The main area of focus of the conference will be various dimensions of gender inequality within the hi-tech industries, where women remain underrepresented and often face discrimination and harassment. Placing the discussion at large into the context of the transformations of labour and changing forms of employment in a digital society, we aim to examine also the role of women and the gendered division of labour in other sectors and domains such as intellectual work or creative labour, the service economy or the labour of care. All of these forms of immaterial labour that are often undervalued and underpaid are going through transformations too under the impact of new technologies.
Thus, we invite scholars from different disciplines to submit conference proposals on the issues, related to gender aspects of “immaterial labour”, “affective labour”, “reproductive labour”, and precarity with a focus on the IT sphere through the feminist perspective.
We are particularly interested in discussing the practices and experiences of researchers who work with East European and ex-Soviet contexts. Many countries from this region for decades have been seen as the suppliers of the cheap labour force in the IT outsourcing and services sector, and these days they are facing serious challenges because of the political turbulences, the war in Ukraine, and mass migration.
We welcome abstracts that engage with the topics and questions addressed below:
- gender inequality in hi-tech industries
- the intersection of gender, class, and ethnicity inequalities in the high-tech sector
- the technologies of gender and the gender of technologies: how education influences professional choices of women in regards to the IT sphere
- service economy, care work, and affective labour in a digital age
- feminist approaches to the analysis of immaterial and invisible labour in a digital society
- women’s intellectual and creative work in the age of precarious labour
- gender aspects of the high-skilled migration in times of political crises and humanitarian catastrophes.
The conference is organized by the Center for Gender Studies at the European Humanities University, in the framework of Women in Tech project.
The Women in Tech program is an infrastructural educational and research project aimed at supporting women in the IT field, stimulating research at the intersection of technology and feminism, and promoting gender equality in the field of high technologies. The project was launched by the EHU Center for Gender Studies and is funded by the European Union.
Submission of abstracts:
To participate in the сonference, please, submit your proposal via wint.conference2023@gmail.com and put “Gender and Im/Material Labour” in the subject of the email. The proposal must include a title, an abstract (300 words), and a short bio (max. 150 words) with contact details.
Dates and deadlines:
Deadline for submission of abstracts – March 30th, 2023.
Authors of abstracts will be notified about selection by April 10th, 2023.
Conference registration:
There will be no conference fees. However, the participants are expected to cover their expenses for travel and accommodation in Vilnius. The organizers can provide financial support for travel to and from Vilnius (up to 200 Euro) and offer hotel accommodation in Vilnius for the participants from Belarus, Ukraine, and other countries of the East-European region.
Conference language: English
Conference format:
Time framework – 30 minutes for each participant (presentation and discussion). Participation/presentation online (Zoom) is also possible (please, inform the organizers of the format of your participation in advance – preferably, when you submit your proposal, but in any case no later than one week before the conference).
Conference venue:
European Humanities University, Savičiaus g. 17, Vilnius, Lithuania
Publication of conference proceedings:
Selected papers will be published in a thematic volume of the Topos: the journal for philosophy and cultural studies (indexed in SCOPUS). Therefore, we ask authors of abstracts during the application process to indicate whether they will agree to work out their presentations into full-fledged articles.
Conference Organizing Committee:
- Elena Gapova (University of Western Michigan, USA)
- Terese Anving (Lund University, Sweden)
- Antonina Stebur (Women in Tech program, EHU, Universität der Künste Berlin)
- Almira Ousmanova (European Humanities University, Lithuania)