Gender and Technology: A Reader / Edition 1

by Nina Lerman, Ruth Oldenziel, Arwen P. Mohun

Overview

For most of human experience, certainly of late, the artifacts of technological civilization have become closely associated with gender, sometimes for physiological reasons (brassieres or condoms, for example) but more often because of social and cultural factors, both obvious and obscure. Because these stereotypes necessarily have economic, social, and political consequences, understanding how gender shapes the ways we view and use technology—and how technology shapes our concept of gender—has emerged as a matter of serious scholarly importance. Gender and Technology brings together leading historians of technology to explore this entwined and reciprocal relationship, focusing on the tools (cars, typewriters, computers, vibrators), industries (dressmaking, steam laundering, cigar making, meat packing) and places (factories, offices, homes) of North America between 1850 and 1950. Together, these essays reveal the ways in which technology and gender—far from being essential, immutable categories—develop historically as social constructions.

Contributors: Patricia Cooper, University of Kentucky; Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan; Wendy Gamber, Indiana University; Carolyn M. Goldstein, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts; Rebecca Herzig, Bates College; Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Ronald R. Kline, Cornell University; Jennifer Light, Northwestern University; Rachel P. Maines, Cornell University's Hotel School Library; Judith A. McGaw; Joy Parr, Simon Fraser University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801872594
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.23(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Arwen P. Mohun is a professor of history at the University of Delaware. She is author of Steam Laundries: Gender, Technology, and Work in the United States and Great Britain, 1880–1940 and coeditor of Gender and Technology: A Reader, both published by Johns Hopkins.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Interrogating Boundaries
Part I: Entwined Categories: Gender Constructs Technology
Chapter 1. Why Feminine Technologies Matter
Chapter 2. Why Masculine Technologies Matter
Chapter 3. Situated Technology: Meanings
Chapter 4. Situated Technology: Camouflage
Part II: Entwined Categories: Technology Constructs Gender
Chapter 5. Industrial Genders: Constructing Boundaries
Chapter 6. Industrial Genders: Home/Factory
Chapter 7. Industrial Genders: Soft/Hard
Part III: Industrial Junctions: Gendering Industrial Technologies
Chapter 8. Cigarmaking
Chapter 9. Dressmaking
Chapter 10. Meatpacking
Chapter 11. Programming
Part IV: Industrial Junctions: Technologies of Industrial Genders
Chapter 12. Economics and Homes: Agency
Chapter 13. Home EconomiesL Mediators
Chapter 14. Home Ideologies: Progress?
The Shoulders We Stand On/The View From Here: Historiography and Directions For Research
Instructor's Notes on Organization
List of Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Eric Schatzberg

This excellent anthology should become a standard source for those interested in the history of gender and technology, as well as a widely used text for courses in gender studies. The selection of articles is brilliant. The volume is grounded in the mature historical scholarship published in Technology and Culture, and significantly strengthened by the inclusion of key articles from other sources.

— Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Amy Bix

The essays selected for this volume cover a well-distributed range of subjects, bringing history of technology and gender studies together with studies of consumerism, labor, production, race, and other topics. The pieces included are well-written, thought-provoking, and frequently just plain enjoyable. The collection will serve valuable scholarly purpose, helping both to establish where research on the relationship between gender and history of technology currently stands and to suggest promising directions for future work.

— Amy Bix, Iowa State University

From the Publisher

The essays selected for this volume cover a well-distributed range of subjects, bringing history of technology and gender studies together with studies of consumerism, labor, production, race, and other topics. The pieces included are well-written, thought-provoking, and frequently just plain enjoyable. The collection will serve valuable scholarly purpose, helping both to establish where research on the relationship between gender and history of technology currently stands and to suggest promising directions for future work.
—Amy Bix, Iowa State University

This excellent anthology should become a standard source for those interested in the history of gender and technology, as well as a widely used text for courses in gender studies. The selection of articles is brilliant. The volume is grounded in the mature historical scholarship published in Technology and Culture, and significantly strengthened by the inclusion of key articles from other sources.
—Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison