“Oh yes! over-preparing for meetings is my jam :)”
The Gendered Experiences of System Administrators
Read the full ACM CSCW article here [1]. Learn about the history of gender in system administration work, and the role of gender and care in the work of system administrators today.
System and network administration is currently a men-dominated profession. Historically, however, this has not always been the case. Women, e.g. Melba Roy Mouton who led the NASA mathematicians group called “computers” and was the Head Computer Programmer at the Goddard Space Flight Centre, were among the very first programmers. However, with the rising importance of computing over time, more men entered this profession and the perception around building and operating systems changed. In other words, this area of work was taken over and the pioneers were overlooked when new opportunities arose.
In addition to the history of gender in the origins of system administration, the gendered view of tasks also impacts this work. For instance, system administration work entails care work. Care work refers to work that demands one’s dedication, commitment and constant availability. Such work is usually not considered as part of formal work, and is often feminized and invisibilized. In the context of system administration, care work shows up in the form of work and efforts required to ensure continuous system operations and meeting the needs of systems’ users. However, these behind-the-scenes efforts often remain unseen and underappreciated.
In our study, we explore the gendered aspects of system administration work by studying the role of gender (both in terms of the participants’ gender and the gendering of tasks) and the ways in which care shows up (or doesn’t) in the men-dominated field of system administration. We conducted six focus groups with 16 system administrators who are not cis men located in seven countries (Germany, United States, Austria, France, Belgium, India, Canada). Each focus group revolved around three main topics: the easy aspects of work, the difficult aspects of work and ways of overcoming difficulties at work.
Overall, we identify and highlight the so-far understudied care work and emotional labor aspects, which are an instrumental part of sysadmins’ work. We also highlight the interaction of one’s (non-cis man) gender identity in the workplace in ways such as:
• the need to be excellent and go above and beyond in system administration tasks.
• its compounding effect on the invisibilization and undervaluation of system administration work.
• the negative impact on the career advancement of those working in inclusive work environments due to hostile non-inclusive workplaces elsewhere.
Care Work in System Administration
Sysadmins are committed to ensuring continuous system operations, and supporting users and colleagues. They fulfil several job roles and interact with numerous stakeholders. While some participants found it easy to communicate with users, many found it difficult to interact with (cis) men because “they still feel put out when they need to be inclusive” (P2) and they can be “demeaning” (P12), “condescending or even belittling” (P14). Working in a tech culture (often synonymous with a culture of masculinity [2] and hierarchy [3]) can be difficult and also prevent sysadmins “from doing the essential work necessary to keep things running” (P5).
Empathy and communication
Participants brought up empathy and communication skills as being important to performing support tasks. But how does the ability to empathize relates to one’s identity? Participants attribute this to traditional gender constructs, e.g., “maybe because I’m a woman and perceived more as caring” (P15) or to the gendered experience of being on “the receiving end of [discrimination]… So I notice it much more when it is done to others as well. I’ve stepped in many times also” (P14). In addition, learning social skills is also a way of coping — by going the extra mile — in a men-dominated field so as to not be overlooked as a professional.
Community
Community support in the workplace is another way care was brought up in our conversations. This takes the form of a good workplace atmosphere where there is mutual trust in the co-workers, e.g. “in terms of identity. Like, my team knows I’m trans*, they’re all queer, that helps a lot” (P5). Community support is influenced by workplace dynamics where, e.g. “personal comes first always” (P4) and where “it doesn’t feel very hierarchical” (P8). Such communities can stand and persevere in the face of harmful and regressive messaging from the management. Sadly, we also find that these dynamics are far from the norm.
Gender in System Administration
Men-dominated workplaces create challenges for people who are not cis men and require people from other genders to perform higher than men to be succeed. For e.g. by having “to go above and beyond what my male colleagues do just to get a spot on the team” (P14). Participants reported a significant pressure to be at the top of their game so as not to lose credibility. Their expertise is constantly under scrutiny and they have to do extra work to establish professional expertise among colleagues. Additionally, they might not be perceived as breadwinners and hence, not considered as suitable as men to be salaried employees.
We found that sysadmins’ behind-the-scenes operations-critical work often goes unseen. The invisibilization and unawareness leads to underestimation and underappreciation of the work that sysadmins do, fostering workplaces that lack care. We find that the participants’ gender compounds these effects as they also face invisibility due to their gender, an effect previously documented in the context of engineering workplaces [4]. We highlight the phenomenon of double invisibility experienced by sysadmins belonging to excluded genders in the workplace.
Participants coped with these inequalities by a) accepting the status quo and working around it, e.g. by anticipating “being underestimated” in meetings (P15) and supporting other women (P9), b) disrupting the status quo by speaking up in the face of discrimination (P12) and c) by removing oneself from hostile environments, e.g. by changing teams (P2) or jobs (P11). However, coping strategies constitute extra tasks which means that sysadmins’ work can take longer to complete. Decreased motivation (P1, P14), “super” exhaustion (P5) and feelings of burnout (P16, P14) are examples of negative health effects that arose as a result of having to endure an inequitable workplace.
Moving towards an inclusive workplace
Participants recommend fostering a supportive workplace that is inclusive, consists of people from diverse backgrounds and where there is mutual understanding, trust, respect, openness and transparency. They suggest defining formal processes for equity in the form of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) practices and HR policies that uphold equity and protect from discrimination and following these policies by setting tangible goals and metrics to measure progress.
Learning from participants’ experiences, we recommend more care for care work so as to disrupt (and possibly reverse) the self-reinforcing circle of uncaring (see Figure 1 below). Caring for care work means to recognize the vital contribution of sysadmins in forming the bedrock of modern digital society, and visibilize and value this work. It also means to not put this responsibility on sysadmins themselves.
Participants in our study are dealing with gender inauthenticity [1] — being perceived as gender inauthentic in their job role — and double invisibility — due to the nature of the job and their gender, remaining especially invisible as long as they do an excellent job. Since our participants feel pressure to excel just to be accepted, their work remains doubly invisible. The visibility that they do receive is often due to their gender or when something breaks. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge these specific phenomena that impact sysadmins from excluded genders in men-dominated workplaces to find ways to create inclusive workplaces for all.
Finally, we find that feminist work environments are important not only for social justice but are also a pre-requisite for enabling secure system operations because a safe and equitable workplace in which people can be themselves contributes to computer security and safety in organizations.
Works Cited
[1] M. Kaur, H. S. Ramulu, Y. Acar and T. Fiebig, “ “Oh yes! over-preparing for meetings is my jam :)”: The Gendered Experiences of System Administrators,” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 7, no. CSCW1, pp. 1–38, 2023.
[2] J. Wajcman, “From women and technology to gendered technoscience,” Information, Communication & Society, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 287–298, 2007.
[3] G. Moane, “Hierarchical Systems: Patriarchy and Colonialism,” in Gender and Colonialism, Springer, pp. 24–54, 1999.
[4] W. Faulkner, “Doing gender in engineering workplace cultures. II. Gender in/authenticity and the in/visibility paradox.,” Engineering Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 169–189, 2009.
