under these circumstances, the maintenance of technical knowledge does not appear attractive. Her self-described strengths lie in dealing with customers and as evidence she cites her experience as an industrial clerk. Although Günther’s and Andrea’s way of distancing themselves from technology is markedly different — Günther dislikes technical detail, while Andrea refers to the time needed to stay up to date — the function the distancing from technology fulfils is very similar, and worth further analysis. It is interesting that most people construct themselves as mainly socially competent, while presenting themselves as not too obsessed with technology. People in both companies strongly echo the widely used discourse that social and emotional skills are vitally important in today’s workplaces, particularly in technical workplaces (Erb, 1996; Faulkner, 2000; Henninger, 2001; Woodfield, 2000). It is possible that technical competence may not be stressed because everybody who is hired at Redtech and Bluetech is expected to have echnical competence. In addition, stressing technical competence could mean associating oneself too much with the hacker image and being too immersed in technical detail — and/or presenting oneself as reading technical material obsessively at home, which most people were eager to disavow. As social competence is so important in today’s world of work, people tended to construct themselves as socially competent while underplaying their

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Social competence seems to add value in this situation, as one is then closer to the ideal technology worker. Besides taking or rejecting certain subject positions in the interview, being an ideal worker is also enacted in everyday work situations. Social and technical skills are particularly enacted in team situations. Ideal worker competencies are reflected in the method used at Redtech to write software programs and through which the emotional and social competence needed for the job become visible. This method is called extreme programming (Beck, 1999a, 1999b) and entails writing software together as a team. In this collaborative programming, two people sit in front of a single computer and while one persons thinks and types the code, the other persons thinks more tactically and strategically. The idea is that two brains are better than one to produce good, that is bug-free and readable, software.7 Although programming itself is less often done in pairs at Redtech, for solving problems a version of extreme programming is adopted. I observed such an interaction between Marcel (aged 29, Redtech) and another Redtech worker. Marcel and the other worker had a problem and discussed it in one office. The other person wrote or modified the code while Marcel provided creative input. Various other people also stopped by to help with solving the problem. Two brains are here used to solve a software problem. The theory is that communication enables synergies that solve the problem more efficiently. Teamwork is used to enact the ideal ICT
worker, who tackles problems in collaboration with others. Another element of extreme programming is that one person reads the code written by another person, which is called a review. The reviewer pays attention to how clearly the code is written and identifies any bugs or faults to ensure that high quality code is produced. In a project I observed at Redtech, Danielle was dubbed ‘Miss Review’8 and people like Zacharias would visit Danielle in her office and they would sit together to read Zacharias’ code. I wondered why so many chose Danielle as a ‘review buddy’, and
a common answer was that she has done reviews several times, and that she was good at reading and helping others with their code. While her competence and the fact that she might simply be better at this task is a plausible explanation, it is also possible that gender plays an important role here. Being corrected by another person is laying oneself open to criticism, and one would be expected to select a person who appears supportive. One stereotype of women is that they are more empathetic and can comfort people. Gender is stressed in this situation through the gendered nickname, ‘Miss Review’, although other options like review buddy, which would be more gender neutral, could have been selected. It is possible that expectations about women’s assumed competencies such as empathy are enshrined in selecting Danielle as Miss Review, and also in that Danielle takes up this subject position as it confirms her status as a woman. Doing femininity as doing social competence is here an interplay between expectations, associations, and ways of self-presentation.

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In this section I have shown how people position themselves in relation to discourses about skills in ICT work and I now focus on how these discourses are also gendered. The gendering of ICT skills
There are few references to gender when people position themselves in relation to the ideal worker, and in most cases the subject positions appear gender neutral to the research participants. This opens the question to whether emotionality and social competence are gendered, and who benefits from the respective constructions. In a different part of my interviews I ask my interviewees if they think that their workplace is a masculine work environment. Most people interpret this question as a question about the scarcity of women in ICT professions, and then give me reasons why this may be the case. The common pattern of discourse is that there is no reason why women should not be in ICT employment. It is regretted that so few women work in ICTs, and the expression ‘it’s a pity’ dominates in this context. The regret is explained through women bringing a better social climate to work, because women were seen as more socially competent. For the purpose of this argument, I confine myself to just one illustrative example. Zacharias (aged 35, Redtech) talks here about how women change the atmosphere at work:

Zacharias: It makes certainly a difference, if you work in a men-only group or team or if women are there as well. That is more a social difference ... that people say it is somehow different.

Elisabeth: How it is somehow different?

Zacharias: I find it difficult to pin that down. Simply the atmosphere. Well, supposedly, women are the more social beings and could then, er (-) how should it put it, er (-) it has an influence (-) on the not so social beings. In this account Zacharias constructs women quite hesitantly, possibly so as to
not appear as sexist, as social beings, who may affect the behaviour of men at work. The construction of women as more socially competent is indeed a hegemonic one, but mainly in a context of why more women should work in ICTs, rather than in relation to the ideal ICT worker. It would be only a small step to transfer this knowledge about women’s social competence to the ideal worker, and as social competence is suddenly central to ICT work, one may wonder if women are not only the ideal managers (Fondas, 1997; Helgesen, 1990) but also the ideal ICT workers of the future. However, in talking about the ideal worker, gender rarely appears to be worth mentioning. One of the rare instances where gender and the ideal worker were connected in Oliver’s comments, discussed earlier. The skills needed for the ideal ICT worker generally appeared to be gender neutral.

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It seems contradictory that, on the one hand, women are said to possess the social and emotional competence needed for ICT work, yet, on the other hand, both men and women enact the subject position stressing social competence. Enacting social competence could mean doing femininity and constructing a feminine gender identity. One would expect it to be more difficult for men to enact a feminine subject position as this may conflict with constructing a traditional masculine gender identity, but this is not the case. By traditional masculinity, I mean the hegemonic form of masculinity prevalent in society, which determines who counts as a ‘real’ man (Connell, 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Edley, 2001; Edley and Wetherell, 1999; Wetherell and Edley, 1999). One reason why enacting social competence is not seen to conflict with masculine gender identity could be that the concept of what it means to be a man has changed, and men are now
requested to display emotional social competence (Edley and Wetherell, 1999; Gill et al., 2000, 2005). It may be that men can easily appropriate the important new skills in ICT work, as they have done before (Bradley, 1995; Cockburn, 1985). It may also be the case that men and women have to be flexible in terms of what gender behaviour they enact (Adkins, 2000, 2003). Another more discourse-immanent explanation would be that the social competence is not gendered feminine when talking about the ideal worker. Skills are made to appear as gender neutral in this context, allowing everyone to claim these skills without consequences for their own gender identity. If the subject position of ‘being socially competent’ is constructed as gender neutral in this discursive context, one could ask if there are different consequences for men and women when enacting this subject position. An illustration could be the example of Danielle as Miss Review. Danielle is dubbed Miss Review because she has a reputation for being good at reading other people’s code to improve it. She is constructed as helpful, unthreatening and empathic, skills which are often stereotyped as being more typical of women and indeed many people in this study referred to similar skills when they talked about why women are more socially competent. Through enacting these skills Danielle literally becomes Miss Review, and her gender9 is embedded in and confirmed through the title. It appears that Danielle is doing what appears to come almost naturally to women; through helping others and enacting this social competence she becomes a woman. There was no ‘Mr Review’ at Redtech. Marcel, for instance, displayed social competence in solving problems collaboratively but did not get a nickname for this. Marcel also displayed empathy and emotional competence in the situation and this is theoretically something that could be labelled doing femininity, and which could potentially be in conflict with a traditional masculine gender identity. However as emotionality is not in this context constructed as something feminine but as something that is necessary for the ideal ICT worker to have, everybody can enact the ideal.

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The gender dynamic in this situation works as follows: Danielle appears to become gendered as Miss Review through doing emotionality, she furnishes her femininity and is constructed as a woman; Marcel also displays emotionality, but in his case no gendered label is attached to the behaviour. It is almost as if through enacting emotionality, Danielle becomes a woman, and in women this emotionality seems to be normal and is not extraordinary. That social skills are often assumed in women but not in men goes hand in hand with what other researchers have found (Fletcher, 1999; Woodfield, 2000). Marcel, however, does enact emotionality but he appears to be closer to the supposedly gender-neutral ideal worker and is not gendered in the process. The situation is different in relation to technical competence. Technical competence is mainly seen as the basis for doing the job, but there are differences in how men and women are assumed to possess that technical competence. One gender association entails men being closer to technology than women (Faulkner, 2001; Wajcman, 1991). Women in technical occupations therefore challenge this gender association.While men are rewarded for showing feminine gender behaviour when they act as emotionally competent, women do not gain extra credit for performing technical competencies, since this forms the basis of the job. While the atypical skills women perform, here technical competence, do not have exchange value in this context. Emotional competence, a more atypical skill for men, does have exchange value. This situation is clearly paradoxical: women are said to be hired because they are assumed to bring embodied social competence to the ICT workplace, yet women are just seen as normal women as they enact social competence; while if men display social competence, this is treated as not gendered but just what
the ideal ICT worker has to do. It was fascinating to find again and again that these different forms of gendered skills were kept discursively separate in the interviews. On the one hand, women are constructed as bringing social and emotional competence to the ICT workplace, which ameliorates the functioning of these workplaces; on the other hand, emotional and social competencies are discussed as if they have nothing to do with gender. The use of these conflicting interpretative repertoires reflects general tendencies in society. It is often claimed that w live in gender-neutral times and sexism is a thing of the past (Benokraitis, 1997; Peel, 2001; Riley, 2002; Wetherell et al., 1987). This is supported through the claim that workplaces are gender neutral (Korvajärvi, 1998). At the same time, the discrimination of women is made impossible through stressing women’s assumed skills because these skills are good and ameliorate the ICT work environment. The implications of this are that ICT workplaces appear as open to women, and those skills associated with women as highly valued. One could assume that women are the new ideal ICT worker. Yet when looking at how the ideal worker was described, the same skills are referred to, but, generally remain unassociated with women, and described as gender neutral.

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Women's performances tended to be interpreted on the basis of gender, while men, as the norm, disappear in the neutrality of skills set out by talking about the ideal ICT worker. Through the different gendering of emotions, depending on the discursive context, it appears that everybody can be the ideal ICT worker, yet this gender-neutral ideal worker role seems to be fulfilled by men
rather than women.

Conclusion
The recent valuation of emotional and social competence at work, and its association with femininity, could suggest that even workplaces associated with rationality and masculinity are suddenly more emotional and potentially more feminine. In this article this reasoning is questioned by looking at how the gendering of emotional and social competencies changes with the discursive context in which it is deployed, and by studying what ICT workers see as important skills in their work context.While most people see social and technical skills as crucial for ICT work, most stress their own social and emotional competence. These skills are generally constructed as gender neutral. However, in other parts of the interviews, social and emotional competence was constructed as something women are good at. In looking at how some people enacted social competence it became clear that the interpretation of social and emotional competence in men tends to be based on ideal worker skills, while similar behaviour in women could much more easily be interpreted as being part of what is normal and natural for women.As the material for this research is clearly limited, further research is needed to explore the subtle mechanisms through which this gendering takes place. This article indicates that a gender dynamic in relation to skill attribution continues to exist, even in a gender egalitarian climate where much discursive work is done to construct men and women as equal in ICT work. ICT workplaces appear as transformed through the valuation of social skills, but one should not jump to the conclusion that this automatically means that women are the new ideal ICT workers. The discursive gendering of emotions helps us to understand how gender is reflexively incorporated in the rhetoric deployed to construct ICT work as gender egalitarian, but silenced in a work environment described as gender neutral.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of the article was presented at the 4th international interdisciplinary Gender, Work & Organization conference in June 2005 at Keele University, and at the 1st annual international conferenceWorkingWith

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Emotions in September 2005 in London. I would like to thank Rosalind Gill, Julia Nentwich, Stina Blix, Sarah Proctor-Thomson, Darren Nixon and the three anonymous reviewers of Gender, Work & Organization for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. I acknowledge the support I
received for this article from the Graduate College ‘Knowledge Society and Gender Relations’ at the University of Zurich, the German Educational Exchange Service and the Sociology Research Fund at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Notes
1. Although there are definitional differences in the concepts of emotional intelligence, soft skills, emotional labour and social competence, they refer to overlapping skills such as to the ability to manage one’s own and other people’s feelings, to be empathic and inclusive, to get on with people in interactions, to be a good communicator and to display empathy. Since these notions were generally not distinguished in the context of the research, I use them interchangeably and refer to these skills as emotional and social competence.
2. Although early flight attendants were men, flight attending was later constructed based on another feminine profession: nursing (Mills and Wilson, 2001).
3. The flexibility of the gendering of jobs varies also spatially as, for instance, in Asia more women work in higher level ICT jobs (Galpin, 2002).
4. This includes various ICT professions and not only high level ones.
5. For the transcription a simplified and modified version of the Jefferson system (Heritage, 1984) was used: (-) indicates a short notable pause, (0.9) an exactly timed
longer pause (here 9 seconds), [inaudible] is inaudible, [text] indicates a transcriber
clarification on unclear parts of tape or additional clarification such as gender of
German word, [...] material deliberately omitted and HEHE stands for laughter.
6. TAMS Analyser by Matthew Weinstein.
7. Extreme programming also entails working less obsessively than hackers (they work ‘only’ 40 hours per week) and it is also described by its founder Kent Beck as an emotional experience: ‘ “Extreme programming is an emotional experience,” he [Beck] maintains. “When you feel it, you understand.” Then he adds a typically cheeky metaphor: “Talking about XP and trying it are two different things — like reading The Joy of Sex versus losing your virginity.” ’(Baer, 2003). Extreme programming is portrayed in this literature as mainly an ultra-masculine endeavour
and this ‘cheeky’ example is another example thereof. In my research, however, such comments were not made.
8. The English phrase was used.
9. Her marital status also becomes visible through the title.

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