TechnoFeminism

Judy Wajcman

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745638058
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

This timely and engaging book argues that technoscientific advances are radically transforming the woman-machine relationship. However, it is feminist politics rather than the technologies themselves that make the difference. TechnoFeminism fuses the visionary insights of cyberfeminism with a materialist analysis of the sexual politics of technology.

1

Male Designs on Technology

Technology is a medium of power.

Cynthia Cockburn, Machinery of Dominance

In their ‘millennial’ reflections on the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, many social scientists as well as popular commentators see technology as providing the impetus for the most fundamental of social trends and transformations. Indeed, understanding the role of technologies in the economy and society is now central to social theory. While there are a variety of social theories that proclaim the radical transformation of society, all contain, at their core, claims about technological change and its social impact. This is as true of the three paradigmatic theories of the transformation that Western societies are undergoing – the theories of the information society, post-Fordism and postmodernity – as it is of more recent theories of globalization. Much emphasis is placed on major new clusters of scientific and technological innovations, particularly the widespread use of information and communications technologies and the convergence of technologically mediated ways of life around the globe.

According to globalization gurus such as Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells, states and societies across the world are experiencing historically unprecedented change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world.¹ Prominence is given to the intensity, extensity and velocity of global flows, interactions and networks embracing all social domains. In the ‘information society’ or ‘knowledge economy’, the dominant form of work becomes information- and knowledge-based. At the same time leisure, education, family relationships and personal identities are seen as moulded by the pressures exerted by, and opportunities arising from, the new technical forces. For these writers, such changes entail the breakup of hierarchical arrangements and herald a new post-traditional network society.

These ideas – or ideas like them – are now commonplace in sociology, and I foreground them here to illustrate the centrality of technology to contemporary theories of social, cultural and economic change. There are strong echoes of the earlier ‘post-industrial society’ thesis in these accounts, and its tendency to adopt a technologically determinist stance.² At that time, it was suggested that the industrial economy of manufacturing and factory production was being displaced by knowledge work. The old hierarchies of manual work would be replaced by more open and negotiated relationships.

Much critical writing at the time took issue with the idea of a post-industrial society, but with hindsight we can see that some of the underlying trends in the economy were well captured. The recent return to ideas of an information society and knowledge economy attests to this. Post-industrial theorists concentrated on hierarchies of class, rather than those of gender and, like their predecessors, the new theorists of technology also fail to consider whether this technological revolution might have a differential impact on women and men. While the common theme is that everything in the digital future will be different, it is not clear if the social relations of gender will also be different because the question is seldom raised. While the optimistic commentators on the digital revolution promise freedom, empowerment and wealth, rarely do they show any consciousness of the relationship between technology and gender. They seem oblivious to the fact that men still dominate scientific and technological fields and institutions. To be in command of the very latest technology signifies a greater involvement in, if not power over, the future.

It is no accident that the debates over post-industrialism coincided with the re-emergence to prominence of feminism. Clearly, profound social changes were under way in this period. But where post-industrial theorists were generally optimistic about the implications of technological change, second-wave feminism, and the growing body of feminist scholarship that flourished with it, identified women’s absence from these spheres of influence as a key feature of gender power relations. By ignoring this axis of inequality, mainstream social theorists missed a central dynamic of technological development. It is being missed, once again, in contemporary social theory.

This chapter charts the growth of a gender perspective on technology. Feminists have identified men’s monopoly of technology as an important source of their power; women’s lack of technological skills as an important element in their dependence on men. Whilst there is broad agreement on this issue, the question whether the problem lies in men’s monopoly of technology or whether technology itself is inherently patriarchal remains more contentious.

Feminist theories of the relationship between gender and technology have taken diverse forms. While liberal feminism conceived of the problem as one of equality of access and opportunity, socialist and radical feminism analysed the gendered nature of technology itself. The social factors that shape different technologies came under scrutiny, especially the way technology reflects gender divisions and inequalities. This approach served as a compelling critique of popular and sociological arguments that were, and still are, characterized by technological determinism. However, although coming from fundamentally different perspectives, early feminist analyses of technology tended to generate a fatalism that emphasized the role of technology in reproducing patriarchy. As we shall see, it is this pessimism that needs to be modified in the light of more recent arguments about new technologies, whilst building on the rich contribution of this earlier feminist literature.

From Access to Equity

Interest in gender, science and technology arose out of the contemporary women’s movement and a general concern for women’s position in the professions. Since the early 1970s, the publication of biographical studies of great women scientists has served as a useful corrective to mainstream histories of science in demonstrating that women have in fact made important contributions to scientific endeavour. The biographies of Rosalind Franklin and Barbara McClintock are probably the best-known examples.³ Recovering the history of women’s achievements became an integral part of feminist scholarship in a wide range of disciplines. Thanks to this work, we now know that during the industrial era women invented or contributed to the invention of such crucial machines as the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the small electric motor, the McCormick reaper and the Jacquard loom.⁴ It has also been established that women played a major part in the early development of computers – a story that is still emerging from the recesses of Second World War history. However, as the extent and seemingly intransigent quality of women’s exclusion from technoscience became more apparent, the approach gradually shifted from looking at exceptional women to examining the general patterns of women’s participation.

Documenting and explaining women’s limited access to scientific and technical institutions and careers was a major concern. Many studies identified the structural barriers to women’s participation, looking at sex discrimination in employment and the kind of socialization and education that girls receive which channel them away from studying mathematics and science. Schooling, youth cultures, the family and the mass media all transmit meanings and values that identify masculinity with machines and technological competence. Sex stereotyping in schools was exposed, particularly the processes by which girls and boys are channelled into different subjects in secondary and tertiary education, and the link between education and the segregated labour market. Explaining the under-representation of women in science education, laboratories and scientific publications, research highlighted the construction and character of femininity encouraged by our culture.

Feminism in the 1970s and 1980s posed the solution in terms of getting more women to enter science and technology – seeing the issue as one of equal access to education and employment. Rather than questioning technoscience itself, it was generally assumed that science is intrinsically open, concerned with unbiased and objective research. If girls were given the right opportunities and encouragement, they could easily become scientists and engineers. Remedying the gender deficit was seen as a problem that could be overcome by a combination of different socialization processes and equal opportunity policies.

This liberal feminist tradition locates the problem in women (their socialization, their aspirations and values) and does not ask the broader questions of whether, and in what way, technoscience and its institutions could be reshaped to accommodate women. The equal opportunity recommendations, moreover, ask women to exchange major aspects of their gender identity for a masculine version without prescribing a similar ‘degendering’ process for men. For example, the current career structure for a professional scientist dictates long unbroken periods of intensive study and research that simply do not allow for child care and domestic responsibilities. In order to succeed, women have to model themselves on men who have traditionally avoided such commitments.

The equal opportunities strategy has had limited success precisely because it fails to challenge the sexual division of labour in the wider society. Women’s reluctance ‘to enter’ is to do with the sex-stereotyping of technology as an activity appropriate for men. As with science, the very language of technology, its symbolism, is masculine. It is not simply a question of acquiring skills, because these skills are embedded in a culture of masculinity that is largely coterminous with the culture of technology. Both at school and in the workplace this culture is incompatible with femininity. Therefore, to enter this world, to learn its language, women have first to forsake their femininity.

Indeed, the very definition of technology is cast in terms of male activities. We tend to think about technology in terms of industrial machinery and cars, for example, ignoring other technologies that affect most aspects of everyday life. The history of technology still represents the prototype inventor as male.

However, the concept of technology is itself subject to historical change, and different epochs and cultures had different names for what we now think of as technology. A greater emphasis on women’s activities immediately suggests that women, and in particular indigenous women, were amongst the first technologists. After all, women were the main gatherers, processors and storers of plant food from earliest human times onward. It is therefore logical that they should be the ones to have invented the tools and methods involved in this work, such as the digging stick, the carrying sling, the reaping knife and sickle, pestles and pounders. The male orientation of most technological research has long obscured the significance of ‘women’s sphere’ inventions, and this in turn has served to reinforce the cultural stereotype of technology as an activity appropriate for men.

Indeed, it was only with the formation of engineering as a white, male, middle-class profession that ‘male machines rather than female fabrics’ became the modern markers of technology.⁵ During the late nineteenth century mechanical and civil engineering increasingly came to define what technology is, diminishing the significance of both artefacts and forms of knowledge associated with women. This was the result of the rise of engineers as an elite with exclusive rights to technical expertise. Crucially, it involved the creation of a male professional identity, based on educational qualifications and the promise of managerial positions, sharply distinguished from shop-floor engineering and blue-collar workers. It also involved an ideal of manliness, characterized by the cultivation of bodily prowess and individual achievement. The discourse about manliness was mobilized to ensure that class, race and gender boundaries were drawn around the engineering bastion. It was during and through this process that the term ‘technology’ took on its modern meaning. Whereas the earlier concept of useful arts had included needlework and metalwork as well as spinning and mining, by the 1930s this had been supplanted by the idea of technology as applied science. At the same time, femininity was being reinterpreted as incompatible with technological pursuits. The legacy of this relatively recent history is our taken-for-granted association of technology with men.

Science as Ideology

Much early second-wave feminism then, was, of a liberal cast, demanding access for women within existing power structures, including technoscience. Feminist writing in this vein focused on gender stereotypes and customary expectations, and denied the existence of sex differences between women and men. It was based on an empiricist view of science and technology as fundamentally (gender) neutral. Sexism and androcentrism were understood as social biases capable of correction by stricter adherence to the methodological norms of scientific inquiry. The problem was framed in terms of the uses and abuses to which science and technology has been put by men.

The radical political movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s also began with this outlook. Research and campaigns depicted an abusing, militarized and polluting technoscience, directed towards profit and warfare. Initially science itself was seen as neutral or value-free, and potentially useful as long as it was in the hands of those working for a just society. Gradually, however, the radical science movement developed a Marxist analysis of the class character of science and its links with capitalist methods of production. A revived political economy of science argued that the growth and nature of modern science were related to the needs of capitalist society. Increasingly tied to the state and industry, science had become directed towards domination. The idea that science is neutral was seen as an ideology with a specific historical development. One of the characteristic formulations of this position, associated with the radical science movement, was that ‘science is social relations’. The point was that the distinction between science and ideology could not be sustained because the dominant social relations of society at large are constitutive of science.

Despite the recognition that scientific knowledge is profoundly affected by the society in which it is conducted, gender-conscious accounts were rare. The women’s health movement that developed in America and Britain during the 1970s provided an important impetus to the emergence of a feminist politics about scientific knowledge. Campaigns for improved birth control and abortion rights were central to the early period of second-wave feminism. They challenged the growth and consolidation of male expertise at the expense of both women’s health and women’s healing skills. Regaining knowledge and control over women’s bodies – their sexuality and fertility – was seen as crucial to women’s liberation.

The women’s health, peace and environmental movements all initially saw science as alien and opposed to women’s interests. This was in particular a reaction to the way biology and medical science had cast women as different and inferior, and made a case for biologically determined sex roles. By the 1980s, feminist criticisms of science had, in Sandra Harding’s words, evolved from asking the ‘woman question’ in science to asking the more radical ‘science question’ in feminism.⁶ Rather than asking how women can be more equitably treated within and by science, feminist critics asked how a science apparently so deeply involved in distinctively masculine projects could possibly be used for emancipatory ends. Western science was characterized as a masculine project of reason and objectivity, with women relegated to nature rather than culture. Rejecting scientific knowledge as patriarchal knowledge, there were calls for the development of a new science based on women’s values.

At the same time, feminist analyses of technology were shifting beyond the approach of ‘women and technology’ to examine the very processes whereby technology is developed and used, as well as those whereby gender is constituted. In other words, feminists were exploring the gendered character of technology itself. This approach has broadly taken two directions: one influenced by radical feminism, the other identified with socialist feminism.

Technology as Patriarchal

The view that Western technology itself embodies patriarchal values, and that its project is the domination and control of women and nature, is an important precept of radical feminism, cultural feminism and eco-feminism. These feminisms emphasize gender difference and celebrate what they see as specifically feminine, such as women’s greater humanism, pacifism, nurturance and spiritual development. The idea that what is specifically feminine is socially produced was abandoned, and n...