Gender and Technology: Gender Mediation in School Knowledge Construction

Abstract

Historically, technology education was perceived as an instrument of social reform and control designed to maintain and reinforce the social spheres of males and females. Current representations of technology, which cohere around notions of technological capability, are considered to be “free” of symbolic gendering. This assumption fails to take account of the deeply gendered nature of technology. As Layton (1993: 35) observed technology is understood as a “masculine” preserve, not a place for women, who are relegated to the roles of users and consumers. This phenomenon can be traced to the historical exclusion of women from skilled work, which was appropriated by men, who restricted “women’s work” to the unskilled and routinized and set up a pattern regarding women’s involvement with technology (Wajcman, 1991). Consequently, “technical competence” came to be understood as an integral part of hegemonic masculinities and positioned women in opposition to this as the “outsiders” or the technically incompetent (Wajcman, 1991). Thus in the discourses that circulate about technologies, women’s and girls’ technical competence is denied and beliefs about their “lack” and men’s and boys’ “expertise” become part of our “common-sense” knowledge about the way people are. Women’s involvement in technology continues to be problematic with product design, decision-making, and development dominated by men (Southwell, 1997). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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