Add Gender and Stir?

Add Gender and Stir? Feminist Theories of Technology COMS 472 Week 3 January 17 2008

Talk Outline • Do technologies have gendered codes? • Feminist theories of technology…now a rather rich history (see Lerman et.al). • Historical perspectives • Multi and inter-disciplinarity • ?=what new research?

Gender • Social sorting: male/female • Not just biological attributes • Assigns power • As identity - performative & symbolic • As structures & institutions - sex-segregation • As symbol & representation - gender differences reveal ideologies

Gendered Material Codes • How are our everyday material objects gendered, through design, use, and marketing? • Consider as well architectural space, and public vs. private space • How is consumerism gender coded?

Technologies can aid in social change… • Ex: contraception • Ex: computers in the workplace • Ex: the automobile • Ex: pharmaceuticals • They can also distort and inhibit social change, and create schisms between the powerful and the less powerful

Useful Boundaries • Technological/Social • Production/Consumption • Skilled/Unskilled • Expert/User

Basic Orientation to Feminist Perspectives • Insistence on instilling a sense of the social consequences of technology • Preoccupied with ensuring equitable access to technological know-how in diverse settings: workplace, education, etc • Environmentally sound practices • Social Justice concerns (Franklin)

A focus on women can…. • Highlight connections between production and consumption • …and production and reproduction… • Can pinpoint relevant social actors in design, diffusion and consumptive stages of a technology’s life-cycle

Lohan… • There are constructive tensions in STS and feminism • Points to directions in feminist-oriented men’s studies • Can focus on how gender is implicated in power relationships

Lohan - concentrate on research sites • Look at non-institutional sites • Domesticity • Look at entire ‘circuit of technology’

Lohan…3 Concepts are Key for Feminist Analyses • Interpretitive Flexibility (how do we reinterpret technological functions in our everyday lives? Ex: the telephone) • Scenario/Script (how can techological interpretations become inscribed as part of the material/symbolic properties of that technology? Ex: ‘feminization’ of technologies) • Actant (refers to non-human actors that are agents in everyday relations which then exert effects….Ex: technologies like the telephone and computer can create gendered relations within the home)

Lohan - Methodological Relativism • Focuses on ambiguities and change in gendered relations • Can unpack gendered patterns and meanings • Can make clearer complexities

Lohan - ‘responsible reflexivity’ • Research identifies researcher and often research project as an actor and contributing element in the ‘circuit of research’…which contributes to knowledge…

Culture of Technologies • Take a look at this in critical perspective • Takes an avowed political stance • Asks: what are the implications for women’s work, reproduction, & consumption? • In wider sphere of women’s lives…

Trajectories of Feminist Socio-technical Analysis • Rectifying historiographical omission of contributions & participation of women in technological innovation, design, and use • Paying attention to technologies that have been ignored/dismissed because they reside within ‘women’s sphere’

Trajectories, etc. • Examine historical exclusion of women from domain of technology, particularly in the labor process • Examine what technologies based on women’s values would encompass

Ruth Schwartz Cowan • “From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims” • Women as bearers and rearers of children • Women as workers • Women as homemakers • Women as anti-technocrats

Judy McGaw-what’s a feminist perspective for history/study of technology? • Consider wider domain of gender • How have gender assumptions shaped technology? • Look at ideology • Look at social shaping of men who designed technology-what type of masculinity?

McGaw • Challenge men as active and women as passive users… • Consumption is an active process • The ‘consumption junction’ • Not just female consumption though..

McGaw-feminine technologies • “Looking at feminine technologies makes visible precisely those aspects of technology that we need to examine if we seek alternatives to a modern, Western technology that appears to be self-destructive, self justifying, and self perpetuating”

Feminine Technologies • The bra…a veritable high-tech phenomena. Fieldtrip: browse the lingerie section of your local department store…underwires, pads to enhance size-position, for sports-nursing, backless-strapless…. • McGaw: “How do you know it fits?”

Invisible Software/Labor • Technological expertise can be ‘invisible’, taken-for-granted, unacknowledged • McGaw: women’s closets and filing; issues of privacy • Example: history of the white collar - revealing class and gender divisions, and an intense technological labor-social system

McGaw… • “Feminine technology matters, because the technology of women’s work made both odor-free bathrooms and paper-filled offices possible. In the process, of course, women, at least, remained fully cognizant that family members excreted and that proliferating forms did not make bosses scientific. Of course, women were creatures of the private sphere - schooled through the decades to launder, rather than air, the dirty linen. It seemed safe to trust them with the secrets.” (p. 30)

McGaw… • “Some might argue that neglecting feminine technology means telling only half of the technological story. I submit that it means missing the most important parts.” (p. 32)

Boys and Their Toys • Do men have a love affair with technology? • Ruth Oldenziel - case study of Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild • Are boys socialized into hands-on tinkering? • Relationship to pleasure - often not considered

Judy Wajcman • Broaden definition of technology • Included domestic technologies • Analysis not just at design level • Location of tech in both public and private spheres • Rejected essentialist takes, (ecofeminism)

Feminist Technology Assessment • Why decline in TA? • Why little public debate? • Public policy is deterministic on technology

Add Gender and Stir?