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    Candace Nast

    MA History grad, BA Women's Studies & Applied IT. Currently historian by day, web developer by night. Applying to History Ph.D. programs with eyes open wide on the job market.

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    DH Barriers to Entry

    Thursday, March 18th, 2010 | Candace Nast

    Gender matters when it comes to the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) pipeline. Digital humanities has been offered up as a second pipeline for women who have humanities backgrounds but are new to coding. What can we do to support these women and others who are coming to the digital humanities without Computer Science backgrounds?

    Some of the other kinds of questions I’d like to consider:

    Are there barriers to entry that are unique to the digital humanities?

    When easy/easier things like html are not considered “real” coding, does this area risk becoming a pink ghetto while “real” programming is left to men?

    Do we rank some kinds of DH over others, creating a hierarchy of geek cred depending on what kind of tools a person uses?

    How can we encourage people who’d like to work in the digital humanities?

    What are some simple things we can do to not be barriers?

    What bigger things need to happen to increase women’s participation in DH?

    Some good places to start: