Feminism Confronts Technology

by Judy Wajcman

In the first major study of its kind, Judy Wajcman challenges the common assumption that technology is gender neutral and analyzes its influence on the lives of women. Does technology liberate women and encourage equality, or are the new technologies reinforcing sexual divisions in society? Does the problem lie in men's monopoly of technology, or is technology itself in some sense inherently patriarchal? To answer these questions, Judy Wajcman explores what the impact of technology is on the lives of women today. Popular stereotypes depict women as technologically incompetent or invisible in technical spheres. Wajcman argues that the identification between men and machines is not immutable but is the result of ideological and cultural processes. She surveys sociological and feminist literature on technology, highlighting the male bias in the way technology is defined as well as developed. Over the last two decades feminists have identified men's monopoly on technology as an important source of their power, women's lack of technological skills as an important element in their dependence on men. During this period, women's efforts to control their fertility have extended from abortion and contraception to mobilizing around the new reproductive technologies. At the same time there has been a proliferation of new technologies in the home and in the workplace. The political struggles emerging around reproductive technology, as well as the technologies affecting domestic work, paid labor, and the built environment, are the focus of this book.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Technology, Sociology, Gender Studies, Gender

194 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Judy Wajcman is the Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics

Reviews

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wajcman is a marxist-feminist I first encountered when attending 4S online in 2021. Despite her political commitments Marx is only mentioned in the opening of the first chapter and when she mentions Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital in the context of the radical science movement (Hilary Rose is mentioned here, a Marxist that was involved in radical science movements connected with Science for the People) and labour process analysis. She discusses Marxist analysis a few more times in the few subsequent pages. More broadly in this chapter, Wajcman outlines feminist theories and critiques of science and technology (Chapter 1). She then moves into the sphere of production where any good Marxist would begin (where of course we meet David Noble, but also marxist feminists like Cynthia Cockburn), and pays special attention to sexual divisions of labour, gender relations at work, and how they have influenced both the pace and direction of technological change (Chapter 2). Next we get a glimpse at some of the newer technologies in human biological reproduction and how they have been contested by feminists, as well as the increasing dominance of technology in Western practices of medicine (Chapter 3). Then we take a survey through the domain of the ‘post-industrial’ home, and think about how technologies have changed how work is done in this often very gendered sphere of life; of course Ruth Schwartz Cowan figures large here (Chapter 4). Zooming out from just the home, we think about the wider built environment, which is of some interest to me. We are given the opportunity to see how the urban system is constructed around the technology of the automobile, still a legacy we suffer with today. It is so hard to get around the city I live in without a car (Chapter 5). Finally, we interrogate technology as a masculine culture and how this ideology shapes both the production and uses of various technologies.

[Mark Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. Synopsis: This book examines women’s relationship to technology. It challenges the assumption that technology is gender neutral. Wajcman examines only specific areas where the gender of technology has had an impact; office technologies, reproductive technologies, domestic technologies, the built environment (the house itself), the computer.
B. Feminist critiques of science and technology
1. Women have achieved little access to scientific institutions. So what are the main critiques of science by feminists?
a) Eco-Feminism: Women will liberate the earth because they are more in tune with nature
b) Psychoanalysis: The Object-Relations School. Men and women relate to the world in different ways. Man must reject his former dependencies on his mother. This male mindset of detachment and mastery has been written into the definition of science itself.
c) Essentialism: The assertion of fixed, unified and opposing female and male traits. Part of the cultural feminists desire for a new model of science.
2. From science to technology
a) Difficulty in criticism here is the conflation of science and technology
b) There is a dearth of material on women and technology
3. Wajcman’s definition of technology (3 parts)
a) Technology as knowledge: Verbal, tactile, mathematical knowledge which can be systematized, such as engineering
b) Human activities: How people use the technology. Like weaving cloth. My thought is that this is where technology links with science. Example a computer is a technology but is can be used for science.
c) Hardware: The physical objects themselves.
C. Office technology and gender divisions: This chapter examines how gender divisions in the workplace affect the direction and pace of technological change
1. The impact of technology on the sexual division of labor
a) Office automation and women’s employment
(1) Pessimistic view of the introduction of the computer into the workplace
(2) Women’s health in using the VDT
(3) Reduction of the need for typing skills (deskilling)
b) The relocation of work
(1) Post-modernism idea of working at home--the electronic cottage
(2) This has caused the majority of men to become work-centered
(3) Women became family-centered
(4) Thus, computer based homework reinforces sexual divisions
D. Reproductive technology: Delivered into man’s hands
1. Pregnancy and childbirth are controlled by more sophisticated and intrusive technologies (but all medicine is like this)
2. Two opposing Feminist perspectives on reproductive technology
a) Technology as a key to women’s liberation: An IVF does not cure fertility; it provides an avenue for biological motherhood through technological intervention
b) Reproductive technology as patriarchal domination by the exploitation of women’s bodies
3. The medicalization and mechanization of childbirth
a) Delivered into man’s hands: Midwives have declined as the male doctor was defined as the expert.
b) The sexual relations of contraceptive technology
(1) Cultural values rather than medical or technical considerations have shaped modern contraceptive technology
(2) This explains the emphasis on hormonal contraceptives and little emphasis on barrier methods
(3) The development of a condom came from a desire to stop VD not for birth control
E. Domestic technology: labor-saving or enslaving?
1. Gender specialization and household technology
a) Domestic technology has reinforced the sexual division of labor
b) Men prefer to watch TV silently while women are to guilty and must clean the house
c) Women are estranged from the video recorder
2. The rest of this chapter conforms to Cowan’s ideas
F. The built environment: The argument here is that sexual divisions are built into the houses themselves and the entire urban system
1. The house itself is a technological construct
a) The built environment is our homes, their locations, etc...
b) Here she argues that the built environment reinforces a domestic ideal which emphasizes the importance of the home as a women’s place and a man’s haven
2. Automobiles reinforce this gendered division
a) Argument here is that the transport system particularly the car restricts women’s mobility and exacerbates women’s confinement of the home
b) This is mainly true for older women and single mothers [129]
c) The modern city is designed around men’s interests. They leave for work at the same time and the public transportation system accommodates them,
d) But, women who must wait for their kids to go to school are not helped.
e) Thus, the modern city is built to the detriment to women
G. Technology as masculine culture: The computer
1. Men and machines
a) Giving birth to the bomb-- the masculine manhattan project
b) Obsession with control (a computing fraternity)
c) Forms of masculinity--there are different types of masculine environments
d) Combat, the heroic masculinity. Video games are gendered masculine
2. Women and machines: cognition or culture?
a) The computer is the main example here because it was a new technology and could have been gendered female
b) Computing inequality at school
c) Space-Wars, games for boys

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gut: An vielen Beispielen wird gezeigt, wie Technik sehr zentriert auf Männer ist. Das Buch ist ja schon nicht mehr ganz so aktuell, aber vieles trifft noch zu und einige jüngere Bücher greifen das vielleicht auch nur auf. Beispiel: ÖPNV-Netze bedingen oft viele Umstiege. Die dadurch verursachten Fahrtzeitverluste wirken sich überproportional auf solche Menschen aus, die häufiger, aber kürzer fahren als auf solche, die seltener längere Strecken fahren. Und das sind Frauen, weil die Arbeiten "rund um den Haushalt" eben eher kürzere, dafür mehr Strecken sind.
Nicht so gut: Gerade wenn es darum geht, wie sich das ändern lässt, bleibt es oberflächlich. Bezogen auf obiges Beispiel: ÖPNV-Netze so umbauen, dass es mehr umsteigefreie Verbindungen gibt. Ja, wäre eine Lösung. In meinen Augen besser: Dafür sorgen, dass sich die Wege von Frauen und Männern nicht so sehr unterscheiden.
Und womöglich sind umsteigebehaftete Verbindungen auch ökonomisch/betrieblich einfach nicht zu vermeiden, sodass die Benachteiligung auf solchem Wege kaum zu beseitigen wäre. Manchmal wird in dem Buch dann tatsächlich auch ökonomisch-mateiralistisch argumentiert (z.B. wird die These verworfen, dass Hochhäuser gebaut werden, weil sie Phallussymbole sind, für die Erklärung, dass es oft einfach günstiger ist ...), aber eher unentschlossen.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read about a third of it over the past month and a half and preoccupied myself with too many other books. Outside of the point of debate of is there sexism in science or is science sexist in itself, harping on valid complaints about real problems just gets old after a while.

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an interesting approach to how technology has also been shaped by men and their benefit, to the detriment of women.