Legitimizing, Developing, and Sustaining Feminist HCI in East Asia: Challenges and Opportunities

TL;DR

Feminist HCI in East Asia faces systemic obstacles—scarce dedicated funding, stigma as less technically valuable, and sparse senior leadership—despite a growing regional interest and localized digital feminism practices. The paper proposes a meet-up design to legitimize, develop, and sustain Feminist HCI in East Asia by creating formal community channels and action-oriented dialogue among researchers at multiple career stages. It documents concrete activities and safety measures to foster inclusive participation, such as structured storytelling, journey-based reflections, and a formal Code of Conduct. The organizers leverage CHI 2025 momentum and a new Reading Seminar, aiming to increase visibility, mentorship, funding access, and cross-regional collaboration, thereby strengthening the East Asian presence in Feminist HCI.

Abstract

Feminist HCI has been rapidly developing in East Asian contexts in recent years. The region's unique cultural and political backgrounds have contributed valuable, situated knowledge, revealing topics such as localized digital feminism practices, or women's complex navigation among social expectations. However, the very factors that ground these perspectives also create significant survival challenges for researchers in East Asia. These include a scarcity of dedicated funding, the stigma of being perceived as less valuable than productivity-oriented technologies, and the lack of senior researchers and established, resilient communities. Grounded in these challenges and our prior collective practices, we propose this meet-up with two focused goals: (1) to provide a legitimized channel for Feminist HCI researchers to connect and build community, and (2) to facilitate an action-oriented dialogue on how to legitimize, develop, and sustain Feminist HCI in the East Asian context. The website for this meet-up is: https://feminist-hci.github.io/