Crossing The Threshold - For Publication - DV

Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for
Women at the Intersectional Margins
SONALI HEDDITCH, The University of Queensland, Australia

DHAVAL VYAS, The University of Queensland, Australia 1
In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women
of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month
long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings
present barriers and opportunities around access of under-resourced women of colour into makerspaces. We
present these findings through four themes: first impressions and visual representations; dimensions of the
enabling environment; role of community partnerships; and intersectional identities of women. We conclude
by discussing three contributions this paper makes to the HCI and CSCW literature, with supporting lessons
and recommendations so that makerspaces no longer encode the involvement of only certain types of users
(predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of women at the intersectional
margins. If makerspaces can facilitate an enabling environment appropriate to be inclusive of women who
face intersecting oppressions, the benefits of the maker movement can expand substantially.
CCS Concepts: • Computer human interaction → Makerspaces
Additional Key Words and Phrases: ACM proceedings, Makerspaces, Women, Intersectionality,
Refugees
ACM Reference format:
Sonali Hedditch and Dhaval Vyas. 2023. Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for Women at
the Intersectional Margins. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact, 7, CSCW1, Article 123 (April 2023), 40 pages,
https://doi.org/10.1145/3579599
1 INTRODUCTION
Makerspaces are sites for learning, using the traditional and digital tools and equipment supplied
by the makerspace to make something, learning as you go [17,33,36,73,75]. Making has been
shown, in the CSCW community, to provide multiple benefits to individuals who engage in it,
such as improved technological skills [1,14,18,23,51] but also benefits to confidence and well-being
[17,78]. In community settings, the values of democratic participation and low barriers to entry
are core tenants of makerspaces [3,63,70,71,79]. However, there has been an emerging body of
work questioning makerspace inclusivity for novices [21,22,49,51] and people of diverse
backgrounds [5,36,64]. Recent research examines makerspaces established for particular
This work is supported by the Australian Research Council’s DECRA grant DE0180100687.
123
Author’s addresses: S. Hedditch, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, 4072 QLD Australia s.hedditch@uq.edu.au. D.
Vyas, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, 4072 QLD Australia. d.vyas@uq.edu.au.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee
provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and
the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to
lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
2573-0142/2023/April - 123 $15.00
© Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3579599
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 7, No. CSCW1, Article 123, Publication date: April 2023.
123:2 Sonali Hedditch and Dhaval Vyas
demographics who traditionally have limited access to formal and informal learning
environments, such as people from a low socio-economic status (SES) background [71,79],
refugees [20,24], as well as in developing country [2,23,30,39] and humanitarian contexts [64].
Further, over the last decade, HCI scholars have also researched the dynamics of feminist
hackerspaces across North America and Europe [25,26,28,57], as well as how female makers
persist in co-ed makerspaces [29]. Women’s traditional crafting activities have been examined
and valued as a maker activity [57,58,78], with Buechley and Rosner leading insights on how such
activities can be applied in a STEM context and merged with electronics and computing [8–
11,41,42,52,59].
However, there remains a significant absence of consideration of how to facilitate the entry of
under-resourced, adult women of colour, who are novices to making and/or makerspace culture,
into makerspaces. In 2020, the Australian Bureau of Statistics [82] reported that half of Australia’s
population is either first or second-generation migrants. Thirty percent of Australia’s population
are first generation migrants, equating to one of the highest amounts of foreign-born residents in
the world, as well as one of the highest immigration rates in the world. The inner suburbs of
metropolitan cities, including the two studied for this paper, have a population between 32 – 40%
who were born overseas, with the urban fringes often being home to 40% migrants and refugees.
The focus of our research is to understand how to engage refugee and migrant women, who
are novices to making and/or STEM skills, into makerspaces. The women we are targeting have
often come from a refugee camp and have missed out on a formal school education. For the
women who have entered Australia as migrants, we are focused on the women who did not enter
as skilled migrants with viable employment pathways, but those who need to start afresh due to
language issues and being under-resourced, lacking the financial means to pursue any education
opportunities which may lead to potential income generation. For these women, their lack of
resources also sit in the context of discriminatory social and cultural norms, which may prevent
their own families or ethnic community, or the host community from enabling access to
opportunities and resources to pursue personal and professional growth. These discriminatory
norms may be due to gender, race, low socio economic status (SES), or an intersection of all these
factors and others. Makerspaces may present a viable pathway for these women at the margins
to benefit from hands-on learning, as well as to build a community and confidence. However, this
concept will remain untested unless the viability of crossing the threshold into makerspaces for
such women is examined.
Over a period of 21 months, we undertook an ethnographic study of nine makerspaces in two
Australian metropolitan cities and their urban fringes, to understand the barriers and
opportunities which render a makerspace inaccessible, or accessible to under-resourced women
of colour. The makerspaces ranged from private makerspaces operated on a membership basis
open to the general public, to makerspaces in public libraries, and makerspaces set up specifically
to support people who are marginalised, including older women, womxn who are trans, queer or
non-binary, refugees and migrants, people with disabilities and those in low socioeconomic areas
with high welfare dependency. Data was collected through interviews with makerspace
participants and staff, ethnographic observations, and desk review of paper-based and online
documentation for marketing, training and networking.
The research found that despite such a diverse Australian population and a genuine intention
from makerspace staff to see increased diversity and inclusion, women of colour were absent in
seven of nine makerspaces studied, present only in two makerspaces that specifically target
refugee and migrant women. The findings present barriers and opportunities to increase the
involvement of under-resourced women of colour, drawing on the practices of all makerspaces
engaged in the study, across four themes: 1) how first impressions through visual representation
and clear, inclusive language matters, as well as ongoing impressions through training and other
operational materials, 2) the dimensions of the enabling environment, including physical,
institutional, social, cultural and resourcing aspects that can constrain or enable inclusion, 3) how
Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for Women at the Intersectional Margins
123:3
open-door policies fail to translate without targeted practices; partnerships with community
organizations with deep connections to the target marginalized group, in order to deliver strategic
programming is discussed as a key entrance pathway, though limitations with this model are also
unpacked. Finally 4), the findings examine the importance of understanding the intersectional
identities of women seeking to enter to makerspaces, to support measures to foster inclusion and
expand the benefits of maker culture.
This paper seeks to make three contributions in order to fill the gap in the research and
literature on the barriers and opportunities that render makerspaces inaccessible or accessible to
under-resourced women of colour. Firstly, we seek to demonstrate how makerspaces encode the
involvement of only certain users (predominantly well-educated white males or white females),
to the exclusion of under-resourced women of colour and marginalized genders, and show how
makerspaces can decode this exclusion and improve access by learning from the optimal practices
of the makerspaces facilitating such access in this study. Secondly, we seek to illustrate the critical
importance of partnerships with community organisations who have deep, ongoing relationships
with target communities, and the potential of a train-the-trainer hub and spoke model with these
partners. Finally, we seek to demonstrate how the reductionism of identities, capabilities and
interests of women at the intersectional margins constrains their involvement, potential and
contribution to the maker-movement and open innovation, and thus the benefits the maker
movement can offer. In making these three contributions, we seek to enhance the CSCW’s
communities’ ability to engage effectively with diverse publics who sit at the intersections of
marginalization, ensuring computer-supported collaborative work extends beyond dominant user
groups.
2 RELATED WORK
This literature review provides a summary of HCI and CSCW studies on makerspace practices to
be inclusive, through targeting particular marginalized demographics and efforts to engage
novices. The focus is on practices to include women in makerspaces and by extension STEM,
including the establishment of feminist hackerspaces as an alternate venue for women, and
women’s activity in makerspaces. The literature review reveals a well-established absence of
women of colour in makerspaces open to the general public as well as in feminist hackerspaces,
and differing interpretations of gendered making activity, depending on positions of privilege or
oppression. Overall, the literature review reveals many, multi-layered and compounding absences
in the research on makerspaces, fortifying the need for further research into the accessibility of
makerspaces for adult women of colour.
2.1 Makerspaces
Makerspaces generally provide communal facilities with access to different equipment, ranging
from traditional tools to digital fabrication machinery, for the purpose of enabling people to
independently or collectively make something [31,50]. Makerspaces are often established with the
underlying values that they offer an open-door to diverse publics, and operate democratically and
inclusively [3,63,70,71,79]. In addition to open-door makerspaces, there has been a rise in
makerspaces that target particular demographics, such as refugees [64], women [26,28,43,51,57–
59,78,80], people from low-socio economic backgrounds [71,79], those with a disability [7,71,81]
and retirees [18,78], as well as in developing country [2,23,30,39]and humanitarian contexts [64].
In offering inclusive environments for people of all backgrounds to make, HCI scholars and
those in the makerspace movement believe that the tools of production will be democratized in
ways that traditional manufacturing does not enable, leading to more open innovation and
bespoke creations meeting the unique needs of different, diverse user groups, which in turn will
result in positive social, economic and political impacts [38,46].
This utopian perspective has seeded a billion-dollar industry, with makerspaces established in
schools, universities, multinational corporations, public libraries, and government entities, such
as the White House and European Union [31,36,44,46]. However, this utopian vision isn’t
without its critics. Hira and Hynes write “Issues of diversity and inclusion in makerspaces
resemble issues of diversity and inclusion in the field of engineering where the dominant culture
is masculine, technocentric, and white” [36], with a 2012 survey verifying that mainstream maker
culture is indeed dominated by men with a medium to high socio-economic status and advanced
education [5].
2.2 Engaging Novices in Physical and Virtual Makerspaces

It has been observed that makerspaces “often have certain entrance hurdles for newcomers, be it
through a preconception as “nerdy”, domain specific knowledge and vocabulary or the complexity
of the machines” [64]. Several HCI scholars have examined how novices (also called amateurs
and non-experts in various literature) are impeded from entering and engaging with makerspaces
[22,40,49,51]. The focus is predominantly on the “fablab” digital fabrication component of these
spaces rather than looking at traditional crafts. Even though the democratic, open-door policies
are in place, makerspace environments can be intimidating for novices, given the tools, machines
and processes are unfamiliar [22]. Research into how to engage amateurs into makerspaces and
using such equipment suggests several key elements:
• Open door policies aren’t sufficient to attract novices or establish a community, but open
days can be successful if arranged around an activity to make something, with workshops
even more successful [22].
• The importance of attitude, not just skills. Those who are more driven to self-efficacy to
problem solve do much better in makerspaces than those who need constant guidance [49,51].
• The value of a dedicated context, ie workshops with mentor support, to keep novices engaged
and feeling supported [49]. The process of teaching new skills in way that enables novices is
more important than what is being made [22,51].
• The importance of alignment with individual goals [49].
• In the case of engaging women, an emotionally safe space has also been noted as important
[51].
Another significant aspect of the maker movement is the advent of online tutorials (via generic
sites such as YouTube which foster DIY practices for personal and professional realms as well as
more dedicated sites such as Instructables and SkillShare). Another key element in the virtual
realm is novice-oriented computer aided design (CAD) tools, to introduce inexperienced
programmers to the realm of computer science, particularly for the use of digital fabrication
equipment which is a common feature of makerspaces [40,51]. Simple applications, such as
Scratch allow for visual drag and drop coding, and TinkerCad, which enables drag and drop 3D
design, makes computer programming accessible to those with a certain level of digital literacy,
even if they have limited experience in programming itself [40]. Again, using a face-to-face
workshop format has been shown to be successful in building confidence in novices to use CAD
tools [9].
In examining this literature, where novice backgrounds are disclosed, novices are often still
university educated professionals with transferable skills, or adolescent youth in high school or
university [22,44,49,51]. There is an absence of research into engaging amateur, adult women into
makerspaces. There are a few studies, particularly in the educational sciences, on how to attract
and retain school aged girls into STEM through makerspaces [43], with the work of Barton and
Tan applying an intersectional lens and examining girls from diverse racial backgrounds
[6,12,13,66–69]. In HCI, there are also a small number of studies on how to engage female
university students in making, through gendered engagements such as e-textiles and fashion [50].
123:5
study on how to retain young women in engineering studies, through the use of makerspaces,
highlights the steady engagement these university students already had with STEM based activity
and making prior to entering the university-based makerspace [75]. This study also acknowledges
its limitation in not looking at racial diversity, with Tomko et al. stating that the limitation
constrained their understanding of how the varied social locations of the women involved were
impacted by interlocking systems of oppression, thus essentializing the experiences of women
and risking painting a portrait of women as a homogeneous group. Tomko et al. states “his study,
thus, is a springboard for future research that must untangle and interrogate the nuanced ways
that systemic institutional oppression is at work in shaping women's pathways into makerspaces,
particularly at predominantly White institutions such as the one studied here.
In summary, there is an absence of research and literature on how to attract novice women
into makerspaces, who are not on a university pathway in STEM. This absence is further
highlighted by existing research into current activity of women in makerspaces.
2.3 Women in makerspaces

Feminist hackerspaces are relatively new, having commenced in the Pacific North West of
America in 2012 [28]. While not common or easily accessible, feminist hackerspaces can now be
found in a variety of locations across North America and Europe [25,26,28,57]. There is, however,
only one known makerspace that designates itself as “feminist” in Australia, which commenced
in 2021. This space, M5, was one of the 9 makerspaces researched for this study. In researching
US based feminist hackerspaces, the founders and staff have shared the reasons for establishing
women only makerspaces, with a focus on safety and shared values, seeking a space designed to
be more welcoming to women that is free of harassment and vulnerability [26,28]. Fox et al. found
tension between access to the hackerspace (with open access for women being a core value) and
refuge, with spaces often in deliberately obscure locations with ambiguous access protocols, to
ensure women’s safety, making it difficult for new members to find. The researchers explain that
rather than being open to all, the space was available to those who knew how and where to look,
rendering the space exclusive [28].
Rosner and Fox have also studied hackerspaces established specifically for mothers, where
childcare and a safe space to breastfeed and express milk was on offer, along with access to “a
community of restless and curious moms.” However, Rosner also concludes that this subset of
mothers are privileged, and in their HackerMoms environment “they embed themselves ever
more deeply into the heart of engineering worlds and the socioeconomic privilege those worlds
represent” [57].
Studies of women in the maker movement who do not occupy feminist hackerspaces often do
not identify as makers, and struggle to fit in to the movement. However, across several studies,
these women are situated in a university context [50,75], or in a crafting guild or group [58,62,78],
or feel comfortable identifying as artists and speak to role models and mentors who have bolstered
their confidence to make and articulate their expression through art [14]. These studies often do
not demarcate the race of the female makers, but do take place in Western societies, and
assumptions can be drawn, based on the level of location, education and resourcing that the
makers are white or have a more privileged background that new migrants or refugees.
2.4 Women of colour in makerspaces

Fox et al. questioned the access for women from diverse backgrounds, observing that most
participants in feminist hackerspaces are white, well-educated, well-paid and predominantly from
STEM fields, with their hacking activities also constituting acts of privilege [26,28,57]. The
founders were well aware of this situation, with organisational visions seeking ethnic and
socioeconomic diversity, but unable to translate the vision into a reality. One president of a
feminist hackerspace stated:
[A] lot of us are nice white ladies and we try not to be jerks about it and we really - try - we try to look at history and try
not to do the same damn [thing…]. And since the feminist movement keeps on doing that. […] I would feel weird being
all yes, we're an antiracist hackerspace when most of our members are white [28].
Fox et al. describes an interview with the founder of LOLSpace in Oakland, stating:
Jen Mai Wu felt that the terms hacker and maker lacked representation for people of color and low-income residents,
those unable to ‘take advantage’ of the maker movement…The fact that they celebrated such domestic labor as a
“boutique” leisure experience further highlighted their privilege [28].
Thus, while feminist hackerspaces have been established to increase women’s access to
making, they continue to serve the well-educated with high incomes. An extensive review of HCI
and CSCW literature studying makerspaces globally failed to find any makerspaces achieving
access for women of lower socio-economic status, or for women of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Thus, in addition to the absence of research and literature on facilitating the entry of novice
women into makerspaces, there is an absence of research into the lack of racial diversity in such
spaces, and a lack of guidelines on how to support improving the racial diversity.
In HCI, discussion is beginning to emerge on the concept of intersectionality and the need to
improve engagement with intersectional groups and design with intersectional awareness
[27,45,55,74]. The concept of intersectionality originates in the 18th century as an analytical
framework [54], but the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw in
research exploring the impact of siloing gender and race as discrete categories in the context of
anti-discrimination legislation [16]. The siloing resulted in erasing the true experience of black
women and the multi-layered, compounding discrimination they faced. In 1991, Patricia Hill
Collins contributed the matrix of oppression, also known as the matrix of domination, as a
framework to analyse the multifaceted aspects of identity that enable privilege and oppression,
presenting this as many axes that work together and influence each other [19,34].
HCI scholars have observed that “identity-focused research tends to analyze one facet of
identity at a time”, with research on ethnicity and race lagging behind research on gender and
socio-economic class [61]. A metareview into Intersectional HCI by Schlesinger et al. [61] found
“striking segmentations, imbalances, obstacles, and omissions regarding identity representation”,
with “a singular focus on identity categories, and a simplified presentation of complex identity
categories”. While there is an emerging body of work questioning makerspace inclusivity
[22,25,33,36,47,50,80], this is done by singular categories of marginalised identity, such as gender,
refugee status, disability, are or socio-economic status. HCI scholars accept there is a need to
broaden conceptions of diversity, engage with intersectional groups and design with
intersectional awareness [1], and this includes makerspace environments. With the few HCI
studies that aim to apply an intersectional analysis, a strong critique is provided by Rankin who
argues that the scholarship continues to privilege dominant voices and erase work by black female
scholars [54]. Kumar and Karusala argue that the limited HCI analysis of intersectionality focuses
on a few explicit areas, namely gender, race and class, with an absence of focus on the less explicit
areas such as nationality, domain of work and linguistic ability [45].
Although considerable efforts are being made to diversify, there are still many voices missing
in HCI literature, including the ‘brown’ voice, the ‘brown feminist voice’ and the voice of those
with limited education, language and digital literacy. There is an absence of research and literature
sitting at the intersections of these identities. It is vital that the challenges women from
marginalized backgrounds and a diversity of ethnicities are heard and represented in design,
research and literature.
123:7
2.5 Women’s activity in makerspaces

Current studies of women in makerspaces highlight that the activities women undertake are
highly gendered. HCI researchers have examined more traditional female maker activity, such as
makerspaces focused on craft [78], sewing [37], quilting [47,65] and knitting [58], as well as
examining the wellbeing generated from such engagement [78]. Besides the studies already
referenced above on retaining girls and women on STEM pathways by leveraging school and
academic makerspaces, there is an absence of studies on women engaged with traditional male
maker activity (eg wood and metal work, electronics) or more modern digital and fabrication
skills (eg 3D printing and laser cutting). Some researchers have noted the importance of elevating
craft legacies as a feminist practice [57], as well as leveraging crafting and sewing activities for
women to introduce electronics and digital tools, with notable success [8–11,41,42,52,59]. One
such study by Rosner consisted of a series of participatory workshops to merge quilting and
electronics which “highlights for HCI scholars that the worlds of hand-work and computing, or
weaving and space travel, are not as separate as we might imagine them to be” [59]. In the
research, core memory planes were used as quilt patches, along with conductive thread to sew
the patches together. As part of the study, the researchers and participants also explored the
underlying role of crafting and gendered-innovation in the development of electronics and
computing, arguing for recognition of these legacies and the ongoing role of women to bring
forth gendered innovations.
However, culturally normative definitions of making are critiqued by Vossoughi et al.,
referencing an interview in the The Atlantic entitled “All Immigrants Are Artists”, and the seam-
stressing conducted by female immigrants as a matter of survival [77]. Vossoughi explains that
the article does not recast the immigrant as a maker to legitimise her capabilities but examines
the racialized and gendered hierarchies that lead to her everyday practices, casting her instead as
an artist.
However, whether a female immigrant has traditional skills in arts, craft, sewing or knitting,
or does not, there still remains an absence of studies on the extent to which women with diverse
racial backgrounds engages in ‘art’ or ‘craft’ or ‘making’ in makerspaces that offer such gendered
activities. Further, there is an absence of studies as to whether women of colour engage in
makerspaces that offer pathways from more gendered activities, such as craft, into more STEM
oriented activities, such as electronics. This study seeks to fill this gap.
To reiterate, this literature review reveals many, multi-layered and compounding absences in
the research on makerspaces, namely:
• an absence of published research into engaging adult women who are novices to making into
makerspaces (who are not on a university pathway in STEM, although it is noted that this
research in itself is highly constrained)
• an absence of literature into the lack of racially diverse women in makerspaces, or
alternatively studies on racially diverse makerspaces more generally
• an absence of studies as to whether women of colour engage in makerspaces that offer
gendered activities, eg craft, and/or pathways from more gendered activities, such as craft,
into more STEM oriented activities, such as electronics, and/or engage with the full spectrum
of activities on offer in makerspaces from the outset.
3 METHOD
Our study focuses on how to foster accessible pathways into makerspaces for under-resourced
women of colour who are novices to making and/or STEM skills. The objective of our research
was to understand how existing makerspaces encode bias, particularly against under-resourced
women of colour, often dependent on welfare programs for their livelihood due to structural,
social and cultural barriers that constrain their involvement in the formal economy. By encoding
bias, we mean explicit and implicit policies and practices of the makerspace that results in
exclusion. These policies and practices, which are inherent to the makerspace culture and the
broader structural, social and cultural environment in which makerspaces are situated, normally
do not intend to exclude. However, without explicitly examining this culture and context,
makerspaces risk remaining unaware that their policies and practices are unintentionally
encoding bias (and that direct actions need to be taken to decode this bias) despite open door
policies and democratic intentions. In addition, the authors sought to explore makerspace
practices that foster inclusion, creating accessible pathways for these women to cross the
threshold into makerspaces and thus provide lessons and opportunities for other makerspaces to
decode bias.
Nine makerspaces were identified across two Australian metropolitan cities and surrounds.
These cities and surrounds are very diverse, with all locations having a population between 32 –
40% who were born overseas, arriving in Australia as migrants or refugees. The makerspaces
ranged from private makerspaces operated on a membership basis open to the general public, to
makerspaces in public libraries, and makerspaces set up specifically to support people who are
marginalised, including older women, women who are trans or queer, people who are non-binary,
refugees and migrants, people with disabilities and those in low socioeconomic areas with high
welfare dependency.
Across the nine makerspaces, data was collected over a period of 21 months (from October
2020 – June 2022) via three methods:
• Semi-structured interviews with makerspace staff and participants. In all makerspaces, the
first author prioritised speaking to female staff and participants and makers wherever
available, with a majority of women (or people identifying as women) interviewed.
• 10 staff (7 female, 3 male) were interviewed on the origin story of the makerspace, its mission,
vision and values, target market, funding and resourcing, staffing, operating environment,
approach to marketing and outreach, and diversity and inclusion policies and practices. All
interview subjects were of Caucasian background, with the exception of staff at M3 New
Arrivals Craft Space, and 2 male staff members at M4 Urban Library Makerspace.
• 8 makerspace participants (7 female, 1 male) were interviewed on their life story, including
their education and training background, employment/ entrepreneurship/ income-
generation history, their view of their gender roles and other aspects of privilege and
oppression they encountered due to identity. In addition to this background information,
participants were interviewed on makerspace practices they believe have enabled their
inclusion and/or exclusion. All participants were white females, with the exception of the
refugees and migrants interviewed from M3 New Arrivals Craft Space, who had migrated
from Sri Lanka, Iran and the Philippines, and the 1 male at M4, who came to participate as a
staff member from a partner organization, who had migrated to Australia from Eritrea.
All interviews with staff and participants lasted 1 – 2 hours on average, with interviews
recorded and hand-written notes and photographs taken in parallel. Makerspace staff and
participants were not paid for their time in the interviews, although some of the refugee and
migrant participants were (at M3 New Arrivals Craft Space only) were offered a small gift card of
AUD20 each as a thank you for their participation, on suggestion of the M3 staff, due to this
cohort being regularly asked to participate in research by various institutions, to try mitigate
research fatigue. The interview guideline for both staff and participants can be found at Appendix
A. A conversational approach was used, with the questions in Appendix A used for guidance, but
not all questions needed to be answered, particularly with regards to participants. For refugee and
migrant women, English language ability was a factor taken into consideration, with questions
simplified as necessary to aid in comprehension. Social and cultural norms were also taken into
account, with the conversation steered in line with what the women were comfortable discussing.
123:9
Over the research period, the Covid-19 pandemic was also occurring, and thus questions were
also addressed on how this affected access to makerspaces and making, to understand Covid-19
related barriers as distinct from inclusion barriers related to intersectional identities.
1) Ethnographic observations, where the first author observed all dimensions of the enabling
environment of each makerspace to facilitate (or constrain) access, engaging as well in
informal conversations with approximately 40 participants across the nine spaces
regarding their entrance into the makerspace
2) Desk-review of makerspaces policies, websites, wikis, annual reports and other
documentation which captured diversity and inclusion practices and pathway offerings.
The table below documents the data collected from the nine makerspaces, as well as flagging
the nature of each makerspace in the description of the entity type, location, cohort and main
activities. The makerspaces have all been given a number (M1 through to M9) and pseudonyms
to represent their nature, which will be used throughout the findings and discussion. The M1
through to M9 numerators are utilized to distinguish staff and participant interviewees in the
findings, with staff being labeled S1, S2, etc. depending on the number of staff interviews, and
participant interview subjects being labelled using the same format (P1, P2 etc.). Therefore, to
provide an example, data being shared from the first staff member interviewed at M3 New Arrivals
Craftspace would be referred to as M3S1. In M6 – M9, formal interviews were not conducted.
This was due to inconsistent staffing and participants, resulting in a lack of regularity, rendering
it difficult to identify suitable interview subjects. However, the ethnographic observations and
desk review generated sufficient data worthy of including findings on practices at M6 – M9 that
are encoding or decoding exclusion.
Table 1: Data collected

Makerspac Entity type, Cohort Main Staff Participa Observatio Documentati
e cost and activities
Interview nt n (hours) on reviewed
location s (S) interview
s (P)
M1 Large Communit Low socio- E-waste 2 2 17 hours Impact
eWaste y Service economic disassembl report,
Hub Organisati status y, M1S1 M1P1 website,
on (CSO) electronics M1S2 M1P2 internal
Limited and 3D documentati
Free involvement printing on
by women
Urban
fringe
M2 Elders CSO Older Craft 1 1 13 hours Nil available
Craftspace women
AUD5 M2S1 M2P1
entry fee
Urban
fringe
M3 New CSO Refugee and Craft 2 4 6 hours Annual
Arrivals migrant report,
Craftspace Free women M3S1 M3P1 website,
M3S2 M3P2 internal

Inner city M3P3 documentati
M3P4 on
M4 Urban Public Specific All 4 - KII M4P1 15 hours Website,
Library pathway for makerspac (partner wiki,
Makerspac State refugee and e activities M4S1 organizat orientation
e governme migrants (e- M4S2 ion staff materials,
nt owned waste) M4S3 member) training
materials
Free Some women
Inner City
M5 Private Women/quee All 1 1 20 hours Website,
FemSpace r and trans makerspac internal
Independe women/non e activities M5S1 M5P1 documentati
nt founder binary (e-textile on
most
Fee for frequently
each offered)
workshop
Inner City
M6 Open Private General All N/A N/A 10 hours Website,
Member public, makerspac policies,
Lab Membershi member e activities orientation
p based based materials,
online
Monthly Limited forums
membershi female
p fee engagement
Inner City
M7 Public Public library 3D N/A N/A 3 hours Website,
Regional printing, training
Library Regional Video and materials
Space city owned sound
editing
Free
Regional
M8 Migrant CSO Refugee and Knitting N/A N/A 4 hours Website
Knitting migrant
Free women
Inner City
M9 Small CSO People with a E-waste N/A N/A 2 hours Website
eWaste disability disassembl
Hub Free y
Inner City
123:11
TOTAL 10 8 90 hours
The data from the interview transcripts, hand-written interview notes, photographs,
ethnographic observation notes and desk review documentation was hand-coded by the first
author, guided by the overarching questions to seek explicit and implicit policies and practices
that encode or decode bias and thus exclusion. The first author, who conducted the interviews
and observations, employed a grounded theory approach, allowing themes to emerge, looking for
practices that both encode and decode the involvement of under-resourced women of colour in
makerspaces against these themes. The emergent themes were influenced by her own
positionality and experiences, as a heterosexual, cis-gendered woman of colour. She is a well-
educated, second-generation migrant, who does not lack the financial resources to access
makerspaces, but as a mother of three, does lack the time. Her social and cultural upbringing and
novice status as a maker rendered some of the socio-cultural and community-based findings as
relatable due to her own lived experience, which would have influenced the coding. Further, as
three of the makerspaces were male dominated, and one dominated by white women, the lead
author’s positionality as a woman of colour gave her a nuanced perspective in interacting with
the staff and participants in the makerspace with regards to the research questions being
addressed and the themes that emerged. However, she also remained alert to her own privileges,
and sought to draw out the encoded barriers that she herself did not experience due to her social
networks, native English speaking status and education which the refugee and migrant women
did not have as a base when interacting with makerspaces.
4. FINDINGS
The findings are presented as a series of themes, covering:
• first impressions, and how visual representation of diverse publics and clear, explicitly
inclusive language in marketing and training materials matters
• the dimensions of the enabling environment, including physical, institutional, social, cultural
and resourcing aspects that can constrain or enable inclusion
• how open-door policies fail to translate without targeted practices. Partnerships with
community organizations with deep connections to the target marginalized group, in order
to deliver strategic programming is discussed as a key entrance pathway, though limitations
with this model are also unpacked
• the importance of understanding the intersectional identities of women seeking to enter to
makerspaces, to support measures to foster inclusion.
In the first three themes, we identify barriers and opportunities regarding each theme. We
define barriers as the policies and practices of the makerspaces which are likely to constrain the
involvement of under-resourced women of colour (and thus encode exclusion), and opportunities
as the policies and practices which have been identified as likely to increase the involvement of
under-resourced of women of colour (decoding exclusion). In the final theme, the findings are
organized around intersectional identities that emerged during the research, and the specific
needs articulated by these groups.
In initial conversations with the founders, leaders and staff of the makerspaces, all expressed
the desire to attract more women of colour into their makerspace. Staff from M1 Large eWaste
Hub, M4 Urban Library Makerspace, M6 Open Member Lab and M7 Regional Library Space all
expressed that they would like to attract more women into their makerspaces, with a current
majority of male participants. When specifically questioned, makerspace staff indicated that as a
result of Covid-19 lockdowns, they had not seen a proportional decrease in female participation.
The struggle to involve women existed before Covid-19 had not impacted female involvement,
and thus any decrease in overall participation had been proportional across genders. M2 Elders
Craftspace and M5 FemSpace, makerspaces that are exclusively for women, attract Caucasian
participants, with M2 participants being older women and M5 including queer and trans women
and people who are non-binary. The staff at M2 and M5 both expressed a desire to engage with
women from culturally diverse backgrounds, including refugees and migrants. M3 New Arrivals
Craftspace and M8 Migrant Knitting specifically cater to migrant and refugee women. M4 Urban
Library Makerspace has a program specifically aimed at refugees and migrants, which is attended
by men, boys and girls with close to 50% participation by females, but an absence of women.
However, this program does not result in refugees and migrants attending their broader
makerspace.
4.1 First impressions: visual representation and clear, inclusive language matters
Globally, and across disciplines and sectors, there is growing awareness of the importance visual
representation of diverse publics in marketing materials and operational content, such as training
resources. The women of colour participants interviewed for this study reported “you can be what
you can see”. This section unpacks the importance of appropriate representative imagery to foster
the involvement of those who are consistently excluded, not only in imagery, but in practice. This
section also covers findings with regards to unintentional exclusion that occur through written
communication.
4.1.1 Barriers which encode exclusion.
M6 Open Member Lab was the largest makerspace researched across all locations, in terms of the
site, tools and equipment and number of members. However, in reviewing its website before first
visiting, it already makes clear who utilizes the spaces. A carousel of 10 images are featured on
the website’s homepage, 8 of which feature people. Across these 8 images, a total of 20 people are
featured. Nineteen of these people are white men. There is one white woman. There are no people
of colour and thus no women of colour. When visiting the makerspace for the introductory tour,
induction, making activities and observations, the actual participation observed in the space
accurately reflected the website imagery. During induction, slide shows and videos were shown,
with two key presenters from the makerspace executive team, both white, one male and one
female. In addition, three people (all white males) presented in person. This makerspace makes a
clear impression that it is a white space, though it was great to see a female executive member
evenly sharing the video screen time for the induction as an active measure to achieve gender
balance. In terms of attendees at the introductory tour and induction, one other female (in
addition to the first author) were present at both events. On both occasions, the other female was
attending to accompany her male partner, but not engaging as a maker. During ethnographic
observations, only one other woman was observed in the makerspace. During informal
discussions, she indicated that she attended to keep her male partner company and used the time
to study for her business degree, rather than engage in any making. She indicated she had never
seen any other women in the space besides the first author and did not feel tempted to try make
anything while there. She observed that the space was really for men who like engineering and
electronics.
M5 FemSpace, a feminist makerspace, aims to be inclusive of all women, of all races, and
classes. It also aims to be inclusive of marginalised genders and sexualities, including trans and
queer women, as well as people who identify as non-binary or intersex. M5 has been successful
in attracting and retaining marginalised genders, due to networks developed by the founder,
particularly with trans youth. However, this inclusive practice may unintentionally be leading to
the exclusion of cis-gendered women who think this means they aren’t included. Participants at
M5 reported that they had female cis-gendered friends who wished to attend, but thought they
123:13
were not invited due to the marketing material indicating that workshops were for ‘marginalised
genders’. Women of colour are also yet to attend M5.
4.1.2 Opportunities to decode exclusion:
In contrast to M6 Open Member Lab, the website and induction materials for M4 Urban Library
Makerspace represents a diverse community. This could partially be attributed to M4 being a
government owned entity, and therefore needing to comply with government policy on
representation in marketing materials. M6, as a private membership owned entity, does not have
any compliance obligations in this regard. However, the representation on imagery for M4 also
translated to an increased diversity of attendance with 50% of attendees at the induction being
women, and all women of colour.
Figure 1: Induction slide showing people of colour (1 woman) with woman of colour also in attendance at
Induction (M4 Urban Library Makerspace).
M3 New Arrivals Craftspace has taken deliberate measures to ensure diverse imagery in their
website, but also in their online tools that are utilied by the refugee and migrant women to engage
in making. M3 had initially planned to curate existing online maker content, such as from
Instructables and You Tube. However, in testing this content with the refugee and migrant
women, the women complained that the makers were all white with American accents, and not
at all relatable. M3P3 stated “I don’t understand them, I can’t do what they do, I don’t have what
they have at home, it won’t be possible.” M3 made the decision to produce their own online maker
content. M3P1, who participated in the production of the content by being videoed while sewing,
explained “you can be what you can see”.
4.2 Dimensions of the enabling environment

There are physical, institutional, social, cultural and resource-based practices that can either
enable or dissuade women and women of colour from engaging in makerspaces. This theme seeks
to unpack these dimensions with examples drawn from the nine makerspaces studied.
M1 Large eWaste Hub and M6 Open Member Lab are both located in industrial sheds. They have
been set up to be functional, without much thought as to whether they are creating a welcoming
environment for novices, women, minorities or anyone who may feel any sort of discomfort with
a space dominated by tools, equipment and men. M1, a makerspace that focuses on e-waste
disassembly and electronics, is chaotic, with e-waste sitting in piles around the space, covered in
dust, and gritty in the approach to disassembly, with screws flying and dominated by men. A
female participant at M1 (M1P2), a social work student who was placed at M1 by her university
to observe the social support offered to the other participants from low socio-economic
backgrounds, explained the intimidating physical environment:
“I literally walked through the gates, right at the front of the building, and I was like, oh my god, what have I done. I saw
all the bins and industrial equipment – I was not thrilled. I was very nervous about coming. I feel so out of depth, and I
feel like I have nothing to contribute in this space because I already was very nervous about my own developing skills as
a social worker. Yeah, like, I didn't know any of the language in this kind of space, so yeah very overwhelmed.”
Figure 2: M1 Large eWaste Hub was intimidating on approach for M1P2. The downstairs area is messy
and male-dominated.
In M1, the first author never observed a woman engaged in e-waste disassembly. Staff
explained that all novices, on entry, are taught to disassemble e-waste by peers on the floor.
However, it was also explained that when women do on occasion come to the space, they are
offered the opportunity to skip e-waste disassembly, and go upstairs to the electronics bench to
learn to solder, as it’s a bit quieter and cleaner and they may not enjoy the environment
downstairs. Consideration had not been given as to how to make the e-waste dissassembly are
more comfortable for women.
It was observed that little to no explanation is given by peer teachers as to the internal
components of the e-waste, their purpose, or how components of the e-waste would be
repurposed. The briefing consisted of showing participants where to obtain a different range of
screw drivers, the e-waste, and the different bins in which to place the different components (eg
plastic, metal, copper, circuit boards, wire, screws). After that, there was general chat and peers
would step in with identifying the correct bin if a question was asked. For a woman unfamiliar
with even using screwdrivers, this experience would be intimidating, especially when considering
the surrounding physical environment and male dominated space.
Efforts to improve accessibility at M6 Open Member Lab are not inclusive, as they are tailored
to the type of community that is familiar with wikis, discords and online trainings. At M6, while
the first author was waiting for the induction to commence, guidelines on getting the space
‘Workable, Accessible and Documented’ were on the wall. The introduction of processes to ensure
novices could learn how to use new equipment rely on the expectation to produce online
guidelines, to sit on an internal wiki, over time. However, following the induction, the first author
found that online guidelines were not yet available on the wiki. It was also impossible for the first
author to organize any inductions on equipment, as people were unresponsive to her requests on
the discord forum. One reply was received, but the suggested timing was of a late evening, which
was not possible for the first author due to her childcare responsibilities. However, even with the
123:15
introduction of online wiki information, this would still render the equipment inaccessible to
refugee and migrant women who have limited language literacy, digital literacy and also lack
confidence to engage without hands-on support and other direct human engagement to build
confidence and comfort in the space.
Figure 3: Guidance on the wall in the lounge area of M6 Open Member La
The founder of M5 FemSpace discussed the origins of her space, explaining that she set it up
because she found another makerspace, where she wanted to deliver workshops to minimalise
her skills as a maker and the content she could teach. M5S1 stated:
I came back after living overseas for 10 years and went around to (another makerspace) because I was like, I’d really like
to get involved. I went in there and said, you know, I design circuit boards and make sensors, and, you know, do all this
stuff and they were like, oh cool you can solder and they like reduced it to this really basic level skill. My reaction to that
was, I’ll have my own space then, make a space where it's cool for women.
M5S1 discussed her observations on accessibility for women:

That other space gets booked out really fast and I feel like maybe there's access issues. They need to make space for
women. You can create access but men are more likely to jump in and take something really quickly, whereas maybe
you've got to encourage women.. Women might have to work or you might have kids, but that means they can’t book in
immediately and so they miss out. I think a female specific session does make it a little bit more accessible. And research
the times that are most suitable for women. I think about my friend who's gonna do an open mic night and he's like, I'm
gonna make it really accessible and I was like how? And he said ‘you know, just everyone can just write their name up
when they want to perform’. I was like, No, you need to make sure that you find some women and put their names up
first, otherwise it's just gonna be all dudes. Because the men are there and they're ready to share whereas, I think you
need to encourage women, there's confidence issues.
M5S1 raises important points. When registrations are open online, or even require a name to
be written on a physical list, women may be more slow to register due to having to first work out
logistics of care, or work schedules and transportation, or wanting to seek out other friends to
join them to build confidence to enter a new space. Women may also be reticent to sign up due
to uncertainty as to whether other women are attending an environment that they consider to be
male dominated or outside their comfort zone. When places are limited and time is of the essence
to sign up, this can often mean women miss out.
4.2.2 Opportunities to decode exclusion.
To contrast with M1 Large eWaste Hub, another e-waste disassembly space, M9 Small eWaste
Hub, founded by a woman who was inspired by M1, created an ordered, clean and more facilitated
approach. Volunteers constantly attended to participants, explaining the components, teaching
technical terms, explaining how different metals and components would be reused. There were
women active in the space and the founder of M1 believes these differences in the physical set up
and the culture of support are important aspects in achieving female involvement. M1P2, who
experienced the initial feelings of intimidation when she walked up to M1, explained that having
a female staff member responsible for her was able to put her at ease in a masculine environment:
“Ella (name changed) is such an engaging person and outgoing person that you kind of just get swept up, and she makes
you feel at home. She makes you feel like you belong. Yeah. And I think without a person like that here, especially women
in this space would find it hard, it would take a much longer time to find your place here. Yeah, so I know a daily practice
of Ella's is to login, drop a bag on her desk, grab her coffee cup and come down and she does like a walkthrough, back
and forth as she gets a cup of coffee, and that practice every morning is like welcoming people especially people who I
know she'll stop and have a chat to people who would like to have a chat with her. Yeah, and that you know that daily
practice is really useful for new people in a new space like this, yeah absolutely.”
Having a female staff member responsible for aspects of social integration, such as settling and
checking in on other female members is an opportunity that could be embraced by other
makerspaces. Although there is still a bit of chaos with the equipment and materials at M5
FemSpace, the staff member M5S1, like Ella at M1, pays constant attention to participants in her
space, checking in on their needs and making sure they are comfortable in the space, as well as
with what they are learning as they make. This practice was also observed in other makerspaces.
In M2 Elders Craftspace, which convenes one morning a week, the President of the makerspace
ensures a morning tea is always on offer (consisting of tea or coffee and a sweet such as cake),
and while participants are having morning tea, she usually delivers an inspirational speech, which
increases the sense of community. The makers, who are older, are updated on health of issues of
any absent participants, encouraged to donate to community causes, and to share stories of
successes in making, such as being invited to show a completed craft project. These social
practices create a sense of belonging. Similarly, at M3 New Arrivals Craftspace, the staff and
volunteers encourage the participants, who may lack confidence due to experiencing isolation in
their new community and limited English, to speak up about what they are making, or their life
story, or any relevant topic at hand. After sharing, the participants are given collective affirmation
by all participants and staff in the space, building and maintaining an inspirational, energetic,
positive environment.
Institutional staffing practices are also important to consider. M3 New Arrivals Craftspace and
M8 Migrant Knitting, spaces aimed at refugee and migrant women, rely heavily on host
community volunteers to ensure constant social and technical support for participants in the
space. Further, M3 and M4 Urban Library Makerspace employ staff with lived experience as
refugees and migrants. For M3, the CEO is a migrant and she ensures key positions are filled by
migrants and refugees. When positions arise, they consider participants in the makerspace as a
first step to fill the role, and prioritise hiring externals who are migrants as well. For M4, the
refugee and migrant program is facilitated by a previous participant in the program, a male
refugee from Iraq, who had been facilitating the program for over 2 years. It had been
acknowledged by M4 staff that it would be ideal to also have a female facilitator, and while
undertaking this research, the M4 makerspace had also selected and recruited a highly engaged
123:17
18 year old Ethiopian female participant, as a co-facilitator, who had just commenced her training.
M4S3, the Iraqi facilitator, said:
She just showed a lot of enthusiasm. She really wanted to learn, and she learnt quickly. And then she was always helping
others and the women participants gravitated towards her. I think they felt more confortable asking her questions because
she is a woman. I’m looking forward to teaching her to facilitate with me. I think it will really enrich the involvement of
female participants more than I realised before I saw (the new Ethiopian facilitator) in action.
The cultural environment of the space is also important to consider. M5 FemSpace fosters an
environment where women feel at home. There are bright colours and women-oriented art. There
is a little kitchenette to make tea and coffee and keep food. M8 Knitting Migrants also offers a
very welcoming, vibrant, colourful venue for migrants and refugees to come and do knitting at
the same time as speaking English with host community volunteers. There is a coffee machine,
cookies, cakes and fruit available, and abundant conversations occurring, with a convivial
atmosphere. The place welcomes women from all corners of the globe, and the first author
engaged with women who were keen to share stories of their home country and the life they are
making in the country. Again, in this space, the women talked ‘women’s business’, such as
pregnancy and birthing. In M2 Elders Craftspace, coffee, tea and cake are on offer, with a schedule
of volunteers rotated to share it with makers. Other community building activities also take place
weekly, such as a lucky door prize.
Figure 4: A tea-towel as art on the wall at M5 FemSpacce
It’s critical to consider women’s double time burden, given the social and cultural norms that
require women to carry the majority of caring responsibilities. M5S1 discussed that men generally
have more free time to tinker. Women are often engaging in caring responsibilities. Thus, children
are also welcome to attend at M5 FemSpace and make alongside their mothers, which was not
experienced in any other makerspace examined. However, the women in attendance at M5 were
all well-educated and experienced and confident in makerspace type activities. There weren’t any
novices in attendance. M5 banter revealed a comfortable level of ease with hacking, tinkering,
programming and crafting, enabling an easy comradery amongst participants.
M4 Urban Library Makerspace and M7 Regional Library Space, as public library makerspaces,
welcome children. However, programs are then targeted at children (teenagers), rather than at
parents and teenagers to simultaneously make. The role of the mothers was booking sessions for
their teenage children. It was observed that M7 staff did not invite the mothers to also make when
booking in their children. M1S1 at M1 Large eWaste Hub recognised that having children in the
space may be the missing link to increasing the involvement of women. She noted that if children
under the age of 5 were permitted to attend, it could overcome childcare issues. However, there
would be safety concerns that could not be easily addressed in the current environment with the
disassembly of e-waste, with little parts going flying which could be dangerous for children. A
dedicated space and resourcing would be required. To contrast, at M5 FemSpace, it was a safer
environment for children to attend and also engage in activities in the space alongside their
mothers.
In addition to lacking “disposable time”, women lack disposable income, making the
affordability of makerspaces and making materials another key factor to consider, as well as the
cost and ease of travelling to the makerspace. M6 Open Member Lab, that struggles to attract
women, charges a monthly membership fee, which may be prohibitive to women’s involvement.
M6 is also not accessible by public transport. In discussing a series of e-textile workshops she was
delivering, M5S1 explained her efforts to ensure affordability of M5 FemSpace workshops:
I think women have less disposable income, I’ve set things up to be affordable. And yeah, I like it here because people can
get a bus here if they need to. I also don’t just advertise my workshops online, I like to do posters and ads in free art
magazines because I don’t want to assume everyone is online.
M3 New Migrants Craftspace, M4 Urban Library Makerspace and M8 Knitting Migrants are
free spaces, and all the materials are also provided at no cost to the refugee and migrant
participants. Like M5 FemSpace, they are also located near public transport. During pandemic
lockdowns, while delivering live workshops online, M3 also arranged the delivery of materials to
the refugee and migrant makers, to ensure ongoing engagement, knowing that they would not be
able to afford materials themselves. They also introduced a micro-loan scheme for participants to
obtain sewing machines, and provided data credit for participants, so they could access the
internet to engage in classes. M4 staff discussed the importance of public transport, including
having their partner organisation assist new participants to the space from the bus stop and train
station. They said that newly arrived migrants and refugees would otherwise feel too intimidated
to come to the big library building in the city, and so being escorted eases with navigation as well
as confidence. M3 also recorded videos to share with new participants on how to purchase a travel
card, and how to walk from the train station or tram stop to the makerspace, to overcome novice’s
initial fears on navigating public transport.
Measures to convert physical, institutional, social, cultural and resource based barriers into
enabling opportunities will foster an environment that makes it more feasible for women and
women of colour to cross the threshold into makerspaces.
4.3 Open door policies: good intentions, won’t suffice

In considering the above representation and enabling environment barriers that women of colour
face with regards to accessing makerspaces, it is already clear that an open-door policy alone
won’t suffice. This section examines the stance makerspaces take regarding their open-door
policy, and how more practical measures such as partnerships, programs, incentives and
dedicated funding and thus resourcing can activate diversity, though involvement may remain
constrained without dedicated pathways beyond introductory programming.
M6 Open Member Lab has what they call a ‘Safe Space Policy’. The policy states:
(M6) strives to be an inclusive and safe space for all to participate in. We believe that in the absence of true equality in
our society, we should aim to provide equity to our members and the participating public. We are not a judge and jury,
we are not the cops; but we are a community with shared ideals about the rights of people to feel free of oppression.
123:19
Abuse, discrimination, harassment, assault, sexism, racism, ableism, religious persecution and homophobic behaviour is
not tolerated at (M6), nor is any other behavior which would reasonably make a person feel trivialised or otherwise
discriminated against. Anyone violating this may be asked to leave the hackerspace either temporarily or permanently.
This Safe Space Policy aims to ensure equity for all members of the makerspace. It is not
actively seeking to diversify the attendees, and as such, M6 is not taking any active steps to
diversify its membership. The policy is discussed during the induction. The President noted its
existence, but verbal reference was only made to the LGBTQIA+ community and not any other
identity, such as based on race, disability or any other minority group. The first author did
question M6’s President on levels of female attendance, and he admitted trouble with attracting
and retaining women into the space. He said that for the women who did attend the inductions
and pay membership, they often did not attend after the first month. He said in some instances,
they would only attend the induction and never return, or only come once after the induction and
not come back, despite paying a membership fee. He was at a loss to why this was the case but
said there was no investigation being conducted into the situation or active strategies in place to
recruit more diverse publics or women.
M1 Large eWaste Hub, that engages in e-waste disassembly and reassembly (eg upcycled
computers), electronics and digital fabrication, also has an open-door policy. M1S1 states:
Our door is open to anyone. That would be a uni student, long term unemployed mums and dads, retirees, whatever.
However, the CEO of M1 explained that they struggle to attract women into the space,
expressing interest in finding strategies would see women walk through the door.
M2 Elders Craftspace president (M2S1), a female only craft-based makerspace, reported the
attendance at her makerspace was solely white, despite living in a city with 40% being migrants
and 215 nationalities. She had a small group of Ethiopian migrants attend for 2 sessions, and she
said they tried to include these women but they did not continue. M2 President displayed political
awareness and discussed the impact of colonialism, from the lens of being Aboriginal herself but
also discussed post-colonial legacies for developing countries and migrants. She said she had
worked to teach English to migrants as a volunteer too. However, even though she identified from
a minority background and had experience working with migrants and civil society organisations
that targeted these communities, she had not considered partnerships or programs or any other
strategies to bring migrants or Indigenous women into the space, despite her wish for increased
diversity. When this concept was suggested to her, she felt lost at how to bring the resources to
bear to set up such an approach.
Similar to the feminist hackerspaces in the US, M5 FemSpace, as Australia’s first feminist
hackerspace, struggles to attract women of colour. Although the space is successful in attracting
trans women and non-binary people, due to the founder’s relationships with this community, she
expressed the desire to see women of colour in her space, but did not know how to make this
happen.
4.3.2 Opportunities to decode exclusion.
Makerspaces that are open to the general public that succeeded in attracting diverse publics did
so through targeted programming. M1 Large eWaste Hub has a specific program for Aboriginal
Australians, which involves outdoor maker activities to convert an old rail line into a walking
track. This program is well attended by Aboriginal men but fails to attract Aboriginal women.
Staff reported that on occasion, a woman has attended, but does not stay beyond the first one or
two weeks. Staff were uncertain as to the reasons why but hypothesized that it was the male
dominated environment.
M1 also has a work-for-the-dole program, where people who are unemployed receive welfare
benefits if they engage in activities at the makerspace. M1P1, one of the few female participants
in M1, crossed the threshold into the space as a result of the work-for-the-dole program. She did
not have any relevant skills but was taught how to solder and is involved in soldering circuit
boards for an entrepreneurial, income generating spin-off of the makerspace. M1P1 talked about
the level playing field culture and how other women can do soldering, electronics or computer
assembly, as M1 allowed her to learn through repetition without the need for study. She said she
would like to see more women in the space, but they only come as a result of programs, such as
university internships or work-for-the-dole, and most don’t stay beyond the program
requirements. M1P1 noted that her sister-in-law looks down on her participation at M1 as “dead-
end”, which saddens M1P1 as she has found something that makes her happy and allows her to
be productive. M1P1 would like to see more women attend and stay on at M1, and perhaps
perceptions would change so others could see M1 as a place to skill up, do useful work, and
appropriate for women as well.
M4 Urban Library Makerspace has a program specifically for refugees and migrants to
disassemble and reassemble the library’s old computers, and install open-source software, and
learn basic internet, office and cyber-safety skills. This is also well attended. These programs
receive participants through partnerships with civil society organisations and government
providers that work with the targeted community and support recruitment into the programs.
These partners work hard to ensure that attendance is close to 50% male, 50% female. M4S2 states:
It’s really important to keep on partnering with organisations that do it as their bread and butter, because they just
articulate really obvious things, like, it’s really hard to get here. And then they offer appropriate support to ensure we do
actually get people through the door, like accompanying people from the train station and the bus stop. This building is
pretty intimidating if you’ve never been here, but our partners support newly arrived people to feel comfortable coming
through the doors.
Figure 5: Refugee attendance at targeted program at M4 Urban Library Makerspace, with 50% of
attendees being female
M5 FemSpace has received a grant from the local city council to offer a series of e-textile
workshops, aimed at women and marginalised genders. M4 Urban Library Makerspace also
benefits from a multi-year grant from a philanthropic trust to run its program for refugees and
migrants. M1 Large eWaste Hub partners with a community o20rganisation and receives federal
government funding for its programs targeting Aboriginal Australians and welfare recipients. M3
New Arrivals Craftspace relies on a range of grants and programmed funding for its work with
refugees and migrants, and M8 operates via a partnership with a community organisation as well.
M9 Small eWaste Hub leverages partnerships with disability service providers to secure
attendance from their target audience.
123:21
Specific programming, strategic partnerships and accessing targeted funding are central to
enabling minorities to cross the threshold into makerspaces. However, even though an
opportunity has been identified to increase makerspace diversity through targeted programming
and partnerships, constraints remain beyond the targeted activities. Staff at M1 Large eWaste Hub
and M4 Urban Library Makerspace expressed a desire to see their targeted programs act as a
bridge, where the participants would move into the broader offerings at the makerspace after
completing their program. However, in both cases, this did not happen in practice. In unpacking
the reasons behind this in interviews with staff, discussions were held around the incentive-based
structure of the targeted programs. With regards to M1, the Aboriginal participants received a
vocational certification at the end of the program with the certification paid for, in addition to
other financial and non-financial incentives. With M4, the participants’ incentive on offer is a free
computer to take home. General programming did not provide incentives beyond learning new
skills or making.
At M3 New Arrivals Craftspace, a makerspace for refugee and migrant women, staff and
participants also acknowledge the incentive-based participation as being key. Engagement is
always stronger for any activities that have income generation potential, through making of
products that the participants can sell to M3, who then on-sell through their retail or wholesale
outlets, or that the participants can sell themselves at markets. M3 also has makerspace activities
that are part of a training program that leads to employment.
A participant at M3 stated:
I made those bracelets, earrings and necklaces and these are my products. I also make scrunchies now. I'm not really
accustomed to go into the city and only my husband drives, so I get up early to catch the bus. I travel well almost two
hours going to one way, going to (M4). But I need to make and sell my products, I need to make the money.
Without the incentive of an income, the participant stated she would not travel to the
makerspace, and she could not find any other opportunity to make and sell her products closer to
home. In addition to considering specific programming and partnerships to attract diverse publics
(and associated funding), makerspaces need to consider what incentives will ensure retention of
participants.
Makerspaces are often located in central locations, rather than the urban fringes where refugee
and migrant women are located. These women are often resource and time constrained, inhibiting
travel. Staff at M4 discussed that the partnership model could be extended, leveraging a mobile
‘train the trainer’ practice that they had previously leveraged to reach regional communities (but
in this instance not refugee and migrant specific). M4S2 stated:
We did have the remit to go mobile for a bit. We did go pretty far afield and delivered workshops. We called them train
the trainer workshops. The issue, I guess, was being able to follow up, its difficult. It’s just not what the (M4) team
restructured to do. We would put computers on pallets and ship them up, after the training. I mean, the regional freight
thing, that is what libraries do, they send stuff out all over the place. Yeah, it was a thing for a while. That kind of stopped
after restructuring and the focus became just on this city building and not on the outreach.”
M4S1, in a separate interview, concurred:
My ideal scenario would be, we’ve trained up facilitators, or we could continue to train facilitators, and we get the gear
for them. Then (our partner) or whoever would run these programs in community. I think it should be about capacity
building. We’ve built capacity with our partner to reach a stage where they could do that.”
M3 New Arrivals Makerspace has trialed a mobile makerspace model. They partner with local
councils or community organisations in urban fringe and regional locations, and drive a van out
to deliver making workshops for a day or two. However, this model again depends on a
centralized delivery by the makerspace itself, and does not allow for ongoing delivery in such
locations. A train the trainer model with community partners would enable better scalability for
ongoing delivery. A Filipino participant at M3, would prefer if M3 came out to her urban fringe
location, as it takes her 2 hours to travel in to M3. She explains that if M3 was able to deliver in
her location, not only travel constraints would be overcome, but trust issues as well. M3P1 states:
The members of my community here, it’s very diverse. They also have their own community, they have the Indian
community, the West African community, the Malaysian community, they have it, you know. If (M3) can bring it here,
they can spread it to their community. Yeah, it’s not easy to invite them (to travel to the central metropolitan location),
because they think maybe they cannot be trusted. They don’t belong to your group and you don’t know them but it’s
easy, when you see a person to say “come, let’s go (to M3)”, but you know, they’re also very careful here in Australia.
You’re very careful also, associating with other people, but if you are there in your group, you know, we become friends
with them, we can easily bring them and spread it to community if (M3) was here, where we are. The women, they go to
the community centers here. The community centers are best. If (M3) worked in the community centers here, they (the
refugee and migrant women) will learn they learn here, this is a good organization actually, it's very good, especially for
multicultural women.
4.4 Understanding the intersectional identities of women who seek to enter

makerspaces
This section is not presented as barriers and opportunities, but rather a collection of identity-
based themes that emerged when interviewing female staff and participants in the makerspaces.
While the focus of the research was under-resourced women of colour, learnings emerged
regarding older women and marginalised genders and sexualities, and the collective needs for
these women at the intersectional margins for a safe space. In understanding these aspects of
identity, makerspaces can better tailor their practices to meet the needs of women at the margins.
4.4.1 Refugee and migrant women.
M8 Knitting Migrants offers refugee and migrant women a place to learn to knit as well as practice
English with host community volunteers, in a welcoming, feminine environment. M3 New
Arrivals Craftspace offers refugee and migrant women a place to learn to craft, sew and crochet,
while simultaneously learning English and building confidence to navigate Australian society, as
well as offering the opportunity to on-sell any products the participants make. While some
refugees that were observed discussed their crafting culture they participated in at refugee camps
(such as traditional embroidery undertaken by Karen women, an ethnic minority from Myanmar
who had fled to Thailand based refugee camps before coming to Australia), many women also
expressed they did not have a particular background or interest in craft or any related ‘traditional’
female making activities. These women also indicated they would not have participated in
knitting or making such craft items, but for the community and opportunities the makerspace
environment brought to them. The underlying assumption that all refugee and migrant women
will connect with crafting activities in makerspaces needs to be challenged, and further
opportunities need to be presented to these women to gain the social and cultural benefits of a
makerspace while undertaking a variety of technical makerspace activities that aren’t gendered.
Access to technology, internet affordability and digital literacy was a recurrent theme in
talking to staff at M3 and M4 Urban Library Makerspace. An Eritrean refugee from a civil society
organization that helps settle newly arrived refugees in Australia, and partners with M4 on their
refugee specific program explained:
When you come from a refugee camp, you have had nothing. You have never seen a computer or a phone. You arrive in
Australia with very little. It’s very challenging for you to control for your children from social media harm in a new
country. And mothers especially, without any other support, single mothers come with children and have no idea. When
the children come they are so excited, they touch the computers, they spend time on social media and actually it drives
them to new directions. Mothers need to learn to protect them to be safe online, from hackers, from scammers, from
sexual abuse, it could be many, many bad things happen.
123:23
However, it was acknowledged by M4 staff that the mothers themselves never attended their
specialist refugee programs to build technology skills. The single mothers would send their older
teenagers, usually aged 17 – 19, to attend and learn how to use computers and bring them home.
The mothers would not learn about cyber-safety unless their own children taught them. Staff at
M4 said language was probably one barrier preventing mothers from attending, and the need to
translate materials and have translators. They also acknowledged that the timing of the programs,
from 4:30 – 6:30pm, would not suit mothers with younger children, but simultaneously this timing
did work for teenagers to come in after high school or vocational training programs. This issue
meant the program was attended by men, teenage boys and girls, but not women. A quote on the
wall of M4, pictured below, focuses on the importance of universal access to computers and any
form of hands-on education. However, the timing of its programs was excluding adult women.
Figure 6: Quote on the wall at M4 Urban Library Makerspace on ‘Access’
In contrast, M3 New Arrivals Craftspace tailors its delivery to training refugee women on how
to use computers and other devices, and to build their digital literacy. Due to the pandemic,
refugee women were motivated to engage with the makerspace online, by watching live classes
on craft making and sewing, in order to break their isolation due to lockdowns. In engaging in
this way, the mothers reported a keen interest to build their computer and phone skills, and that
online engagement worked better when also looking after young children at home. In fact,
participants who were novices to making (including craft-based skills), saw the main benefit as
the digital skills acquired, rather than crafting. M3P2, a recent migrant from the Philippines,
states:
I never had time to sew or crochet when I was younger, I was too busy with children, parents, taking care of the house,
and work. I enjoyed my work, I wasn’t interested in craft. And now my children have moved out, dad has passed. Because
of (M3), I’ve learnt a lot of things. To use WhatsApp, the iHub, online learning. I never imagined I could learn computer
skills, this has been so important for me.
Further, at both M3 New Arrivals Craftspace and M8 Knitting Migrants, the first author
engaged in informal conversations with migrant women who were well qualified, but due to
limited English as well as their qualifications not being recognized by the Australian government,
found themselves unemployed in Australia. In the case of M8, the knitting classes were a way to
connect with the host community and other migrants and build English skills, but many women
felt frustrated by their inability to secure meaningful work in Australia in line with their
qualifications and experience from their country of origin. Women with tertiary degrees,
including engineering and architecture, discussed working as cleaners or in hospitality to make
ends meet. At M3, similar stories were presented. Given the positive spirit of the M3 environment,
women discussed their new careers as “entrepreneurs” in Australia, making and selling products
such as earrings and tote bags to the makerspace, but on further questioning about what their
ideal scenario would be, many women admitted their entrepreneurship was a result of necessity,
rather than aligned with their true aspirations to enter formal employment in line with their
qualifications. They believed that a venue that would allow them to engage in a broader set of
skills, including electronics, computing and digital fabrication, would increase their Australia
based experiences and strengthen their CVs and job prospects. One engineer migrant, from Chile,
discussed how she pursued and secured staff role at M3 to improve their production processes of
the craft items for sale. However, she said that although she had carved out this opportunity for
herself, she knew of many migrant women who had not been able to find a way to apply their
tertiary skills in Australia.
4.4.2 Older generations had to make to live.
Female participants at M2 Elders Craftspace, aged between 60 – 80, reported the necessity to make
from a young age. They expressed frustration with today’s culture of packet mixes and plug in
machines, which don’t require people to think, not being able to work out problems because no
one knows how something works. M2P1 explained:
In your alternator, we used to have what they call brushes and they used to spin, and sometimes they’d stick. So I had a
hammer and when the car wouldn’t start I’d get out and bash it with a hammer and the car would start. So you know,
this is what we did in those days. Whereas today, everything comes packaged, your read the instructions, oh you plug it
in. I was never going to be a scientist, but I knew how things worked, and I’d ask, how do you do that, but kids aren’t
taught that now. People can now just ask computers how to do everything, and they don’t need to retain any knowledge.
They can just ask the computer over and over again.
Participants across M2 explained that they continued to do craft in the makerspace to stay in
touch with their making roots. M2S1 talked about her isolation growing up in the bush, and how
shops simply were not available, so everything was homemade, including clothing. M2P1 began
knitting as a child, and was learning to crochet at M2. However, she saw herself as different to
the other participants in the space. She described herself as ‘butch’, with her interest in more
‘masculine’ skills being unique when she was a girl, young woman and even now. She explained
that even today, she still didn’t have anywhere she could go to practice or learn mechanical skills.
She said she was often told to “shut up” because she often asked questions on how to do things
in the male domain.
4.4.3 Fleeing gender-based violence leads to a need for learning ‘masculine’ skills.
While simultaneously crafting, two interview subjects at M2 Elders Craftspace discussed their
experiences with sexual violence. The interview structure did not seek to address such matters,
but in discussing gender roles, both women, independently, articulated that they would like to
talk about this as part of their identity.
M2S1 described being raped by her father as a child, as was her sister and mother. She said
that making, be it crafting or cooking, always made her feel calm. It was an outlet for her as a
child and continued to be to this day.
M2P1 shared that one week after her mother died, she was pack raped by seven men at age 14.
Her father took her to the police station. The police took her into a room by herself, stood over
and call her a slut, and told her she enjoyed it and asked for it. No further action was taken, and
123:25
M2P1 said she became withdrawn and introverted. She got married at age 21 and found herself in
an abusive relationship with a man who was physically and psychologically violent.
For both women, they said these traumatic experiences also resulted in a need for self-reliance,
including the ability to navigate traditionally male roles and activities, particularly with car and
house maintenance and financial management of the households. The women also valued the safe
space that a female only makerspace offered, where they could freely discuss their trauma
amongst other women who would empathise or sympathise. They expressed a lot of frustration
at the lack of safe places for women to learn holistic life skills and said they haven’t seen this
change over their lifetimes.
At M3 New Arrivals Craftspace, refugee and migrant women also slowly build trust with the
staff and volunteers, and over time, disclose any gender-based violence occurring at home. These
women are extremely vulnerable, in a new country, with limited English, limited community and
knowledge of support services, resulting in extreme levels of dependence on the perpetrator. The
decision to disclose domestic violence comes at a time when the women realise that M3 staff and
volunteers are in a position to access the right services and support to enable the independence
that the woman needs, such as access to a safe house and other basics to transition their living
situation. However, M3 does not offer opportunities for women to build more ‘hands-on’ skills
that women may have relied on their partner or male relative for, such as house maintenance.
Makerspaces offer the strong potential to be a venue to skill women up for independence in all
senses.
4.4.4 Sexuality and Gender Roles.
In two makerspaces, the staff and participants talked about their sexuality and gender roles. M5S1
identified as non-binary but used she/her pronouns and talked about how she had deliberately
created a safe space for women, but also people who identify as women or non-binary to enjoy
the space. In advertising workshops at M5 FemSpace, S1 seeks to ensure that they are advertised
as open to ‘genders that are marginalized’. M5S1 also offers the chance for participants to select
their pronouns in application forms and checks with participants on their preferred pronouns
when entering M5 for the first time. M5S1 explains how M5 has become popular with trans youth
who had transitioned to being female:
I did an intro to electronics workshop and I did a live code meetup, using Tidal Cycles to make electronic music. But this
one young girl she was 18, years old when she came and just took to live coding. She is trans. She just constantly blows
me away how talented she is. So we started doing the live code meetups, and we started putting on gigs through (M5) and
without publicly saying, it's ended up like actually mostly trans kids playing because they’ve got word it’s a safe space.
Where the person hasn't played before, I think giving someone their first gig, sort of going, Oh come on, just play, just do
it like, encouraging them or hassling them a bit is really valuable. And so yeah, so, basically we had like a queer noise
night, which I'm pretty happy about too.
Over the course of the interview and discussing gender roles, M1P2 chose to disclose her
sexuality:
Traditionally, I think my mom and dad both had very patriarchal and very gender binary roles, but I'm actually queer, so
I have really changed the way that they think of that and having had same sex relationships, and really, and studying
social work and looking at social justice and looking at gender equality, I've really pushed their thinking in different ways.
When I was growing up, my brother got asked to come and look at the car with my dad, and then I would go well why
aren't you asking me, like, I'm gonna have a look at this. I mean, naturally I don't care about cars, but it was kind of like
a rage, yeah. If they're going out on the boat, well, why am I not going out in the boat, that's not a boy role, that's just a
role.
M1P2 then went onto reflect on what sexuality and gender expression means in the context of
engaging in M1 Large eWaste Hub:
So when I came here and having other queer friends who were maybe more aligned to some of the work that's done here,
I wondered why there weren't more women in this role. Yeah, who are interested, I know lots of women who are interested
in like four-wheel drives and all that kind of mechanical, electronic stuff. Yeah, but they weren't represented at [M1]. I
have the privilege of passing, I guess is a language that would be used. My partner is a trans masculine person so they're
very masculine, they have much more discrimination in workplace and training and assumptions being made about them
than I do. If I didn't disclose, people just assume that I'm heterosexual. And in that it can have its impact as well, so I
constantly feel like I have to come out all the time. So I have to explain myself often if I choose to. And when I don't feel
safe to, then I feel a little bit trapped in the fact that I'm not telling people who I really am and presenting myself and my
authentic version so it's kind of a seesaw. I'm very careful about the way that I disclose, because I would never want to
feel like I am being discriminated against and I guess I'm a little bit wary of that.
M1P2 discussed how trans-masculine people, like her partner, would feel unsafe in M1, due to
the lack of education and understanding by heterosexual cis-gender men who dominated the
space. She also discussed how queer women who enjoy the activities of the makerspace, including
electronics and mechanics, would also not feel safe. She said that amongst her community, they
did not know of any safe spaces to go which would enable them to engage in makerspace
activities. M1 Large eWaste Hub is missing out on talent and participants who are interested in
their activities but aren’t cis-gendered or heterosexual.
5. DISCUSSION
Despite an increased emphasis in CSCW literature on improving diversity [35] and engaging
makers at the margins [64,79], including considering gendered making activities [4] and women
[15,26,48], there is a gap in the research. The focus in Western societies is frequently on women
who are on a university pathway in STEM [43,50,75], or established in a crafting guild [58,62] or
elders craft group [78], or as an artist[14], or are situated in a developing country context [56].
There is an absence of literature into the lack of racially diverse women in makerspaces in
Western contexts, and specifically how to enable their access. In this paper, we have described
our 21-month long fieldwork at nine makerspaces. All staff of the seven makerspaces that don’t
have women of colour participating, expressed the desire to increase their involvement, but felt
at a loss as to how. (It is noted for clarity that three spaces have refugee and migrants
participating, but M4 Urban Library Makerspace is failing to attract adult women thus only M3
New Arrivals Craftspace and M8 Knitting Migrants are successful in this regard, being dedicated
to serving this group.) In reporting on the interviews, ethnographic observations and desk review
of policies and collateral for marketing, training and networking, we have aimed to highlight how
all aspects of the enabling environment, be it structural, physical, social, cultural, emotional or
resourcing can encode or decode bias, and thus constrain or enable the involvement of women at
the intersectional margins. In examining the practices of the two makerspaces that are specifically
for refugee and migrant women, we discuss the constraining and ‘gendered’ practices that limit
the potential of these women to engage in a broader range of making activity, as well as lessons
on constraining environments for older women and marginalized genders and sexualities. We
outline how the benefits of makerspace movement could be significantly expanded if women at
the intersectional margins were included.
5.1 Encoding and Decoding Exclusion

Previous research finds that open door policies aren’t sufficient to attract novices or establish a
community. The same research suggests that open days can be successful if arranged around an
activity to make something, with workshops even more successful [22]. This research agrees that
open-door policies are far from sufficient but adds a cadre of recommendations to improve
accessibility of makerspaces, for general and diverse publics, with a focus on women, and under-
resourced women of colour.
123:27
Before women even make it to the door, makerspaces need to consider how they present
themselves on their websites and marketing materials. These considerations must extend into
content and imagery used in the makerspace itself, and this must be accompanied by clear,
inclusive language that does not risk misinterpreation as to who is included and who is not. For
example, it is possible, though not yet researched, that M5 FemSpace’s positioning as inclusive of
marginalized genders may unintentionally be leading to the exclusion of women of colour, who
are less familiar with this language or uncertain how to navigate an open and inclusive
environment for the LGTBQIA+ community due to lack of experience or discriminatory cultural
and social norms. Clear representation in marketing materials that is inclusive of women of
colour along with marginalised genders, and more deliberate statements of inclusivity of all
targeted groups could decode unintentional exclusion. If makerspaces could audit their websites,
marketing, induction and training materials to ensure a diversity of representation, women of
colour considering attending the space may feel more welcome and inclined to attend, as well as
intrinsically challenging their innate identities as to what they can do and are capable of.
However, bridging an intersectional web of marginalisation across a diversity of groups will
remain complex and require significant nuance and tailoring.
Further, M5S1 noted that the process to register to attend a makerspace needs to be accessible
in itself. She discussed how other makerspace registration processes for induction workshops on
equipment gets snapped up, and she observed by mostly men and postulated on possible reasons
why. M6 Open Member Lab, another makerspace that was ‘open-door’ but almost exclusively
male in membership, was observed to require an online engagement to locate someone to induct
on equipment, which was very difficult to arrange and timing of inductors in the space did not
necessarily match with the novice’s availability.
The makerspaces that actively engage women present a clean, ordered environment. Those
that are exclusively focused on women also featured bright colours and décor, and facilities for
making tea, coffee and food items such as cake. These findings align with those by Fox et al. in
studying feminist hackerspaces in the United States, which these researchers describe as the
Aesthetics of Domesticity [28], which they describe to include comfortable furniture, soft lighting,
accent colours, refreshments and coziness. Fox et al. also report on efforts the members make to
ensure that the space is physically inviting by reducing clutter, organising the space using a
labelling system and ensuring cleanliness, quoting one member to say “clutter can also be an
accessibility thing.” Fox et al. state “In this sense, members began to hack not only their existing
spaces, but also a dirty and chaotic garage aesthetic long associated with masculine do-it yourself
culture”.
Fox et al. also presented findings on the physical obscurity of the feminist hackerspaces they
studied, in order to control access [28]. In addition, they discussed a vetting of members, to ensure
an alignment with feminist values and moral accountability to ensure a safe space, resulting in
the spaces being exclusively accessible to white women already skilled in STEM, and presumably
with social capital in those networks to pass the vetting process. However, in this study’s context,
makerspaces in highly centralized, easily accessible locations, remained inaccessible to under-
resourced women of colour without STEM skills or social capital. This was found to be due to the
hours involved in travelling to a city center from an urban fringe location, uncertainty on how to
get to the space from public transport stops, as well as intimidation to enter such a building. M4
Urban Library Makerspace supported access by sending trusted partner organization staff to
accompany novice refugee and migrant participants from public transport stops to the
makerspace location. Hedditch also addresses accessibility issues in her autoethnography on
makerspace access for herself, as a woman of colour, highlighting the importance of good lighting
after dark and the need for safely accessible toilet facilities [33]. The timing of sessions, if after
school hours, also rendered M4 inaccessible to adult women. M5 FemSpace sought to overcome
concerns about childcare by enabling mothers to bring children into the space. M1S1 noted that
this could also be the key to increasing female participation in the space. To contrast, M7 Regional
Library Space and M4 Urban Library Makerspace attracted teenage children but not their mothers.
Rosner has studied feminist hackerspaces that have been established by women with young
children (under 5) [57] to enable a child-friendly venue. At M5, children ages 6 – 12 were observed
in the space, making alongside their mother. This set up seemed to be working for the makerspace
staff, the mother, and other participants, who all remarked how unique and special it was to have
a space where both mothers and children could be involved. Given the variation in needs and
abilities of children at different ages, and what that also means in terms of a mother’s availability
and ways she can engage with her children in a makerspace, much more research is required to
enable specific planning and programming for how children of all ages can be involved in
makerspaces, with their mothers equally involved. For under-resourced women of colour,
affordability is also key. A lack of disposable income means makerspaces need to be near public
transport, and low in cost, both for entry/membership as well as for any costs associated with
structured learning opportunities or accessing materials. Makerspaces may be able to pursue
grants to support under-resourced communities to gain subsidised access.
Digital literacy is also vital to consider. M4S3 noted that many refugees come to Australia
without having interacted with a smart phone or computer prior to arrival. Makerspaces such as
M6 Open Member Lab that rely on online sign ups and navigating forums and wikis to enable
connections with strangers online to set up equipment inductions render the space inaccessible
to under-resourced women of colour. M3 New Arrivals Craftsapce displayed good practice in
working with refugee and migrant women to build their digital literacy and cyber-safety. M5S1
acknowledged that not all women are online, and utilized print-based media such as posters and
art magazines to try reach new members and potential novices to making, but with a focus on the
art community, rather than publications and venues for women of colour. M4S2 also
acknowledged the need for translation, and that it was an unrealized objective of the space.
Female participants in the majority of makerspaces articulated in some form that they needed
to cross a threshold to enter the makerspace, and experienced internalized and external barriers
to do so. The reasons why women entered the makerspaces often differed depending on the
makerspace context, but their entry and ongoing involvement in the space was attributed to the
social scaffolding in place to enable their involvement. M1P2 discussed how important the daily
check-ins of a female staff member were for her to move from a high level of discomfort to a more
settled state. M3P2 revealed how isolated and lonely she had been prior to her involvement with
M3. Many participants spoke of the charisma of the female staff at their makerspace, and how
they made the participants feel welcome, and often sparked inspiration to make and to build
connections with other women in the space, resulting in a feeling of belonging. Several of the
makerspaces studied also relied on volunteers from the community to ensure understanding of
the making activities, but these volunteers were also tasked with checking-in on social issues and
facilitating support. The importance of community, personal well-being and a safe space, has been
observed in literature on women in making and feminist hackerspaces [25,26,28,33,57,78]. Foster
observes that FemHack’s events often opened with a roundtable check-in, during which everyone
shared how they were feeling and expressed their needs, interests, or desires for the coming
session, demonstrating an emphasis on collective care and aid [25]. However, very little attention
is paid in the literature to the specific safety needs of women of colour, and especially migrants
and refugees who face additional traumas, depleted sense of belonging, and additional encoded
bias which stymie their sense of safety.
Women and women of colour will not cross the threshold into makerspaces, without feeling
physically, emotionally, socially, culturally and financially safe to do so – all these factors must
be considered. However, even with the above recommendations in place, this is probably not
sufficient to enable the involvement of under-resourced women of colour. Another key ingredient
is establishing partnerships with community organisations that work with the target participant
group as their “bread and butter”.
123:29
5.2 Building community through partnerships, both in-house and through a hub and
spoke model
M1 Large eWaste Hub and M4 Urban Library Makerspace demonstrated that partnerships were
key to enabling under-resourced people of colour to join their makerspace, although the
participants that joined this way committed to a dedicated, incentive-based program.
The partnership, a dedicated program, the incentive-oriented nature of the program, and the
grant-based funding and thus human resources in place to scaffold support the under-resourced
novice makers provide a helpful model for other makerspaces to replicate. For a feminist
makerspace such as M5, as well as those feminist makerspaces discussed in the work by Fox
[26,28] and Rosner [57,59], partnerships and dedicated programs could be key to enabling a
diverse cohort of makers. A review of HCI and CSCW literature reveals an absence of literature
on the brokerage of partnerships to improve diversity and access for marginalized groups. We
seek to contribute to this concept and indicate the need for further research here. However, our
research indicates that while a successful mechanism for initial crossing of the threshold by
marginlisaed groups, partnerships and dedicated programs are not a silver bullet to sustaining
diversity. Although this mechanism enabled under-resourced people of colour to cross the
threshold into M1 and M4, two key limitations were noted:
1) Adult women were not involved in either program. M1 noted that they had been unable
to successfully retain Aboriginal women in any of their programs to date. M4 noted that
while teenage girls were involved, and this was consistent due to the partner’s
requirement to ensure a 50% female attendance, the male cohort was made up of both men
and teenage boys. Adult women did not attend, and M4S3 speculated this was due to the
timing (4:30- 6:30pm), and the inability of mothers with younger children to undertake the
program at this time. The lack of involvement of women meant risks in terms of cyber-
safety of their teenager, as well as a lack of transfer of skills and resources to a
demographic consistently most likely to miss out.
2) The inability to bridge participants from dedicated programs to other makerspace
trainings, workshops or general use purposes. M4S1 speculated that additional funding
and thus human resource support would be required to create pathways into other
activities, through ongoing mentorship and additional incentives. She talked about the
interest African boys showed in the recording equipment in the makerspace and the
interest girls showed in sewing, but due to the mainstream nature of other inductions, she
had been unable to bridge the participants across.
M3 New Arrivals Craftspace, which is dedicated to refugee and migrant women, is a
community organisation in itself, operating as a not-for-profit, with significant support from
various donors to run its programs. The staff are clear that the refugees and migrant women
involved are incentivised by the need for community and social support, but also predominantly
by the income generation opportunities at M3, where they can produce products that M3 will on-
sell in their retail and wholesale channels. However, M3 participants also noted limitations to
involvement, due to the centralised location and nature of resourcing of M3. To attend M3, many
participants located in urban fringe locations would need to travel for 2 hours by public transport.
M3 had been trialing a mobile makerspace approach, taking a van to the outer suburbs and
regional locations, and leveraging partneships with local community organisations for a venue.
However, this would mean only 1 - 2 days of makerspace activity in the mobile location. M3,
along with other makerspaces, should consider the recommendations of M4 Urban Library
Makerspace. Although constrained by the public library management due to a restructure of
resourcing, and thus unsupported to pursue their own ideas, the staff at M4 discussed that the
key to expanding their program’s reach would be a hub and spoke model where the M4 hub would
train trainers of partner organisations with deep experience with the target communities. M4
would be able to supply the equipment and resources for their program, translated materials, but
the partner could deliver in more accessible locations. If this model was pursued, the timing could
be altered, and childcare provided, to overcome other aspects of the constraining enabling
environment which may foster the involvement of women, including mothers. M3P1 also spoke
about community centers as being key to reaching migrant and refugee women in her area and
recommended M3 partner with her local community center on an ongoing basis, suggesting
another hub and spoke type model.
5.3 Avoid reductionism of identities, interests and capabilities and derive new
benefits
The findings regarding intersecting identities and their relationships with making also bears
further discussion. M2 Elders Craftspace, M3 New Arrivals Craftspace and M8 Knitting Migrants
offer craft-based programs to women. While gendered making activities should be celebrated and
hold legitimate space in the maker movement, offering only craft and related gendered activities
is highly restrictive, for the women, and for the maker movement and open innovation. Older
women in M2, along with migrant women in M3 and M8, expressed a desire for a women friendly
makerspace that would allow them to learn and practice a broader set of skills to enable their
independence and broaden their employment prospects. Further, for marginalized genders,
having binary ‘gendered activities’ and gendered spaces (eg. “a dirty and chaotic garage aesthetic
long associated with masculine do-it yourself culture” or “an aesthetic of domesticity and
coziness”) is causing exclusion. As M1P2 indicated that trans-masculine people would feel unsafe
in M1 Large eWaste Hub, due to the lack of education and understanding by heterosexual cis-
gender men who dominated the space. She also said queer women who would potentially enjoy
the activities of the makerspace, including electronics and mechanics, would also not feel safe.
Similar to older women and women of colour, people from marginalised genders do not have
access to safe place to go to engage in the full spectrum of makerspace activities.
Black feminist literature holds the requirement for a ‘safe space’ as a central tenant to enabling
inclusivity for women who face multiple intersecting oppressions [19,34]. Makerspaces (whether
centralised, mobile, or in a hub and spoke model) could be a safe space for intersectional women
to subvert oppressions that reduce their identities, interests and capabilities. If a makerspace was
consciously established to ensure all dimensions of the enabling environment decode
exclusionary practices and optimise inclusive pathways, the space could be safe and offer multiple
benefits that are yet to be discussed in the literature, due to the lack of scholarship on
intersectional women. Thus far, HCI scholars have documented makerspace benefits along 5 main
themes, being self-directed learning [24,32,36,44,60], open innovation [17,38,53,72,73], democratic
participation [63,70,71,79], wellbeing [78,79] and the community environs maintained through an
ethos of care [76]. However, in offering a safe space to older women, women of colour and
marginalized genders and sexualities, its postulated that the following benefits could also be
realised, as articulated by the participants in this study:
• the provision of a platform for skilling up to be domestically independent and leave a
violent situation
• a therapeutic environment to discuss past traumas with peers, with potential pathways to
appropriate social support facilitated by makerspace staff or volunteers
• a place to practice and utilise skills that remain otherwise inaccesible and under-utilised
as a result of migration, which could strengthen job application prospects
• a safe space for marginalised genders and sexualities to freely explore ‘traditionally
gendered’ activities they have felt excluded from without fear of judgement in a cis-
gendered makerspace.
123:31
M5 FemSpace offers potential for women to break the mold of learning ‘gendered’ skills, by
enabling its participants to segue from craft-based activities into electronics and programming,
through e-textiles. From U.S.A based research and practice, this path is well established as
successful in maker activity for women and people from the LGBTQIA+ community [9–
11,25,41,42,59]. However, the literature, and by extension, makerspaces (at least as observed in
Australia and as admitted by feminist hackerspace founders in the United States) is yet to use e-
textiles to segue women of colour into a broader makerspace skill set. There is room for research
here.
Further, opportunities for women and women of colour should not be restricted to e-textile
pathways in feminist hackerspaces. Mainstream makerspaces, that have open-door policies but
currently only attract men, can benefit from the recommendations herewith, to enter community-
based partnerships and offer specialised pathways to enable accessibility for women in all aspects
of makerspace activity and culture. If mainstream makerspaces can ensure the offering of a
physically, emotionally, and culturally safe space, with appropriate representation, affordability,
scaffolding and social support, and the potential to bring in or make alongside children, then there
is potential to broaden the movement. It may be tempting for mainstream makerspaces to lump
this in the “too hard” basket, but in doing so, it undermines the purpose of the maker movement
itself, to democratise making and foster open innovation. Without pursuing the mechanisms to
improve accessibility for women at the intersectional margins, the maker movement is not only
reductionist for women, but reductionist for itself.
6. CONCLUSION
Makerspaces offer a potential pathway into Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM) skills for refugee and migrant women who experience intersecting oppressions, based on
gender, race, class and lack of education and resources. The absence of women in STEM is well
documented, and global efforts are being made to attract and retain girls into STEM in schools, as
well as to retain women in STEM in tertiary education and the workforce, including through the
utilization of makerspaces. Efforts are also underway to document how to attract novices into
makerspaces, and how to operate makerspaces for marginalised groups, such as women or
refugees. However, there is an absence of research into makerspaces that serve women at the
intersections of identities, facing multiple and compounding constraints including in explicit
aspects of their identity, such as gender, race and class, as well as implicit areas such as a lack of
education, resources and social capital. As a result, there is a lack of makerspaces, and thus
research into enabling the accessibility of makerspaces as a pathway into STEM for under-
resourced women of colour.
This paper finds that there are multiple factors influencing or impeding the pathway into a
makerspace and makes three contributions in order to fill the gap in the research and literature.
Firstly, we have demonstrated how makerspaces encode the involvement of only certain users
(predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of under-resourced
women of colour, and show how makerspaces can decode this exclusion and improve access by
learning from the optimal practices of the makerspaces facilitating such access in this study.
Secondly, we have illustrated the critical importance of partnerships with community
organisations who have deep, ongoing relationships with target communities, and the potential
of a train-the-trainer hub and spoke model with these partners. Finally, we have demonstrated
how the reductionism of identities, capabilities and interests of under-resourced women of colour
constrains their involvement, potential and contribution to the maker-movement and open
innovation. If makerspaces can facilitate an enabling environment appropriate to be inclusive of
women at the margins, the benefits of the maker movement expand substantially.
In leaving women who are the most likely to miss out on all formal institutional opportunities
out of makerspaces as well, their knowledge continues to be excluded and therefore not count.
Real efforts towards equity in STEM and makerspaces must target those most likely to miss out.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the staff and participants at the makerspaces with whom we
engaged for this research, and their generosity in giving time to be interviewed and engage
meaningfully with questions on how to improve access for diverse publics, particularly women
and the intersectional margins. Dr Dhaval Vyas was supported by the Australian Research
Council’s DECRA grant DE180100687.
REFERENCES
[1] Michael Ahmadi, Anne Weibert, Victoria Wenzelmann, Konstantin Aal, Kristian Gäckle, Volker Wulf,
and Nicola Marsden. 2019. Designing for Openness in Making: Lessons Learned from a Digital Project
Week. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Transforming
Communities, ACM, Vienna Austria, 160–171. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3328320.3328376
[2] Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Steven J. Jackson, and Md. Rashidujjaman Rifat. 2015. Learning to fix:
knowledge, collaboration and mobile phone repair in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In Proceedings of the Seventh
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, ACM,
Singapore Singapore, 1–10. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2738018
[3] Morgan G. Ames, Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell, Silvia Lindtner, David A. Mellis, and Daniela K.
Rosner. 2014. Making cultures: empowerment, participation, and democracy - or not? In CHI ’14
Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Toronto Ontario Canada, 1087–
1092. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2579405
[4] Tawfiq Ammari, Sarita Schoenebeck, and Silvia Lindtner. 2017. The Crafting of DIY Fatherhood. In
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
(CSCW ’17), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1109–1122.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998270
[5] Karlin Associates. 2012. An Independent Profile of Makers at the Forefront of Hardware Innovation.
DOI:https://cdn.makezine.com/make/sales/Maker-Market-Study.pdf
[6] Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan. 2019. Twinning iterative design with community cultural
wealth: Toward a locally-grounded, expansive maker culture. In Proceedings of FabLearn 2019, ACM,
New York NY USA, 168–171. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3311890.3311918
[7] Ingo Karl Bosse and Bastian Pelka. 2020. Peer production by persons with disabilities – opening 3D-
printing aids to everybody in an inclusive MakerSpace. Journal of enabling technologies 14, 1 (2020),
41–53. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1108/JET-07-2019-0037
[8] Beth Buchholz, Kate Shively, Kylie Peppler, and Karen Wohlwend. 2014. Hands On, Hands Off:
Gendered Access in Crafting and Electronics Practices. Mind, Culture, and Activity 21, 4 (October 2014),
278–297. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2014.939762
[9] Leah Buechley and Michael Eisenberg. 2009. Fabric PCBs, electronic sequins, and socket buttons:
techniques for e-textile craft. Pers Ubiquit Comput 13, 2 (February 2009), 133–150.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-007-0181-0
[10] Leah Buechley and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2010. LilyPad in the wild: how hardware’s long tail is
supporting new engineering and design communities. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on
Designing Interactive Systems - DIS ’10, ACM Press, Aarhus, Denmark, 199.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1858171.1858206
[11] Leah Buechley and Hannah Perner-Wilson. 2012. Crafting technology: Reimagining the processes,
materials, and cultures of electronics. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 19, 3 (October 2012), 1–21.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2362364.2362369
123:33
[12] Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan. 2018. A Longitudinal Study of Equity-Oriented STEM-Rich
Making Among Youth From Historically Marginalized Communities. American educational research
journal 55, 4 (2018), 761–800. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831218758668
[13] Angela Calabrese Barton and Edna Tan. 2020. Beyond Equity as Inclusion: A Framework of “Rightful
Presence” for Guiding Justice-Oriented Studies in Teaching and Learning. Educational Researcher 49, 6
(August 2020), 433–440. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20927363
[14] Nathalia Campreguer França, Dorothé Smit, Stefanie Wuschitz, and Verena Fuchsberger. 2021. The
Women* Who Made It: Experiences from Being a Woman* at a Maker Festival. Sustainability 13, 16
(January 2021), 9361. DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169361
[15] Tara Capel, Bernd Ploderer, Margot Brereton, and Meg O’Connor Solly. 2021. The Making of Women:
Creating Trajectories for Women’s Participation in Makerspaces. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5,
CSCW1 (April 2021), 1–38. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3449109
[16] Devon W. Carbado, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Vickie M. Mays, and Barbara Tomlinson. 2013.
INTERSECTIONALITY: Mapping the Movements of a Theory1. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research
on Race 10, 2 (ed 2013), 303–312. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X13000349
[17] Kayla Carucci and Kentaro Toyama. 2019. Making Well-being: Exploring the Role of Makerspaces in
Long Term Care Facilities. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, ACM, Glasgow Scotland Uk, 1–12. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300699
[18] Cerna, Katerina and Müller, Claudia. 2021. Making online participatory design work: Understanding
the digital ecologies of older adults. (2021). DOI:https://doi.org/10.18420/ECSCW2021_N22
[19] Patricia Hill Collins. 1991. Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of
empowerment / Patricia Hill Collins. Routledge, New York, NY.
[20] Lucia Corsini and James Moultrie. 2020. Humanitarian makerspaces in crisis-affected communities.
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing: AIEDAM (2020).
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0890060420000098
[21] Don Gibbs Davis. 2017. Novice Behavior in a Makerspace: Pragmatic Pathways to Shaping CS Identity.
ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1906287060?pq-origsite=primo
[22] Katrien Dreessen and Selina Schepers. 2018. Three strategies for engaging non-experts in a fablab. In
Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, ACM, Oslo Norway, 482–
493. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3240167.3240195
[23] Danielle P. Espino, Seung B. Lee, Lauren Van Tress, Toby T. Baker, and Eric R. Hamilton. 2020. Analysis
of U.S., Kenyan, and Finnish Discourse Patterns in a Cross-Cultural Digital Makerspace Learning
Community Through the IBE-UNESCO Global Competences Framework. RESSAT 5, 1 (January 2020),
86–100. DOI:https://doi.org/10.46303/ressat.05.01.5
[24] Rachel Fiore and Marjorie Cooper. 2019. Using the Maker Movement to Forge a Middle-School
Collaboration to Support English Language Learners. Science Scope 43, 1 (2019), 28.
[25] Ellen K. Foster. 2019. Claims of equity and expertise: Feminist interventions in the design of DIY
communities and cultures. Design Issues 35, 4 (2019), 33–41. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00562
[26] Sarah Fox. 2015. Feminist Hackerspaces as Sites for Feminist Design. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM
SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, ACM, Glasgow United Kingdom, 341–342.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2757226.2764771
[27] Sarah Fox, Amanda Menking, Stephanie Steinhardt, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, and Shaowen Bardzell.
2017. Imagining Intersectional Futures. (2017), 387–393. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3022198.3022665
[28] Sarah Fox, Rachel Rose Ulgado, and Daniela Rosner. 2015. Hacking Culture, Not Devices: Access and
Recognition in Feminist Hackerspaces. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer
Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, ACM, Vancouver BC Canada, 56–68.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675223
[29] David Green and David Kirk. 2018. Open Design, Inclusivity and the Intersections of Making. In
Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM, Hong Kong China, 173–186.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196718
[30] Thilina Halloluwa, Pradeepa Bandara, Hakim Usoof, and Dhaval Vyas. 2018. Value for money: co-
designing with underbanked women from rural Sri Lanka. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian
Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, ACM, Melbourne Australia, 63–73.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3292147.3292157
[31] Foad Hamidi and Melanie Baljko. 2015. Makers with a Cause: Fabrication, Reflection and Community
Collaboration. In Distributed, Ambient, and Pervasive Interactions, Norbert Streitz and Panos
Markopoulos (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 49–61. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-
3-319-20804-6_5
[32] Sang Yeal Han, Jaeheung Yoo, Hangjung Zo, and Andrew P. Ciganek. 2017. Understanding makerspace
continuance: A self-determination perspective. Telematics and Informatics 34, 4 (2017), 184–195.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2017.02.003
[33] Sonali Hedditch and Dhaval Vyas. 2021. A Gendered Perspective on Making from an Autoethnography
in Makerspaces. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1887–
1901. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462015
[34] Patricia Hill Collins. 2016. Intersectionality / Patricia Hill Collins, Sirma Bilge. Polity Press, Cambridge,
UK ; Malden, MA.
[35] Julia Himmelsbach, Stephanie Schwarz, Cornelia Gerdenitsch, Beatrix Wais-Zechmann, Jan Bobeth,
and Manfred Tscheligi. 2019. Do We Care About Diversity in Human Computer Interaction: A
Comprehensive Content Analysis on Diversity Dimensions in Research. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Glasgow Scotland Uk, 1–16.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300720
[36] Avneet Hira and Morgan M. Hynes. 2018. People, Means, and Activities: A Conceptual Framework for
Realizing the Educational Potential of Makerspaces. Education Research International 2018, (2018).
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6923617
[37] Anja-Lisa Hirscher. 2022. ‘Hey, I can do that too!’: How skilful participation thrives in a co-sewing
café. CoDesign 18, 2 (April 2022), 243–259. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2020.1823994
[38] Alexis Hope, Catherine D’Ignazio, Josephine Hoy, Rebecca Michelson, Jennifer Roberts, Kate Krontiris,
and Ethan Zuckerman. 2019. Hackathons as Participatory Design: Iterating Feminist Utopias. In
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Glasgow
Scotland Uk, 1–14. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300291
[39] Steven J. Jackson, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, and Md. Rashidujjaman Rifat. 2014. Learning, innovation,
and sustainability among mobile phone repairers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In Proceedings of the 2014
conference on Designing interactive systems, ACM, Vancouver BC Canada, 905–914.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598576
[40] Jennifer Jacobs and Leah Buechley. 2013. Codeable objects: computational design and digital
fabrication for novice programmers. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, ACM, Paris France, 1589–1598. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466211
[41] Lee Jones, Meghrik Isagholi, Elizabeth Meiklejohn, Snow Xu, Kara Truskolawski, Jessica Hayon, Grace
Jun, Pinar Guvenc, and Christina Mallon-Michalove. 2020. Hack-Ability: Using Co-Design to Develop
an Accessible Toolkit for Adding Pockets to Garments. In Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design
Conference 2020 - Participation(s) Otherwise - Volume 2, ACM, Manizales Colombia, 95–99.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3384772.3385124
[42] Lee Jones, Sara Nabil, Amanda McLeod, and Audrey Girouard. 2020. Wearable Bits: Scaffolding
Creativity with a Prototyping Toolkit for Wearable E-textiles. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth
International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, ACM, Sydney NSW
Australia, 165–177. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3374954
123:35
[43] Anna Keune, Kylie A. Peppler, and Karen E. Wohlwend. 2019. Recognition in makerspaces: Supporting
opportunities for women to “make” a STEM career. Computers in human behavior 99, (2019), 368–380.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.05.013
[44] Beth Kolko, Alexis Hope, Brook Sattler, Kate MacCorkle, and Behzod Sirjani. 2012. Hackademia:
building functional rather than accredited engineers. In Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design
Conference on Research Papers: Volume 1 - PDC ’12, ACM Press, Roskilde, Denmark, 129.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2347635.2347654
[45] Neha Kumar and Naveena Karusala. 2019. Intersectional computing. interactions 26, 2 (February 2019),
50–54. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3305360
[46] Silvia Lindtner, Shaowen Bardzell, and Jeffrey Bardzell. 2016. Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of
Making: HCI After Technosolutionism. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, ACM, San Jose California USA, 1390–1402.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858506
[47] Cayley Macarthur, Caroline Wong, and Mark Hancock. 2019. Makers and quilters: Investigating
opportunities for improving gender-imbalanced maker groups. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-
Computer Interaction 3, CSCW (2019).
[48] Cayley MacArthur, Caroline Wong, and Mark Hancock. 2019. Makers and Quilters: Investigating
Opportunities for Improving Gender-Imbalanced Maker Groups. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3,
CSCW (November 2019), 1–24. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3359131
[49] David A. Mellis, Leah Buechley, Mitchel Resnick, and Björn Hartmann. 2016. Engaging Amateurs in
the Design, Fabrication, and Assembly of Electronic Devices. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference
on Designing Interactive Systems, ACM, Brisbane QLD Australia, 1270–1281.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2901790.2901833
[50] Johanna Okerlund, Madison Dunaway, Celine Latulipe, David Wilson, and Eric Paulos. 2018. Statement
Making: A Maker Fashion Show Foregrounding Feminism, Gender, and Transdisciplinarity. In
Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM, Hong Kong China, 187–199.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196754
[51] Chaeah Park and Pirkko Siklander. 2018. Triggering Women’s Interest in Digital Fabrication. In
Proceedings of the Conference on Creativity and Making in Education, ACM, Trondheim Norway, 95–96.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3213818.3213831
[52] Hannah Perner-Wilson and Leah Buechley. 2010. Making textile sensors from scratch. In Proceedings
of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction - TEI ’10, ACM
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 349. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1709886.1709972
[53] Irene Posch, Daniela K. Rosner, Amit Zoran, Ozge Subasi, Raune Frankjaer, and Tania Pérez-Bustos.
2019. Troubling innovation: Craft and computing across boundaries. Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems - Proceedings (2019), 1–8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3299010
[54] Yolanda A. Rankin and Jakita O. Thomas. 2019. Straighten up and fly right: rethinking intersectionality
in HCI research. interactions 26, 6 (October 2019), 64–68. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3363033
[55] Yolanda A. Rankin and Jakita O. Thomas. 2020. The intersectional experiences of blackwomen in
computing. Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE 1
(2020), 199–205. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366873
[56] Upul Anuradha Rathnayake, Thilina Halloluwa, Pradeepa Bandara, Medhani Narasinghe, and Dhaval
Vyas. 2021. Exploring Entrepreneurial Activities in Marginalized Widows: A Case from Rural Sri
Lanka. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW1 (April 2021), 1–24.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3449216
[57] Daniela K Rosner and Sarah E Fox. 2016. Legacies of craft and the centrality of failure in a mother-
operated hackerspace. New Media & Society 18, 4 (April 2016), 558–580.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816629468
[58] Daniela K. Rosner and Kimiko Ryokai. 2009. Reflections on craft: probing the creative process of
everyday knitters. In Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition - C&C ’09,
ACM Press, Berkeley, California, USA, 195. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1640233.1640264
[59] Daniela K. Rosner, Samantha Shorey, Brock R. Craft, and Helen Remick. 2018. Making Core Memory:
Design Inquiry into Gendered Legacies of Engineering and Craftwork. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Montreal QC Canada, 1–13.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174105
[60] Rachel Kaminski Sanders, Theodore J Kopcha, Kalianne L Neumann, Kristin Brynteson, Carrie Bishop,
Rachel Kaminski Sanders, and Carrie Bishop. 2019. Maker ’ s Workshop : a Framework to Support
Learning through Making are negotiated and renegotiated multiple times over the course. TechTrends
(2019), 386–396.
[61] Ari Schlesinger, W. Keith Edwards, and Rebecca E. Grinter. 2017. Intersectional HCI: Engaging identity
through gender, race, and class. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings 2017-
May, (2017), 5412–5427. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025766
[62] Sherry Schofield-Tomschin and Mary A. Littrell. 2001. Textile Handcraft Guild Participation: A
Conduit to Successful Aging. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 19, 2 (March 2001), 41–51.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X0101900201
[63] JooYoung Seo. 2019. Is the Maker Movement Inclusive of ANYONE?: Three Accessibility
Considerations to Invite Blind Makers to the Making World. TechTrends 63, 5 (September 2019), 514–
520. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00377-3
[64] Oliver Stickel, Dominik Hornung, Konstantin Aal, Markus Rohde, and Volker Wulf. 2015. 3D Printing
with Marginalized Children—An Exploration in a Palestinian Refugee Camp. In ECSCW 2015:
Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 19-23 September
2015, Oslo, Norway, Nina Boulus-Rødje, Gunnar Ellingsen, Tone Bratteteig, Margunn Aanestad and
Pernille Bjørn (eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 83–102.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20499-4_5
[65] Angelika Strohmayer and Janis Meissner. 2017. "We had tough times, but we’ve sort of sewn our way
through it: the partnership quilt. XRDS 24, 2 (December 2017), 48–51.
[66] Edna Tan and Angela Calabrese Barton. 2007. Unpacking science for all through the lens of identities-
in-practice: the stories of Amelia and Ginny. Cultural studies of science education 3, 1 (2007), 43–71.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-007-9076-7
[67] Edna Tan and Angela Calabrese Barton. 2017. Designing for rightful presence in STEM-rich making:
Community ethnography as pedagogy. In Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on Creativity and
Fabrication in Education, ACM, Stanford CA USA, 1–8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3141798.3141807
[68] Edna Tan and Angela Calabrese Barton. 2018. Towards Critical Justice: Exploring Intersectionality in
Community-based STEM-rich Making with Youth from Non-dominant Communities. Equity &
excellence in education 51, 1 (2018), 48–61. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2018.1439786
[69] Edna Tan, Angela Calabrese Barton, Hosun Kang, and Tara O’Neill. 2013. Desiring a career in STEM-
related fields: How middle school girls articulate and negotiate identities-in-practice in science. Journal
of research in science teaching 50, 10 (2013), 1143–1179. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21123
[70] Theresa Jean Tanenbaum, Amanda M. Williams, Audrey Desjardins, and Karen Tanenbaum. 2013.
Democratizing technology: pleasure, utility and expressiveness in DIY and maker practice. In
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Paris France,
2603–2612. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2481360
[71] Jennyfer Lawrence Taylor, Dhaval Vyas, and Tony Sharp. 2017. Diversity and coherence in a
hackerspace for people from a low socioeconomic community. In Proceedings of the 29th Australian
Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, ACM, Brisbane Queensland Australia, 238–247.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3152771.3152797
[72] Nick Taylor, Loraine Clarke, and Katerina Gorkovenko. 2017. Community Inventor Days. 2, 01 (2017),
1201–1212. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064723
123:37
[73] Nick Taylor, Ursula Hurley, and Philip Connolly. 2016. Making Community: The Wider Role of
Makerspaces in Public Life. CHI 2016: (Re)understanding Making: A Critical Broadening of Maker
Cultures (2016), 1415–1425.
[74] Jakita O. Thomas, Nicole Joseph, Arian Williams, Chan’tel Crum, and Jamika Burge. 2018. Speaking
Truth to Power: Exploring the Intersectional Experiences of Black Women in Computing. In 2018
Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT),
IEEE, Baltimore, MD, USA, 1–8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/RESPECT.2018.8491718
[75] Megan Tomko, Melissa W. Alemán, Wendy Newstetter, Robert L. Nagel, and Julie Linsey. 2021.
Participation pathways for women into university makerspaces. Journal of Engineering Education 110,
3 (2021), 700–717. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20402
[76] Austin Toombs, Colin Gray, Guoyang Zhou, and Ann Light. 2018. Appropriated or Inauthentic Care
in Gig-Economy Platforms: A Psycho-linguistic Analysis of Uber and Lyft. In Extended Abstracts of the
2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, Montreal QC Canada, 1–6.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188657
[77] Shirin Vossoughi, Paula K. Hooper, and Meg Escudé. 2016. Making Through the Lens of Culture and
Power: Toward Transformative Visions for Educational Equity. Harvard Educational Review 86, 2 (June
2016), 206–232. DOI:https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.86.2.206
[78] Dhaval Vyas. 2019. Altruism and wellbeing as care work in a craft-based maker culture. Proceedings of
the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, GROUP (2019). DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3361120
[79] Dhaval Vyas and John Vines. 2019. Making at the Margins: Making in an Under-resourced e-Waste
Recycling Center. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW (November 2019), 1–23.
[80] Tara Whelan. 2018. We are not all makers: The paradox of plurality in the maker movement. DIS 2018
- Companion Publication of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (2018), 75–80.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3197391.3205451
[81] Danielle Wilde and Patrizia Marti. 2018. Exploring Aesthetic Enhancement of Wearable Technologies
for Deaf Women. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM, Hong Kong
China, 201–213. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196777
[82] 2021. Migration, Australia, 2019-20 financial year | Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved July 3,
2022 from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/migration-australia/latest-release
Appendix A
Participant Interview Questions
1. Life story
1.1 Name, country of origin, number of years in Australia, hobbies, skills, interests
1.2 Education and training history and current activities
1.3 Employment/Entrepreneurship/Income history and current activities
1.4 Housing – is she in a secure environment?
1.5 Family/community situation – is she in a supported environment?
1.6 Relationships
1.7 Gender roles
1.8 Rights, responsibilities, constraints
2. Making/Hacking
2.1 Why (motivation and philosophy)

2.2 How did you learn?
2.3 How has your making evolved over time?
2.4 What does it mean to you?
2.5 Skills you apply in life/employment etc
3. Makerspaces.
3.1 How/when did you get involved with x Makerspace?

3.2 What is it about x Makerspace that you like?
3.3 Are there any challenges with attending x Makerspace?
3.4 Do you have recommendations for x Makerspace on what would make it easier for you
to attend?
3.5 Have you been to/go to any other maker spaces?
3.6 What qualities make a makerspace welcoming?
3.7 What qualities make a person feel excluded?
3.8 Have you ever felt excluded from a space?
3.9 Have you ever had to exclude someone from a space?
3.10 Do you tell your friends about x Makerspace?
3.11 How is learning facilitated here?
3.12 What role does IT play in administering, social networking, learning, income for x
Makerspace?
3.13 What role does x Makerspace play in your personal growth?
3.14 Have family roles changed over time now that you are involved with the makerspace?
How do you think your role in the family has changed?
4. IT/Digital behaviours/STEM activities
4.1 Do you own/have access to a smart phone, or computer? Do you borrow? Do you
share the device with other family members?
4.2 How do you use it?
4.3 Explore its role in education/training, life administration, social networking, income
generation
123:39
4.4 How have digital behaviours changed over time? During covid? How do you see IT in
your life in the future.
5. Covid19
How did the following things change for you during the lockdowns?
5.1 Making/hacking
5.2 Digital behaviours
5.3 Accessing the makerspace
5.4 Did you create a space in the home for making?
5.5 If so, was it easy to have your own space for maker activities? Did you have family
members also using the space? How did that go?
5.6 What changed for you socially during the lockdowns?
5.7 Income opportunities
5.8 Mental health
5.9 Safety, including a light introduction of the concept of the shadow pandemic of gender
based violence
5.10 If a lockdown was reintroduced at some point in 2021/2022, what do you think could be
done to improve conditions for you to focus on making/training/IT/income?
6. The Future
6.1 What new skills would you like to learn?

6.2 What skills do you think it’s important for your children/grandchildren to learn to
prepare for the future?
6.3 If you were given the opportunity to learn something completely new, what would it
be?
6.4 If you could have any job, what would it be?
6.5 If you could start any business, what would it be?
6.6 If you could be a teacher, what would you like to teach people?
6.7 Do you have any women or men in your community that you really look up to as a
source of inspiration? What is it about them that inspires you?
6.8 What are your aspirations for your future?
6.9 What are your hopes for your children/future generations?
Staff Interview Questions
1. Origin Story
1.1 How did the makerspace originate?

1.2 Mission, vision, values
1.3 Target market(s)
1.4 Legal status/nature of entity
1.5 Request operational framework documents – eg annual report, member guidelines,
induction documents.
2. Marketing/outreach
2.1 How do you market to your target market?

2.2 How many people do you reach, what is your capacity? (per demographic if several)
2.3 How do you induct participants?

2.4 Also ask about same processes for volunteers/staff
2.5 Has Covid-19 impacted involvement, and specifically involvement of women/women of
colour?
3. Pathways
3.1 What is the typical journey of a participant?
3.2 How do you facilitate learning?
3.3 What are your goals for the participants?
3.4 What skills/characteristics would you like a participant to gain at the makerspace?
3.5 What does the makerspace enable participants to do beyond the space? Pathways that
open up?
3.6 How do you keep people engaged?
3.7 At what point do you find people choose to exit their involvement with the
makerspace?
4. Diversity and Inclusion

4.1 Any D or I foci for your makerspace? How do you action this?
4.2 Policies?
4.3 Practices/programs/pathways
4.4 Struggles to include people of particular demographics?
4.5 Intersectionality
5. Funding
5.1 How do you get your funding?
5.2 Are you financially sustainable or what measures are you taking to improve financial
sustainability?
5.3 If you had a big pot of funding given to the makerspace, how would you spend it?
5.4 If you lost a chunk of funding, what activities/aspects of the makerspace would you
cut?
6. Operations
6.1 SWOT?
6.2 Blue ocean vision
7. Future goals
7.1 What’s next?
Received July 2022; revised October 2022; accepted January 2023

Crossing The Threshold - For Publication - DV

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Crossing The Threshold - For Publication - DV

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Crossing the Threshold: Pathways into Makerspaces for

Women at the Intersectional Margins

SONALI HEDDITCH, The University of Queensland, Australia

2.2 Engaging Novices in Physical and Virtual Makerspaces

2.3 Women in makerspaces

2.4 Women of colour in makerspaces

2.5 Women’s activity in makerspaces

Table 1: Data collected

M3S2 M3P2 internal

4.2 Dimensions of the enabling environment

Figure 3: Guidance on the wall in the lounge area of M6 Open Member La

M5S1 discussed her observations on accessibility for women:

Figure 4: A tea-towel as art on the wall at M5 FemSpacce

4.3 Open door policies: good intentions, won’t suffice

M4S1, in a separate interview, concurred:

4.4 Understanding the intersectional identities of women who seek to enter

Figure 6: Quote on the wall at M4 Urban Library Makerspace on ‘Access’

5.1 Encoding and Decoding Exclusion

Participant Interview Questions

2.1 Why (motivation and philosophy)

3.1 How/when did you get involved with x Makerspace?

4. IT/Digital behaviours/STEM activities

6.1 What new skills would you like to learn?

Staff Interview Questions

1.1 How did the makerspace originate?

2.1 How do you market to your target market?

2.3 How do you induct participants?

4. Diversity and Inclusion

7.1 What’s next?

Received July 2022; revised October 2022; accepted January 2023

You might also like