Engendering technology: culture, gender, and work

In contemporary Western society, technological professions are gendered, and this differential attribution of meaning has implications for the composition of the professions and the experiences of men and women in them. In this paper, I briefly review a comparative framework which challenges conventional wisdom about the configurations of gender and technology. I consider examples which benefit from examination in this framework, and use them to point out avenues for change in current contexts. An examination of women's traditional activities as being "technological" opens the door to inviting women to think of themselves as contributors to technological life, since they already are in more traditional areas.