This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender–technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.
1637
Views
39
CrossRef citations
Altmetric
be0ef6915d1b2200a248b7195d01ef22
Original Articles
FROM WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENDERED TECHNOSCIENCE
Pages 287-298
Published online: 21 Jun 2007
Original Articles
FROM WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENDERED TECHNOSCIENCE
People also read
Judy Wajcman
Labour & Industry: a journal of the social and economic relations of work
Published online: 10 Apr 2013
review article
Technofeminism