"You're not smart enough for it. You can't do it anyway." - Experiences and Coping Strategies of Female System Administrators

Bumiller F, Eichenmüller C, Benenson Z (2023)


Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2023

Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery

Conference Proceedings Title: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Event location: Hamburg, DEU

ISBN: 9781450394222

DOI: 10.1145/3544549.3585648

Abstract

The profession of system administration is currently very male-dominated. This is also reflected in research on system administrators which largely relies on male-dominated samples as well. We conducted and analyzed 8 interviews with female system administrators working in Germany and investigated the experiences they encounter in their professional and private environments. Our findings show that female system administrators make negative as well as positive gender-specific experiences. To deal with the negative experiences the female system administrators have developed certain coping strategies. These include adapting to their male-dominated environment in terms of language and dress choices, confronting misbehaving colleagues or clients and even exploiting existing gender stereotypes to their advantage. Furthermore, our results highlight the huge impact that both professional and personal environment can have on female system administrators.

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How to cite

APA:

Bumiller, F., Eichenmüller, C., & Benenson, Z. (2023). "You're not smart enough for it. You can't do it anyway." - Experiences and Coping Strategies of Female System Administrators. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings. Hamburg, DEU: Association for Computing Machinery.

MLA:

Bumiller, Franziska, Christian Eichenmüller, and Zinaida Benenson. ""You're not smart enough for it. You can't do it anyway." - Experiences and Coping Strategies of Female System Administrators." Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2023, Hamburg, DEU Association for Computing Machinery, 2023.

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