Gender Designs IT

Construction and Deconstruction of Information Society Technology

I Introduction Gender Research and IT Construction: Concepts for a Challenging Partnership 9 Gender Research and IT Construction: Concepts for a Challenging Partnership Susanne Maass, Els Rommes, Carola Schirmer, Isabel Zorn “We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, […] declare our common - sire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share infor- tion and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ” This Declaration of Principles for Information Society was made during the UN 1 World Summit of the Information Society in Geneva 2003 . Current transformations towards the Information Society are affecting p- fessional and private lives, individual and societal interactions, economic and educational directions and technological developments. Or, to put it the other way around: New technologies and in particular information and communication technologies offer a multitude of opportunities for transformations in the m- tioned (and many more) fields. To emphasize this close connection the EU used th the term ‘Information Society Technology’ (IST) in their 6 Framework and put 2 forth the "IST Vision: anywhere anytime natural access to IST services for all" .