IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2022 - 50

Feature
because of aspects of their identity. Participants in
the studies responded to societal low expectations
of them with statements affirming their potential
for success and achievement. Morton [33, p. 10]
provides a striking analysis of this type of resistance,
" This challenge also reinforces learning environments
in which Black women feel the need to
exhibit persistence and even resilience to be successful-as
evident by my participants' accounts
and other research ...-given their desire to change
representation both numerically and within practice
by serving as a role model. " Similarly, the participants
in Lane-A's study used society's beliefs about
their engineering abilities to " motivate " and " prove "
to others that they could succeed in engineering. We
also found similar notions of this type of resistance in
Ovink and Veazey [34, p. 382] " ... immediate access
to an alternative community of minority scholars
where success in the sciences became 'normalized.'
The empowering subculture and set of expectations
and practices associated with this institutionalized
space became a source of social and cultural capital
from which students could draw. "
Direct relational transactions
through care
Direct relational transactions are where FEC [13]
intersects with the counterspace [12] framework.
Direct relational transactions are the care work that
happens within a communal space and are characterized
by the formation of a community and the
relations and communications between members.
In the community, members leverage their shared
understandings of their various experiences with
oppression in care and support of one another's
well-being. These are a form of fictive kinship [12],
[38]. Fictive kinship is family-like relations that validate
experiences and support the exchange of strategies,
the end purpose of which is to exist in and
navigate oppressive environments. For example, we
find in Ovink and Veazey [34, p. 383]:
" ...Also having BUSPers in a lot of courses reduced
the sense of social isolation...I sat with BUSPers
throughout most of my science courses, and it
was nice to see familiar faces...and knowing that
together we were going to do well, we were going
to bring in the best grades. " -Participant Tasha
Ovink and Veazey [34] noted that the community
that developed from the BUSP program was so robust
50
that it led to a " subcultural identity " for community
members. Participant's relational transactions were
simultaneously caring and cared-for allowing themselves
and each other to flourish. In her description
of what she gained from her community, Tasha
speaks about all the elements of care including
the reciprocity of experiencing care sharing, " that
together we were going to do well. " We noted the
inclusive words like " we, " and " together, " Tasha
used in her statement. This collaborative and communal
language runs directly counter to the competitive
nature of ICT programs. Similarly, Lane-B [21, p.
164] contrasted the " overwhelmingly hostile " nature
of the ICT classroom with the community experienced
in the counterspace of the research program.
Morton too utilized the word " safe " several times in
their analysis to describe the sense the participants
gained from being part of their community. One participant
in the study, LaTisha, described uncaring
professors and another participant, Bianca, shared
a prior need to be quiet because of a lack of confidence
before experiencing the community. In both
cases, they were able to leverage the safety of care
in the community. LaTisha would confide in her
research mentor and gain a sense of support, and
Bianca noted that the community empowered her to
be more confident and not as quiet anymore in her
academic surroundings.
There were similarities in the ways that FEC relationships
were experienced across our five cases.
Lane-A [32, p. 8] utilized FEC as a framework to support
their analysis and focused on proactive caring
through " staff accessibility, trust, positive motivation,
reinforcement, encouragement, (and) student
accountability. " Likewise, Townsend and Sloan and
Morton both described close relationships between
students and their advisors. Highlighting a different
type of relationship, Townsend and Sloan and
Morton describe the strength of the community that
developed between the participants themselves.
Ovink and Veazey found that relationships developed
between all the participants and between the
participants and their advisors in the community.
Care across all the studies represented an encompassing
consideration for students' psychological
well-being and academic success. All the participants
in the studies identified as women of color and experience(d)
compounded levels of systemic oppression
in their STEM environments. In all five studies,
the counterspaces promoted practices inclusive of
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2022

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