The technology question in feminism: A view from feminist technology studies

Feminist research on technology tends to view technology either as neutral or as determining, drawing implications for women that are either overoptimistic or overpessimistic. By contrast, feminist scholarship within the field of technology studies, or feminist technology studies, is more ambivalent politically, and sees technology as socially constructed, or coproduced, alongside gender. This paper elaborates this framework by exploring various ways in which technology map be gendered, drawing in part on recent research on engineering. It focuses, in turn, on gender in and of technological artefacts; on the durability of masculine images of technology; on gender in the detail of technical knowledge and practice: and on the place of technology in (some) men's gender identities. This framework provides a more sound basis for understanding the ambivalence about technology which many women experience and, thus, for a praxis which steers a cyborgian course between uncritical endorsement and outright rejection of technology. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.