"Making a Way Out of No Way": Women's Making Practices in a Public Library Makerspace

• In Event: 18.045 - Science Capital => STEM Capitxl: Practicing Theory in a Science Museum Youth Informal Learning Program

Abstract

Makerspaces are shared workspaces for creating tangible objects, exploring ideas, and developing skills (Sheridan et al., 2014). Although makerspaces are touted as forces for democratizing digital fabrication (Blikstein, 2013), women remain marginalized in the maker movement (Bean, Farmer, & Kerr, 2015; Intel, 2014).

Public library makerspaces may be well-positioned to engage women: the majority of U.S. women of all races and ethnicities visit public libraries (Horrigan, 2016), library makerspaces aim to foster broad community access (Halverson, Lakind, & Willett, 2017), and community members perceive libraries as resources for technology learning (Horrigan, 2016). This poster seeks to inform the design of makerspaces that attend to gender equity by exploring the experiences of women in a public library makerspace in a majority African American, Rust Belt city.

Drawing on Calabrese Barton, Tan, and Greenberg (2017)’s conceptualization of equitably consequential making, this poster asks (1) In what ways do women leverage the makerspace to engage in personally meaningful and consequential making? and (2) How do the makerspace’s sociomaterial resources support and/or constrain women’s learning and engagement? Using a case study design (Stake, 1995) guided by third-generation activity theory (Engeström, 1987, 1999), the makerspace is framed as an interactive activity system and participants as purposeful agents moving across multiple contexts. Data are drawn from interviews with six African American and three White women engaged in sustained making, supplemented by non-participant observations and interviews with makerspace staff.

Findings illuminate respondents’ integration of digital technologies into existing creative practices, pushing boundaries of what counts as making and STEM and challenging gendered distinctions between crafting and technology practices (Buchholz, Shively, Peppler, & Wohlwend, 2014; Calabrese Barton et al., 2017).

In a context of limited employment opportunities, respondents leveraged making to support economic survival and thriving through entrepreneurship and cost-saving practices: “Making a way out of no way.”

I can actually make money off things like this. And my little cousins...they can look up and…be like, "She did it. She made it out. The odds were against her, but she still made it out.”

Respondents also engaged in making as a means of personal renewal and resilience:

I'm not thinking about the outside world. I'm not thinking about stress. I'm thinking about, “How do I make that curve go the way I want it to go?”

The public library provided respondents’ only access to digital design and fabrication. To explore these technologies, respondents orchestrated learning pathways shaped by personal preferences and makerspace affordances and constraints (Azevedo, 2011). One unique affordance was the extensive just-in-time instruction provided by staff, an alternative to the “extreme autodidacticism” of hacker-inspired makerspaces and the workshop-style instruction of many makerspaces in informal learning institutions (Blikstein & Worsley, 2016). The makerspace’s intentional inclusivity gave rise to a key tension, as it required respondents to navigate conflicting preferences and values within the space.

These findings contribute to our understanding of African American and White women’s making-related practices and learning pathways and have implications for the design of makerspaces that foster equitable and consequential learning and engagement.

Author

• Rebecca M Teasdale, University of Illinois at Chicago