The Gender-Technology Relation: Contemporary Theory And Research

by Keith Grint (Editor), Rosalind Gill (Editor)

What is the relationship between gender and technology? Are technologies inherently masculine? What sort of assumptions about gender go into their design production and use? Are technologies implicated in women's oppression or could they play a part in women's liberation? Do the rapid changes we are witnessing in medical, industrial and information technologies pose threats to or offer opportunities to women?

The last fifteen years have seen the development of an important field of research - feminist studies of technology - provoking such questions as above, and challenging the cultural association between masculinity and technology.

In The Gender-Technology Relation, international writers in the field address these questions and the implications of technological development. Through a series of case studies, the chapters focus firstly on the issues raised by different technologies (e.g. domestic and reproductive technologies, computing, education and work), and secondly on developing theoretical understandings of the gender-technology relation.

Presenting significant research in a range of technologies, and an innovative exploration of one of the major theoretical debates of the 1990s: the relationship between feminism and social constructivism, The Gender-Technology Relation challenges current convictions, and subsequently looks towards the theoretical, methodological and political futures of gender and technology.

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995