Official URL: https://www.ucdpress.ie/display.asp?isbn=978191082...

In this chapter we examine how informal education events, like gamejams, contribute to the gendered structure of the knowledge economy in Ireland. We identify how communication, temporal and spatial structure, hierarchies of knowledge and unpaid labour contribute to gendered knowledge hierarchies, and to gendered pathways into ICT related occupations. Game making and game playing events may reinforce a relationship between codified and abstract forms of knowledge, certain forms of masculinity, and computers, ultimately undermining the assumption that digital games provide an equal pathway into STEM for all. Even if the focus of these events is on learning technical skills, we would suggest that a range of ‘informal’ and ‘incidental’ social learning is taking place that may serve to reinforce wider patterns of social inequality. In what follows, we first place our work in the context of historical and feminist research into the gender/technology/knowledge relationship in production and consumption cultures. We then present our findings from research at two day-long gamejam events in Ireland in 2016 to identify who attends these events and the ways in which these events are gendered. Finally, we discuss how academics and civic society organisations have collaborated to organise inclusive female-friendly informal learning events.