Towards a Feminized Technology? Gendered Values in the Construction of Technology

Abstract

Feminists have produced different conceptions of women in science—suppressed, reformers, or revolutionaries—all of which have proved controversial to many women who are actually working in science and technology. This paper approaches some of the issues raised by feminist analysis through an empirical investigation of engineering students and R&D scientists in Norway. It gives an outline of what is meant by `caring values' in a Norwegian context, and of the problems raised by efforts to produce universal links between values and physical properties of artefacts. Then the effects of selection and socialization of women in technology, and the possibilities of articulating caring values in the culture of Norwegian technological R&D, are analyzed. The paper argues that strong claims that women and caring values have `no impact' in R&D should be rejected, as should claims about positive impacts on methods and design criteria. However, problem choice is affected, and some `natives' claim that the computer science sub-field of information systems is an arena where women do R&D differently from men.