1 Questioning Gender in E - learning and its Relation to Computer

Introduction The domain of Informatics is a world of actors in which ICT-representations are designed and used, presented and interpreted. ICT-(re)presentations are present in this world not only in the form of hardware or software but also as methods and theories used for designing and making ICT-products, are representations within this world, too. The Informatics discipline (Computer Sciences) is a part of, and an actor in a world of interaction in which ICTpresentations are present and used in the interaction itself: between people, between machines and between people and machine. E-learning created an interaction world in which ICTrepresentations are designed and used. In the discipline Informatics only little attention is given to gender aspects. The dominant attitude is that its products and its acting are, or should be, gender-neutral. Gender is seen as "outside" the discipline. Gender itself is recognised just as sets of fixed characteristics belonging to two generalised types of human being. "Female" qualities are seen as only useful in the interaction between professionals and users. Questioning gender in Computer Science in the past was mostly reduced to asking what the position of women in Computer Science was, or to searching for the causes why relatively few women are professional ICT-designers.