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Tag: gender

  • Evaluating gender among minorities in relation to the CHIPS and Science Act

    Recently we produced three papers during a course on policy analysis, one of which I wrote about the American legislation The CHIPS and Science Act (the CHIPS is the acronym Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors, and divided into to parts, one on chips and one on science), introduced in August of 2022.

    The last two points in the fact sheet from The White House concerns the gap in gender and minorities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education)(bold text by me):

    • “… To ensure more people from all backgrounds and all regions and communities around the country, especially people from marginalized, under-served, and under-resourced communities, can benefit from and participate in STEM education and training opportunities, the CHIPS and Science Act authorizes new and expanded investments in STEM education and training from K-12 to community college, undergraduate and graduate education.”

    • “…including new initiatives to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions, and other academic institutions providing opportunities to historically-underserved students and communities, primarily through the National Science Foundation (NSF). […] The legislation also gives agencies and institutions the mission and the tools to combat sexual and gender-based harassment in the sciences, a demonstrated barrier to participation in STEM for too many Americans.“

    Furthermore, in the legislation itself, under Section 10321:

    • “The NSF shall issue undergraduate scholarships, postdoctoral awards, and other awards to address STEM workforce gaps, including for programs that recruit, retain, and advance students to a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline concurrent with a secondary school diploma.”

    A year later, The White House wrote in another fact sheet:

    • “At least 50 community colleges have already announced new or expanded semiconductor workforce programs.” 
    • “…student applications to full-time jobs posted by semiconductor companies were up 79% in 2022-2023.”

    Could these codified intentions actually mean something for STEM education and the semiconductor industry? Could the number of educations regarding semiconductors increase; the number of women (from minorities) enrolling in STEM education increase; and could the number of women graduating from STEM educations increase? Since this assignment was about evaluation/assessment, both formative and summative, I outlined a proposal on how to actually evaluate these efforts, this intervention in form of a very encompassing law, in which roughly $13 billion was directed towards “R&D and workforce development.”

    With statistics from the NSF, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Department of Energy and Department of Labour I would’ve designed a study to analyse whether the number of women actually increased. In addition to this I’d elaborated interviews, or the possibility for women to record or write a diary, about their experiences, why they chose to continue or stop studying. The study would’ve gathered statistics between 2017 and 2027, in part because graduation will take time when the effects of the legislation came into effect in 2023 at the earliest, and graduates will become a fact in 2025. Feedback from women could contribute to formative changes in the education or the direction of the legislation.

    Designing a study like this has been one of the best moments of the education so far. Partly due to being able to delve deeper into the factual legislation, partly because evaluations (however boring they might sound) can play a useful role in modern bureaucracy.

  • Reasons and responsibilites to protect personal data

    My essay is finished. The subject was how the Swedish government wrote about personal data in two strategies, namely the so-called Digitalization strategy and the National strategy for cyber security. Who is responsible for protecting personal data and what are the reasons to protect personal data? Is there a gender perspective present?

    Personal data is omnipresent and processed by companies, organizations, state authorities, the health care sector and municipalities. Many times for no reason at all or the collection and use concern personal data that should not be processed. Simultaneously, there’s plenty of stories how personal data is harvested or scraped by actors and there’s virtually no chance to know who holds personal data and where it is.

    Reading Swedish news can weekly tell how information and personal data is lost or abused. Personal data is collected on such a large scale, it’s impossible to protect it. Data brokers, governments, authorities, all are involved in this collection, processing and dissemination. What, then, does the Swedish government write about responsibilities and reasons to protect it?

    Why the gender perspective? The report Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex and Lies are Weaponized against Women Online was issued earlier 2021. One of the conclusions is that online gendered abuse and misinformation is a national security issue by being directed at women (in this case) systematically, resulting in less public participation from women in a democratic society. Much of the abuse is directed by actors from other countries as well. Another is how women’s personal data can be abused and weaponized against them, for instance spreading conspiracies about sex, national, sexual and gender identity.

    Does personal data relate to national security in the government texts, or more to individual security? Can the loss or abuse of personal data threaten or weaken national security?

    My main conclusions are:

    ·  the Swedish government perceives everyone as responsible for personal data, though the individual has the utmost responsibility for his/her/their personal data

    ·  the government is mainly focused on thwarting crimes like child pornography

    ·  the government doesn’t want to centralize processing of personal data

    ·  too strong a state can threaten personal data and individual security

    ·  there’s a sort of built-in contradiction when the government wants public data more accessible for the creation of services by companies (for instance)

  • Idea accepted

    After many days of straying like a lost dog around the different ideas, I settled on one idea. I managed to narrow it down, from the fields of computational propaganda, information warfare, privacy and surveillance capitalism, to the core of many of them: personal data. What does the Swedish government write about personal data and processing (of personal data)? How does the government write about personal data and security? Is it my responsibility to keep personal data safe and secure, is it the government’s responsibility? And do they apply a gender perspective? What is the perspective on information security?

    May means a lot of writing on this issue. Thus the list of interesting and intriguing books grows longer and longer still. In summer I hope I’ll manage to write a little about some of them.