Facing Gender Disparity in “Democratizing” DIYbio Spaces
By Lorena Lyon
Facing gender disparity in “democratizing” DIYbio spaces Lorena Lyon On the first floor of 339 Summer St, Somerville, MA, is a community bike shop, where members of the surrounding residential neighborhood come for do-it-yourself (DIY) bike repairs. On the second floor is a community DIY biology laboratory.
BosLab is a community biology lab that houses a collection of lab machines one might expect to find in a lab at Harvard or MIT. Here, lab members can sequence local microbiomes, explore aging pathways in bacteria, and engineer yeast to produce new fragrances and flavors. It is part of the “DIYbio” movement, an unofficial social movement of “biohackers” who seek to expand the practice of biology outside of traditional institutional spaces like universities and biotech companies. As a “DIY” movement, the ethos of DIYbio is to make bioengineering more egalitarian and accessible. By assuming that DIY is inherently democratic, however, the movement may cloud its own issues of diversity.
The DIYbio movement began in 2008 as a collective of biohacking enthusiasts and academic researchers, including professors at Harvard and MIT, who met to discuss the future of biohacking and open source science. One of the members, Mac Cowell, began “DIYbio.org,” a website to support the growing DIYbio community. He also founded Bosslab, the Boston Open Source Science Lab, which would later become “BosLab” under its current leadership. Bosslab was originally established for biotechnology professionals from Kendall Square and Boston to have a space to tinker in. Today, BosLab has expanded its goals to become an educational community center and “democratize” biology.
The fundamental belief underlying DIYbio is that biological engineering should be accessible to everyone, not just academic researchers or biotech professionals. This goal, however, may not be fully reflected in practice. During an open house, it is hard to miss a certain demographic disparity at Boslab: the members are primarily men. The BosLab gender difference is apparent even when looking at the Boslab website; out of the 9 main organizers, only two are women. The issue has not gone unnoticed; Angela Kaczmarczyk, one of the 9 main organizers [1] and also the president of BosLab, observes, “It’s primarily men who come to our events, and most of our members are males.” She adds, “as a female running the space, I would like to see more women getting involved.”
Kaczmarczyk and others rationalize the lab’s predominantly male membership by pointing to pre-existing gender imbalances in engineering fields, particularly computer science and biomedical engineering, that make up the backgrounds of many of BosLab’s members. Statistics on computing degrees seems to back this up. In the Computing Research Association’s 2010-2011 survey, women received 29.5% of master’s degrees, and just 19.8% of doctoral degrees relating to computing. However, biomedical engineering exhibits less of a gender gap: 2 in 2011, women made up 39.2% of master’s biomedical engineering degrees, and 36.7% of doctoral biomedical engineering degrees. Gender gaps may exist in computing and biomedical [3] engineering, but the disparity is not large enough to be the sole explanation for BosLab’s gender imbalance.
Biohacking is not the only hacking community with gender disparities. The electronic hardware hacking community also faces low female participation. In response to male-dominated hackerspaces, women in the hardware hacking community have created their own hackerspaces. Mz* Balthazar’s Laboratory is a “feminist hackerspace,” intended for “people who have traditionally been excluded from or have felt unsafe in spaces where science is taught, or technology is being used.” Stefanie Wuschitz, an artist and researcher, founded Mz* Balthazar’s [4] Laboratory after finding herself isolated in hardware hacking workshops.
Electronic hardware hackerspaces first attracted Wuschitz for their cultivation of curiosity and creativity. However, when participating in hacking workshops, she found herself isolated as one of the only women in the room. Like Angela Kaczmarczyk, she wondered “why most participants at workshops were male” and what was keeping women from entering. She [5] [6] identifies an “invisible censorship” that keeps women from participating, which manifests in cultural differences between male and female spaces. She described the mostly-male 7 hackerspaces as “being far from home” and feeling unfamiliar with the way male hackers [8] related to each other.
While at Boslab, I ask Angela if the lab has come under the influence of “bro” culture that tech startups have been portrayed as promoting. She responds with an affirming laugh, and goes on to clarify “but everyone is really nice here even if it gets bro-y at times. Because we’re all science nerds, we love talking about science and geeking out. [...] there’s a lot of respect here.” Her response parallels Wuschitz’s experience. These predominantly male spaces do not seek to be inaccessible to underrepresented groups; in fact, they perceive themselves as highly open and inclusive, especially due to their emphasis on collaboration and knowledge-sharing. A [9] male organizer at BosLab describes the community as “more liberal here [than academia]. A lot of people who come here would be defined as freaks in their industry. [...] There is very little sexism or intolerance to gender, or sexual orientation, or religion.” Still, despite their best intentions and desire to “democratize biology,” the predominantly male and admittedly “bro-y” environment of BosLab may be enough to deter potential female members.
To change perceptions around gender and technology, and to involve more women in hacking, Wuschitz founded women- and trans-only hacking groups, which she found especially empowering because they allowed their members to transition from passive consumers to active producers of technology. While discussing the future of Boslab, it is clear that BosLab organizers hope that their space will foster a similar empowerment of their members: “The idea of this place is eventually to grow big enough that anyone with an idea in molecular or synthetic biology can come and try it in a safe environment and run as far as they want and drop it at any moment and continue with their life.” If BosLab can diversify their membership as they grow, then they will be one step closer to achieving their goal of democratizing biotechnology.
1“About.” Accessed May 5, 2017. boslab.org/about
2 Zweben, Stuart. Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends: From the 2010-2011 CRA Taulbee Survey. Computing Research Association, 2012.
3 Brian L. Yoder, Engineering By the Numbers (2011), American Society for Engineering Education, 2012.
4“About.” Accessed May 5, 2017. mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/about/
5 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Women artists in the world of open-source technologies” presentation at TEDxBratislava, 1:45.
6 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Access Denied: DI_Yourself: Stefanie Wuschitz (at) about international hacker spaces” presentation at Transmediale Berlin, 5:35.
7 Ibid, 5:29.
8 Ibid, 5:48.
9 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Women artists in the world of open-source technologies” presentation at TEDxBratislava.
Facing gender disparity in “democratizing” DIYbio spaces Lorena Lyon On the first floor of 339 Summer St, Somerville, MA, is a community bike shop, where members of the surrounding residential neighborhood come for do-it-yourself (DIY) bike repairs. On the second floor is a community DIY biology laboratory.
BosLab is a community biology lab that houses a collection of lab machines one might expect to find in a lab at Harvard or MIT. Here, lab members can sequence local microbiomes, explore aging pathways in bacteria, and engineer yeast to produce new fragrances and flavors. It is part of the “DIYbio” movement, an unofficial social movement of “biohackers” who seek to expand the practice of biology outside of traditional institutional spaces like universities and biotech companies. As a “DIY” movement, the ethos of DIYbio is to make bioengineering more egalitarian and accessible. By assuming that DIY is inherently democratic, however, the movement may cloud its own issues of diversity.
The DIYbio movement began in 2008 as a collective of biohacking enthusiasts and academic researchers, including professors at Harvard and MIT, who met to discuss the future of biohacking and open source science. One of the members, Mac Cowell, began “DIYbio.org,” a website to support the growing DIYbio community. He also founded Bosslab, the Boston Open Source Science Lab, which would later become “BosLab” under its current leadership. Bosslab was originally established for biotechnology professionals from Kendall Square and Boston to have a space to tinker in. Today, BosLab has expanded its goals to become an educational community center and “democratize” biology.
The fundamental belief underlying DIYbio is that biological engineering should be accessible to everyone, not just academic researchers or biotech professionals. This goal, however, may not be fully reflected in practice. During an open house, it is hard to miss a certain demographic disparity at Boslab: the members are primarily men. The BosLab gender difference is apparent even when looking at the Boslab website; out of the 9 main organizers, only two are women. The issue has not gone unnoticed; Angela Kaczmarczyk, one of the 9 main organizers [1] and also the president of BosLab, observes, “It’s primarily men who come to our events, and most of our members are males.” She adds, “as a female running the space, I would like to see more women getting involved.”
Kaczmarczyk and others rationalize the lab’s predominantly male membership by pointing to pre-existing gender imbalances in engineering fields, particularly computer science and biomedical engineering, that make up the backgrounds of many of BosLab’s members. Statistics on computing degrees seems to back this up. In the Computing Research Association’s 2010-2011 survey, women received 29.5% of master’s degrees, and just 19.8% of doctoral degrees relating to computing. However, biomedical engineering exhibits less of a gender gap: 2 in 2011, women made up 39.2% of master’s biomedical engineering degrees, and 36.7% of doctoral biomedical engineering degrees. Gender gaps may exist in computing and biomedical [3] engineering, but the disparity is not large enough to be the sole explanation for BosLab’s gender imbalance.
Biohacking is not the only hacking community with gender disparities. The electronic hardware hacking community also faces low female participation. In response to male-dominated hackerspaces, women in the hardware hacking community have created their own hackerspaces. Mz* Balthazar’s Laboratory is a “feminist hackerspace,” intended for “people who have traditionally been excluded from or have felt unsafe in spaces where science is taught, or technology is being used.” Stefanie Wuschitz, an artist and researcher, founded Mz* Balthazar’s [4] Laboratory after finding herself isolated in hardware hacking workshops.
Electronic hardware hackerspaces first attracted Wuschitz for their cultivation of curiosity and creativity. However, when participating in hacking workshops, she found herself isolated as one of the only women in the room. Like Angela Kaczmarczyk, she wondered “why most participants at workshops were male” and what was keeping women from entering. She [5] [6] identifies an “invisible censorship” that keeps women from participating, which manifests in cultural differences between male and female spaces. She described the mostly-male 7 hackerspaces as “being far from home” and feeling unfamiliar with the way male hackers [8] related to each other.
While at Boslab, I ask Angela if the lab has come under the influence of “bro” culture that tech startups have been portrayed as promoting. She responds with an affirming laugh, and goes on to clarify “but everyone is really nice here even if it gets bro-y at times. Because we’re all science nerds, we love talking about science and geeking out. [...] there’s a lot of respect here.” Her response parallels Wuschitz’s experience. These predominantly male spaces do not seek to be inaccessible to underrepresented groups; in fact, they perceive themselves as highly open and inclusive, especially due to their emphasis on collaboration and knowledge-sharing. A [9] male organizer at BosLab describes the community as “more liberal here [than academia]. A lot of people who come here would be defined as freaks in their industry. [...] There is very little sexism or intolerance to gender, or sexual orientation, or religion.” Still, despite their best intentions and desire to “democratize biology,” the predominantly male and admittedly “bro-y” environment of BosLab may be enough to deter potential female members.
To change perceptions around gender and technology, and to involve more women in hacking, Wuschitz founded women- and trans-only hacking groups, which she found especially empowering because they allowed their members to transition from passive consumers to active producers of technology. While discussing the future of Boslab, it is clear that BosLab organizers hope that their space will foster a similar empowerment of their members: “The idea of this place is eventually to grow big enough that anyone with an idea in molecular or synthetic biology can come and try it in a safe environment and run as far as they want and drop it at any moment and continue with their life.” If BosLab can diversify their membership as they grow, then they will be one step closer to achieving their goal of democratizing biotechnology.
1“About.” Accessed May 5, 2017. boslab.org/about
2 Zweben, Stuart. Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends: From the 2010-2011 CRA Taulbee Survey. Computing Research Association, 2012.
3 Brian L. Yoder, Engineering By the Numbers (2011), American Society for Engineering Education, 2012.
4“About.” Accessed May 5, 2017. mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/about/
5 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Women artists in the world of open-source technologies” presentation at TEDxBratislava, 1:45.
6 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Access Denied: DI_Yourself: Stefanie Wuschitz (at) about international hacker spaces” presentation at Transmediale Berlin, 5:35.
7 Ibid, 5:29.
8 Ibid, 5:48.
9 Stefanie Wuschitz, “Women artists in the world of open-source technologies” presentation at TEDxBratislava.
