###Wajcman, Judy (1991): Feminism confronts technology. Ein Überblick. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Preface:
In the past decades, feminism has identified men’s grip on technology as an important source of their power and the lack of technical skills of women as an element of their independence. The book wants to apply a more coherent approach to gender and technology. Feminist have investigated the effects of technology on society. This technological determinism was subject to critique. Wajcman acknowledges the reverse effects in a social theory, the social shaping of technology.
It is common to measure society’s progress along science, technology and medicine, but the relation between science and society is currently subject to profound questioning. The feminist perspective on science is a recent endeavor, but it has attracted a lot of debate, that is parallel to the criticism about technology and gender.
The Sexual Politics of Science
A general concern for women’s position in the professions has led to an increased interest in science. Revisiting and writing biographies have demonstrated that women have in fact made important contributions. However, the focus has shifted from exceptional women to the general patters - the limited access to scientific institutions, the structural barriers to women’s participation, sex discrimination and channeling girls away from science or the construction of feminine identity are subject to criticism. But rather than questioning science itself, it was assumed that girls just needed the right opportunities, to become scientists. This approach locates the problem in women and asks them to exchange aspects of their gender identity. It doesn’t ask for a broader change in institutions. For example, the hours do not allow for childcare, which men traditionally avoided. The cultural stereotype of science as linked with masculinity is also crucial. Furthermore sciences have been shaped by masculine biases, with a direction towards profit and warfare, and Marxist analysis linked it with capitalist methods and production. At the same time the sociology of scientific knowledge had the premise, that scientific knowledge, too, is affected by society. Gender specific accounts on this were rare.
Scientific Knowledge as Patriarchal Knowledge.
Concern with gender and scientific knowledge can be traced back to the women’s health movement, that dealt with questions and demands around medical male practices and dominance, with a sexist bias in medical definitions of mental health, and the marginalization of female health workers. There has been a growing awareness of the use of female and male metaphors and dualisms. Criticism pointed at the representation of females as passive objects and males as active agents. Some feminists celebrate this association with nature though, rejecting patriarchal science, others were heading towards a gender-neutral science.
A science based on women’s values?
Contrary to liberal feminist approaches, that saw science as gender neutral, radical feminism emphasized the differences and women’s greater humanism, pacifism etc. This return to an emphasis on natural or psychological gender differences is a common thread. Essentialism is subject to critique, as the notion of a set female nature lies at the heart of oppressive conceptions. Masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and constantly under reconstruction. But there is no constant dichotomy, there is a matrix of contrasts. (Strathern). What is considered male or female differences across cultural groups. And the qualities that some women experience as feminine, do not reflect experiences of all women, as they are divided along class, race and culture. This doesn’t mean that the differences are irrelevant, gender is in almost every culture fundamental to social organization and identity. And qualities associated with males are almost everywhere more highly regarded. Women have in common that they have been marginalized from every powerful institution. We should engage in social practices to redefine values and set the feminist spotlight not only on recruitment but also on the content of scientific knowledge.
From Science to Technology
The debate about society and technology often takes a technic determinist stance. A major concern of women has been the impact of technology on women’s lives, especially on women’s work, in households or in the third work, where women are cheap labour assembling components. Lately, a debate has developed over reproductive technologies. There has been a tension between views that see technology as liberating women and the reverse view, that technologies are oppressive to women. A key issue here is whether the problem lies in men’s domination of technology or whether technology is in some sense inherently patriarchal. If women were in control, would there be more benign technologies? There is also a need to distinguish between science and technology and develop different theoretical approaches. This has been common in sociology, to see technology as applied science, while it possesses own distinct cultural resources. Definitions of technology see it as a body of knowledge, activities and practices and physical artifacts. However feminist perspectives on technology are more recent and less developed than those on science.
Hidden from History
Gender is rarely mentioned in technology studies. Women’s contributions have been left out, even in progressive humanist studies and journals. The history of technology depicts the inventor as male. A task of feminists therefore has been to uncover and recover the roles of women in technological developments. Due to the sources, like the patent registry, women are often not mentioned - rather their husband or the financial backers. At the same time, access to education was denied. A more radical notion sees that women, especially black women were among the first technologists, since they were responsible mostly for gathering and planting and hence it seems logical that they invented the tools and methods involved in this work, like slings, knifes, sickles or plows. Furthermore, technologies that are associated with women are often not seen technical, like the baby bottle, which has transformed human experiences tremendously. But it doesn’t appear in the history of technology.
A technology based on women’s values?
Women have asked the technology question - parallel to the science question - to explore the masculinity of technology itself. There has also been a call for technology based on women’s values, also from male authors. This notion of female nature is essentialist, again, and it is important to ask how women became associated with these values, since the answers involve examining the ways women’s experiences were restricted to the home and families. Nevertheless, the strength lies in going beyond the usual conception of the problem as being a women’s exclusion. Feminists have pointed at all kinds of barriers but rarely has the problem been seen in the way engineering is taught.
Technology and the division of labour
The labour process literature’s basic argument was that capitalist worker relations are a major factor affecting the technology of production in capitalism, they were deliberately designed to deskill and eliminate human labour. Technology was understood as the result of capitalist social relations. However, this approach was gender blind because it focused exclusively on class terms. Women’s exclusion was the consequence of a gender division of labour and the male domination of skills that developed under capitalism. Some argue, that before the industrial revolution, women had less barriers to acquire technical skills. The advent of machinery challenged traditional skills, men had the monopoly over the new skills created. Male craft workers couldn’t prevent women from entering production, so they organized rights over technology - women were laborers working in unskilled job for lowest pay. “It is the most damning indictment of skilled working-class men and their unions that they excluded women from membership and prevented them gaining competences that could have secured them a decent living” - Cockburn. By control of the key technologies men denied women practical experiences upon which they could have invented. Experience of existing technology is a precondition for the invention of new technology.
Missing: The Gender Dimension in the Sociology of Technology
It is evident that technology is not the product of rational technical imperatives, political choices are embedded in their design and in the selection. Technological change is a process subject to struggles for control by different groups. As such, the outcomes depend primarily on the distribution of power and resources within society. Sociology has moved away from studying the individual inventor, but rather show the effects of social relations on technology. The evolution is a function of a complex set of technical, social, economic and political factors. So far though, little attention has been paid to the gender interests, what studies overlook is the absence of women which is significant. Preferences for technologies are shaped by a set of social arrangements that reflect men’s power in the wider society.
Some of the fiercest battles over costs and benefits of technological change have been fought over paid work, the most notorious one about the weavers of the 19th century. Theorists consider technology as shifting labour to the service based economies and jobs will be replaced by new ones. Others sees the potential for an enhancement of skills. Rising unemployment levels though prompt a pessimistic view on degraded and deskilled jobs, with employer monitoring and speed-up. The outcomes will be constrained however by the pre-existing organization of work, of which gender is an integral part. Technical change has not substantially undermined sexual division.
The impact of Technology on the sexual division of labour
Despite of women being half of the labour force, analysis of work and technology haven been oblivious to gender issues. Feminists are addressing this issue since the 70ies. Optimists yet again see the liberating potential of technological advances, others argue in the framework of the “labour process perspective”, or the deskilling debate, that shows how technology is not an autonomous force, but affected by class relations. This approach describes deskilling as strategies to reduce costs, it also describes the proletarization of white-collar workers, where management reduces the skill requirements of office work and hence the labour costs. The result is that workers have less and less control over production.
There are, however, different tendencies, that can coexist. An analysis must take different positions of office workers into consideration. The overall tendency is for technology-led changes to operate within and reinforce preexisting differences in the patterns of work. Technological change tends to further advantage those who already have recognizes skills and a degree of control over their work tasks. Conclusions from one wave of technology may not apply to later ones. It is important to periodize the process of technological change.
Studies often focused on craftsmen or class, without taking into account, that the problems are different for women, studies of craft workers - who were privileged in their market - are not relevant to women. Craft unions have played an active role in subordinating women.
–> Any understandings of technology will be incomplete without the recognition that the relations of production are constructed as much out of gender divisions as class divisions.
New Technology and gender Relations
Gender relations are embodied in the sphere of production as well as in reproduction. While labour process literature suspected that the elimination of physical heavy work would gradually make boundaries between women’s and men’s work disappear. However, gender stereotyping of jobs has remained remarkably stable. Women get paid less, and are segregated to the bottom of the hierarchy. Technology does disrupt established patterns and open up opportunities for change, but technology is not an independent force, it is conditioned by existing relationships. So women lose out on these struggles, because powerful groups defend their skills or monopolize new ones. Women have been kept out due to the active exclusion (not only their lack of self confidence).
–> The introduction of female labour is usually accompanied by a downgrading of the skill content of the work and a consequent fall in pay for the job
Sex, Skill and Technical Competence
–> The work of women is often deemed inferior simply because it is women who do it
Efforts of the male working class have been directed against employers but they have also operated against women’s interests by preventing dilution and defending skill - blocking away women’s access
There are important connections between men’s power in the workplace and their dominance over machinery. Likewise between women’s relative lack of power and lack of technical skills. Knowhow is a resource that gives those who possess it a degree of actual or potential power. Technical competence is a key source of men’s power over women - of the capacity, for example, to command higher incomes and scarce jobs. In order to see technology not as inherently masculine, Gender has to be understood as a cultural process and ongoing. Furthermore there is not one essentialist construction of men, but rather masculinities.
The Relocation of Work
The latest developments open up possibilities for radical changes in the location of work, offices can be moved offshore altogether and work becomes decentralized. A sexual division of labour has emerged, as women in third world countries perform labor-intensive assembly or do data processing for large films. To some optimists, the home as a work place offers freedom for people to reintegrate work into personal life and share more unpaid work. For others it evokes the spectrum of self-exploitation. For many women, homework is attractive because of their household responsibilities, but at the cost of a lack of social security and sickness pay. For men, however, work from home entails flexible working patterns and this moves agains any significant change in family life. Women become less work-centered, men become more work-centered.
–> We find more evidence for reinforcement of gender differences, rather than transformation
The Social Shaping of Workplace Technology
Now the focus lies on the social factors that cause technological change. Argue: Sex of the workforce and gender relations in the workplace affect the direction and pace of technological change profoundly. New technology is seen as emerging from modifications and recombinations of existing technology, however this is not the only force shaping technology. It is always oriented towards a goal and that is normally to reduce costs, so technical and economical reasoning is often inseparable. A vital issue is the cost of labor, and class relations - which provides a starting point for the analysis of gender in this process.
Industrial conflict and technical innovation / The automation of machine tools
Innovation and machinery has been a weapon in the battle for control over production. The self-acting mule for example was the employers’ response to the unionized spinners and their frequent strikes. Skilled workers do not look only in the direction of the capitalists, though, but also in the direction of the unskilled who are seen as a threat - typically this involves older male white workers looking at young, female or and black, minorities.
Noble explored the development of numerical control in machine automation. The example shows how technological development is shaped by patterns or power and cultural values, with employers struggling with the skills of their machinists. His study shows different levels of social determination, as it is not only management’s demand for control, but military interests or engineers’ interest as well. It fails though to take the gender dimension into account.
The Gendered Relations of Technology
The relations of women and men workers are fundamental. Gender divisions interact with technological change:
Women’s wage labour costs considerably less then men’s, hence employers may seek forms of technological change that enables them to replace expensive skilled male workers with low paid less unionized female workers.
Where cheap women’s labour is available, technical change may appear slower than in other industries, since incentives are low
Machinery is designed by men for men, industrial technology reflects male power as well as capitalist domination
It is overwhelmingly males who design technological process and industrial machinery - it is hence the knowledge of and experience of engineers and workers which shapes new technologies. the design is therefore the outcome of preexisting power relations.
–> Technology can be seen as a driving force, but it has been built into pre-existing relations of sex, class and race that structure the labour force and employment opportunities. Women’s jobs and men’s job are as demarcated as ever, this is in part because social relations are expressed in and shape technologies.
Feminist Perspectives on Reproductive Technology
Advances in the field of reproductive technologies are seen as liberating, especially since they allow women to control their bodies. Patriarchy was seen as a control over women’s bodies, hence women’s oppression was located in their biology and ectogenesis was a technological fix. Recently [sic!] though, women started to oppose the experimentation on women’s bodies. Main proponents of reproductive technologies were scientists and researchers and their developments have helped numerous women and yet the use of human embryos in research is becoming a major source of controversy, with groups like right to life lobbies in one of the corners. Feminists, too, are divided about this topic. New technologies seem to fulfill the traditional role of women and coexist with a powerful ideology of motherhood. Moreover the techniques are technological fixes but they do not address the causes of infertility.
The FINRRAGE group - a group of radical feminists - saw reproductive technologies as a form of patriarchal exploitation on women’s bodies and wanted to reclaim the experience of motherhood as foundation of women’s identity. They saw the ability of bearing as the unique source of power and means of social control. In futuristic dystopias, men would achieve ultimate control over human creation by controlling the wombs of women. Reproductive Technology was seen as a new stage in the patriarchal war against women.
These new technologies have the potential do empower or disempower. It was argued that FINNRAGE fails to see the agency of women and instead o ascribing technologies political properties themselves, feminists argued that the institutional settings in which these procedures occur should be problematized and the power relation need to be separated from the technologies themselves. Gender is no experienced the same for every woman, but through mediations as sexual orientation, age, race, class, history and colonialism. New technologies may have very different implications for third and first world countries or within countries. They vary according to access to health care and the ability to pay for expensive treatments. Hazardous experiments and sterilization drugs were targeted at colored women. Furthermore the technologies are in many ways rather about population control than about women making informed choices.
-> The dangers are not a function of the technologies themselves, but of their abuse.
Women - in fact - make choices out of a limited selection of options. FINNRAGE were right in arguing that gender relations have profoundly structured the form of reproductive technologies and therefore emphasized that technologies to have political qualities. - to make this claim one does not need to conceptualize it in terms of a monilithic male conspiracy.
Langdon Winner: To recognize the political dimensions in the shapes of technology does not require that we look for conscious conspiracies or malicious intentions.
Another dimension addresses the struggle over knowledge and expertise. For the contest between midwives and an emerging male-dominated medical profession, technology was crucial. The forceps enabled its user to deliver infants in cases where either child or mother would have died. Midwives were not allowed to use instruments, they were seized by physicians who used it way too often and hence deprived midwives of their monopoly on child birth intervention. Even today, instruments and technology seems to be in use far too often - it is not a biological necessity, but rather it reflects the structure of power and decision making. The single most significant contribution to a cut in the death and handicap rate among newborn babies would be a comprehensive anti-poverty program. The questions is why the technologies we have take the form thy do - and thus we need to look at the social context in which the new reproductive technologies have developed.
[skipped a chapter about profession and class. It addresses that reproductive technology is the result of a complex web of interests that have been woven - those of professional and capitalist interests overlaid with gender]
The extent to which contraceptive technology is being used is as much dependent on society’s attitude towards sex, children and women’s status as it is on effective technology. The use of birth control requires a morality that permits the separation of sexual intercourse from procreation. Hence the question is why technologies developed at a certain time. The prevalent myth is, that birth control came with modern medicine, but this is far from true, there have been techniques dating back to ancient times. Some techniques were more amenable than others and could be used in secrecy. The point that needs to be emphasized is, that women and men might have conflicting concerns and goals in mind when contemplating fertility control. Self-determination as a goal exists parallel to population control. The hormonal pill is designed to fit in with male defined sex, that allows spontaneous sex, but at a high risk cost for women.
Sexual relations in combination with population policies and market forces have shaped contraceptive technology. While the overall effect of this has been the masculinization of an area that was previously a women’s sphere, women who are already advantaged in society have been in a position to benefit rom recent reproductive techniques. In this area as elsewhere, technologies operate within and reinforce pre-existing social inequalities.
It is suggested that the industrial revolution occurred in the home too, where unpaid work has been key to women’s oppression. However, the time spent on housework has remained remarkably constant, according to studies of Ann Oakley (The Sociology of Housework). Few studies though researched how technological changes were the result of economic imperatives or individual choice. Wajcman’s aim is to explore the way the design and promotion of domestic technologies has been shaped by existing ideologies of gender.
Industrialization of the Home and Creation of the Housewives
The conventional wisdom that technology freed women from housework and let the enter the labor face is grossly misleading. Ruth Cowan explains that the failure of the Industrialization at home to ease household tasks is linked to a whole new range of tasks which were just as time consuming and came along with the mechanization. The loss of servants and rising expectations of the housewife added up onto his. The shift from production to consumption [meaning to distinguish between self produced means and means that were bought, e.g. food] isn’t applicable to all systems: Food, Clothing and Health Care do fit in this model, they were ready made or moved out of the household. The transportation system though exemplifies a shift in the other direction. Goods used to be delivered, now women had to take time to do shopping and move goods, which is often not considered work. Technologies radically increased the productivity of housewives, however time wasn’t saved. The disappearance of paid and unpaid servants, the remodeling of the housewife ideology and new standards towards cleanliness and child education added further burdens and time consuming tasks and roles. Domestic technology has further ensnared women and a transformation would depend on a transformation of gender relations.
-> The greatest influences on housework come from non-technical changes: demise of domestic servants, changing standards of hygiene and childcare, ideology of housewifery and the symbolic importance of the home
Gender Specialization of Household Technology
Evidence suggests that domestic technology has reinforced the traditional sexual division and locked women more firmly into their traditional roles. It reduces the time men are involved in household tasks but increased the time women spend on housework. Men’s relationship to technology is defined differently, they use and repair machines, while women’s use of machines is not seen as skillful. They are dependent on men’s ability to repair and fix, which gives men a form of control of women’s domestic environment. While the home is for women mostly a sphere of work, it is sphere of leisure for men. Typically the remote control is being used by men. When a new technology arrives in the home it is already inscribed with gendered meanings and expectations.
Technological Innovation and Housework Time
A central argument is that domestic work time has been declining for women between 1960 and 1980, however, this accounts only for routine domestic work (cooking, cleaning, other regular housework) while shopping and travel and childcare has substantially increased. The argument that time is reduced is only meaningful if it means that leisure or discretionary free time for women increases. There are more fundamental factors than just technology, for example number and age of children, and the presence of men (which increases work for women). A technicist orientation is also evident in assessments of future technologies like the smart home, which are insensitive to gender issues.
Alternatives to Individualized Housework
So much energy has been devoted to the mechanization of the household, instead of in collectivization. There were ideas dating back to Engels and the 19th century to abolish the individual housework and have a community driven solution. Policies in Eastern Europe took up some ideas with collective laundry systems, communal eating facilities and more. They did not challenge the gendered division, but they collectivized the work and saved hours for families. However why did women chose technologies that were damaging to them? It is tempting so see women as duped victims who were passive receivers of technology. However Cowan depicts women as active agents. Yet it is important to recognize the extent to which individual choice is constrained by powerful structured forces. In Britain communal houses were seen as associated with poverty and women favored privacy. And technologies did bring some improvements along, and people can be taken in by false promises. The irony though is that women often blame themselves for the failure of technology to deliver.
Men’s Designs on Technology
Less attention has been given to the innovation, development and diffusion processes of specific technologies. Most domestic technology is designed by men and it’s big business. Particular technologies are produced not in relation to the needs of individuals but largely they serve the interests of those who produce them and those who are suppliers of the energy needed. This is evident in the failure of the gas refrigerator. It failed for social and economic reasons, while it had advantages from the consumer’s point of view. Furthermore there is a culture of engineering that is making decisions about the design. When women design technological artifacts, little is heard of them, like from the self-cleaning house by Frances Gabe.
Domestic Technology: A Commercial Afterthought
Much of the applied technology wasn’t developed for the household but is descendant of - for example - military uses. Household technology didn’t have pressure to focus on efficiency, since unpaid labour wasn’t measured. The tools had to look rather attractive with useless buttons and lamps attached. There is often a mismatch of industry’s envisioned use case and the actual application, which is often linked to male engineering, that doesn’t take needs of women into account.
Conclusion: More work for Social Scientists?
–> The fact that men in the public sphere of industry, invention and commerce design and produce technology for use by women in the private domestic sphere, reflects and embodies a complex web of patriarchal and capitalist relations.
To further our understanding of these issues we need more qualitative research on house work and how it is organizes and research on the designers and their backgrounds, interests and motivation.
Argument: The built environment reflects and reinforces a domestic ideal which emphasizes the importance of the home as a woman’s place and a man’s haven. Sexual divisions are literally built into houses and the whole urban system’s structure. The physical form of buildings is seen as a result of technological and engineering advances, however the design of the built environment is stamped with wider social and economic relations.
The Ideal Home:
Victorian ideals lay the groundwork for the modern domestic ideal, with the separation of home and workplace and the identification of the home as a private place. While the home was subdivided in public and private places too and the women confined to the latter. The rooms reflected the stratified relationships within the home and was characterized by the subordination of servants to the family, family to wife and wife to husband. Efficiency rather than beauty became the organizing principle of the home in the 20th century and the kitchen became the core of the house. This change reflected the growth of a middle class without servants and the mechanization of the home. Large-Scale state intervention in the housing market played a key role in favoring the single family household. In the 50ies and 60ies women were increasingly pushed back into the home, with new socio-psychological conceptions of familial relations (good communication, intimacy, safety, leisure). The open kitchen enabled women to observe children while cooking, now that all tasks rested upon her. Less privacy was offered to adults, especially women, they had the kitchen as a domain. Houses became more rural looking again and important for the self-image. Along this development, families became a private entity as well, being separated from each other, especially in suburbs. This movement fostered isolation and boredom in housewife’s lives. The Zoning of work and home settled women further in the neighborhoods and distanced them from economy. Studies on space, segregation and power had often neglected the perspective on gender besides class and race.
Feminist Alternatives:
The feminist designers’ collective “Matrix” commented: Women play almost no part in making decisions about or in creating the environment. Is is a man-made environment. (Matrix 1984, p. 3, reference: Wajcman p. 120). Feminists have drawn attention the the sexual politics of space, with domestic architecture often disregarding the quality of women’s lives. Women experience space differently from men (reference to the multi-story residential block) and some claim that women design differently. However common education and financial restrictions unify the general premises in architecture. Wajcman recalls the victorian model developed by Pierce and Gilman, that aimed at socializing household work and favored kitchen-less apartments. However: The liberation of the middle class women involved exploiting women of a lower economic class. This failure demonstrates the impossibility of divorcing gender from class and other relations of inequality. Egalitarian architectural forms cannot be superimposed on a preexisting social order and be transformative in themselves.
Automobiles: Technology in Motion
Women’s and men’s daily lives trace very different patterns of time, space and movement, and the modern city is predicated on a mode of transport that reflects and is organizes around men’s interests, activities and desires, to the detriment of women. The automobile industry is the largest in the world and addresses needs like privacy, convenience and mobility. However, rush hour lets people travel as slowly as a horse in 1900. The state as well as the automotive and petroleum industries were the force that prevented a ecologically sound, diversified and balanced system of mass transportation. These developments in transport policy have affected women and men differently. Women have less licenses and less access to the family car. And yet, their travel needs are expanding, for the disappearance of home-delivery services, which were replaced by car-oriented supermarket complexes, resulting in an increase of the time women had to spend on consumption activities. Women are furthermore restricted in their choice of jobs due to mobility constraints and tasks. Effectively they might be restricted to part time jobs, nearer to the home, which allows them to pick up children. Yet public transport is still designed around the needs of full-time workers, wheres women’s journeys are more complex and multi-purposed. The dominance of the car has also made the city alienating for women and pedestrians, with dark underground passages or motorways polluting the air. Women often do not travel at night, especially women of color for the potential risk of harassment and violence. Langdon Winner’s article emphasized the politics of artifacts and
–> even seemingly innocuous technological forms such as roads and bridges seemingly reinforce power relations. What is so significant about these vast technological projects is that they endure, such that for generations after Moses [the architect of low bridges] has gone, the highways and bridges he built […] continue to give New York much of is present form. Many of his monumental structures of concrete and steel embody a systematic social inequality, a way of engineering relationships among people that, after a time, becomes just another part of the landscape.
Cars are also cultural charged with masculinity, class, lifestyle and more powerful messages. But there are also cars that were designed with female drivers in mind.
Once we recognize the gendered nature of the design and production of the built environment, once it is no longer seen as fixed, we can begin to make space for women.
The link between technology and masculinity is more complex than it might appear. Technologies definition itself has a male bias, we tend to think about cars, machinery, instead of the technologies of everyday life like of cooking and childcare. The enduring force of the identification between technology and manliness is not inherent in biological sex difference, it is the result of the historical and cultural construction of gender. This chapter examines the ideological and cultural processes that serve to make natural and thereby help to generate this connection. The ideology of masculinity has an intimate bond with technology.
Men and Machines
Warfare is traditionally is a male preserve, much feminist writing assumes that war is the result of men’s inherent aggressive nature. Studies on the development of the atomic bomb and the dropping on Hiroshima show how the researchers and developers had an overriding pleasure in perfecting the technology. For Brian Easlea (Fathering the Unthinkable) this shows how men are trying to compensate their lack of ability to give birth, reflected in their use of sexual and birth metaphors - womb envy. All these accounts by Easlea are strongly suggestive and the rhetoric or invention of the bomb cannot be explained strictly in terms of the anxieties of the male inventors. Sexual imagery does not originate in particular individuals but in a broader cultural context. The domination of men in the enterprise might be a reflection of the male domination in all powerful public institutions.
The language used has a particular function, it is not only about articulating but also about hiding - rather than informing, the discourse functions as a legitimation for political outcomes.
Men identify with technology and form bonds, women rarely appear in these stories about technological inventions. The masculine workplace was described by Sherry Turkle in “Loving the Machine for itself”, an ethnography at MIT, where she encountered a male culture of mastery, individualism, non-sensuality. Hackers would deny a macho culture, but the preoccupation with winning, control and of subjecting oneself to violent tests make this world unfriendly towards women.
There is a need to distinguish between different forms of masculinity in relation to different arenas of technology. There is no singly masculinity and the disparate versions reflect class divisions, ethnic and generational differences. There are hegemonic masculinities and subordinated or marginalized forms. Hegemonic masculinity is achieved by the organization of private life and cultural processes, but this doesn’t need to correspond with the actual personalities of the majority.
In Western societies, hegemonic masculinity is strongly associated with aggressiveness and the capacity for violence. In which way is the control over technology woven into this idea?
Looking at hackers - there is no real physical danger involved, yet they are drawing upon dangers, risk and virility to describe their work. It is paradox though, that this group is often described as losers and unattractive. Is technical expertise then the realization of power or the lack of it? It does bestow some power though in terms of relation to others who do not have the skills. However there is an extent to which race, class and age matter. The master of cars does not convey the same status, but it is more closely linked to hegemonic masculinity. This must be viewed against the background of their relative deprivation, low status and comparative powerlessness in the broader society.
Technical expertise is a key source of power among men, it does no override other sources of power, such as position in the class structure.
Masculinity is remarkably flexible, in one moment men dismiss intellectual work as soft, in the other, they need to appropriate sedentary intellectual work for masculinity too.
The Military is an institution that underwrites the ideology of hegemonic masculinity. War and military incorporate a masculine ethic, about dying for others, honor and bravery. Ideas about women being unfit for the job are almost universal and often rely on the inferiority of the female body. Even women in the field were described as non-combat personnel. It is a prevalent thought in feminist writing that women are naturally inclined to pacifism, but there are numerous examples of women leading to war and women are a vital part of the war production industry, male war artifacts are in reality built by women.
Technology is more than as set of physical objects or artifacts, it also fundamentally embodies a culture or set of social relations made up of certain sorts of knowledge, beliefs, desires and practices
–> Treating technology as a culture
Women and Machines: Cognition or Culture?
How do women think about and experience technology? It was a commonly held belief that with the development of microelectronics and the decreasing importance of heavy industrial technology the gender stereotyping would diminish. Computing could have been gender neutral, or an industry that appropriated women. Instead our culture has already defined computers as preeminently male machines. Technologies are sec-typed when they enter the workplace, where women never approach the foreign territory. This segregation reflect that patriarchal relations are an integral part of our entire social system - education, schooling, youth cultures, mass media, family - they all transmit meanings and values that identify masculinity with machines and technological competence. These social context are intertwined and mutually reinforcing, but they aren’t external forces. Individuals actively participate in, resist or reproduce these social practices.
The drop of girls taking computer science classes (despite all efforts) appears to be linked to the introduction of microcomputers in schools - here girls quickly learnt that they are for boys. They are linked to scientific, mathematical, traditionally male subjects, taught my male teachers. In a more profound way, the hidden curriculum (different behavior, implicit meanings and teaching) fosters the differentiation between boys and girls who often internalize some kind of lack or inferiority. Computers are seen as belonging to the realm of machinery and mathematics. Feminists challenge this passive model, girls might be interested but get driven out of the space or are being harassed.
Toys are an important part of the differentiated learning experiences, and there is a tendency for the home micro to be bought for the sons of the family - encouraged by advertisements for computer games and computers, featuring boys. Boys in Britain were 13 times more likely to use a computer in 1985 and only 4% of mothers used it.
Games are the primary attraction for kids to use computers, however, it is men who design them, with militaristic titles, masculine narrative content - which alienates girls, who also have less time at hand. In household education boys are more easily allowed to follow interests that do not benefit anyone else. When women do enter programming, they might have another style, which is not superior or inferior, but different and diversity should be celebrated. The problem is, that there are different values accorded to the styles. When gendered styles of computing are identified by teachers, they are valued accordingly.
Wajcman emphasizes though, that the return to ideas about fundamental and comprehensive cognitive, emotional and moral difference between women and men is unconvincing. There is more variety in the sexes than in between and cognition cannot be stripped of its social content to reveal pure logical reasoning. Social relationships, understandings and practices play a constitutive role in the elaboration of children’s conceptual knowledge.
–> Discrepancies of cognitive style can be observed as the consequence of major sexual inequalities in power.
–> [T]echnology is more than a set of artifacts. Technology is also a cultural product which is historically constituted by certain sorts of knowledge and social practices as well as other forms of representation. Conceiving technology as a culture reveals the extent to which an affinity with technology has been and is integral to the constitution of male gender identity. Masculinity and femininity are produced in relation to each other […]
Cockburn describes the construction of men as strong, manually able and technologically endowed, and women as physically and technically incompetent. Gender is not only about difference, but also about power: this technical expertise is a source of men’s actual or potential power over women. However, masculinity construction is a complex process.
–> The correspondence between men and machines is thus neither essential nor immutable, and therefor the potential exists for its transformation
Conclusion
The social shaping approach always insists that technology is a form of social knowledge, practices and products. It is the result of conflicts and compromises and the result is hence depending on power distribution and resources. The sociology of technology can only be strengthened by feminist critique, meaning that we look at how the production and use of technology is shaped by male power and interests and it means broadening the definition of technology and tracing the origins of women’s sphere’ technology. Here, too, sociology suffers from a male bias.
The search for a general feminist theory is misguided, we need to analyze the specific social interests that structure the knowledge and practice of particular kinds of technology.
Rather than seeing technology as a neutral force determining society, the social shaping approach provides scope for human agency and political intervention. The relationship between technological and social change is indeterminate, designers cannot completely predict or control its final uses. It is important not to underestimate women’s capacity to subvert the intended purposes of technology. We shouldn’t reject existing patriarchal technology and return to feminist values, we should rather work from within.
There is room for effective politics and disruption in the engine rooms of technological production. The involvement of more women in scientific and technological production, education and so on might bring significant advances in redesigning technology and challenge male culture of technology. Working in these fields doesn’t have to entail cooption.
Men need to learn that technology is not theirs, and give up privileges and power and ultimately this depends on a transformation of gender power relations and the nature of work itself. Childcare and housework can be equally shared. The reluctance of women to enter technology reflects how power relations are inscribed in the existing structures and a more radical critique of technology is necessary. Feminine values however are themselves distorted by the male dominated structure of society. We need to discard essentialist notions of values as masculine or feminine and open up to new forms that values should take. These forms will be different from existing forms of femininity, since values like putting children’s and men’s needs first have subordination built into them.
Rather than calling for a technology based on feminine values, we need to go beyond masculinity and femininity to construct technologies according to a completely different set of socially desirable values.
The time is ripe for reworking the relationship between technology and gender. Technologies reveal the societies that invent and use them, their notions of social statues and distributive justice. In so far as technology currently reflects a man’s world, the struggle to transform it demands a transformation of gender relations.