Research Paper on:
Gender Bias and IT Design

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
low number of women that are in IT education setting role models for the female students (Haynie, 2004). This may be the cause that leads to fewer females entering the  IT design or engineering professions. Social pressures have also seen the use of IT more dominated and ultised by males, which may also lead to a great number of developers  being male. When we look at the article Oudshoorn (et al, 2004) they outline the use of the I -methodology in the development of DDS. Where software is designed  there is a general agreement that the end user has to be considered as they are the people who will be using the final product. If they cannot use it  then the design has failed. The approach in many cases has been that of a design for all, so that those who have little experience with computers, the computer illiterate,  may be catered for as well as those who are very competent. A key development stage is the need to identify the user group (Braude, 2003). In the case supplied  by the student there is a starting pit to design allowing for the use of the DS by a range of users including illiterates, but the emphasis shift to what  it terms the I-methodology. The I-methodology was able to take the inherent perception of the idea of the self as the main  perspective and make the assumption that the users of the system would have a similar interest in IT and the internet as the designers themselves did (Oudshoorn et al, 2004).  This firmly placed the designers in part of the target group they were designing for as they obviously had that interest. With