To what extent can we talk about the design and use of ICTs as gendered?

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Innovation, Culture and Technology

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To what extent can we talk about the design and use of ICTs as gendered?

In contemporary society, media and communication technologies, as are all other technologies, are gendered: in the way they are designed, produced and marketed as well as in the way that they are used. In the course of history, a more or less stable relationship between masculinity and technology has taken shape. Masculinity and technology are assumed to be intimately related to one another. It is argued that there is a definite “cultural association between masculinity and technology” (Grint and Gill: 3). Following on from this is the other popular assumption that all technology is created, designed by and there for masculine users. However, today’s generations and the future may hold some changes in the gendering of technologies.

To what extent have new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) such as computers, computer-games, mobile phones and Internet sites come to signify masculinity? What may have begun as a “sexist humour about women’s technical incompetence” (Grint and Gill: 3) has now developed into some thing much more serious. Feminists have claimed that “social relations of technologies are gendered” (Cockburn: 32), and it is true that we cannot fully understand technology today without a “reference to gender” (Cockburn: 32).

Throughout history men have dominated technology.

“Masculinity and technology are conceived of as being symbolically intertwined, such that technical competence has come to constitute an integral part of masculine gender identity, and, conversely, a particular idea of masculinity has become central to our very definition of technology” (Grint and Gill: 8). Women “were distant from the laboratories, drawing offices and board rooms from which decisions about new technologies were emerging” (Cockburn: 36). The designing of Information Communication Technologies were gendered male to a huge extent. Even today, technologies are increasingly being designed by men, and therefore it is men’s interests that are shaping the outcome of technologies. Women are being excluded not only in the production process but also when it comes to what is suitable for these ICTs. Men produce the majority of products designed mainly for the use of women housewives such as washing machines and microwaves. Therefore, how can they be suitable for women to use? Men observe women in their family homes and try to interpret what they will find useful to aid them with their housework.

“Men are depicted as designing technologies, which are ‘inappropriate’ or even ‘pernicious for women’s use and male interests’ are said to shape their eventual form” (Grint and Gill: 13). The continuing design and development of technologies by men is leading to gendered technologies which are not suitable for women. Therefore it would be much more practical and cost effective for women to design the technologies that they are more likely to use.

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However, “to talk about women and technology in the same breath seems strange, even incongruous. Technology is powerful, remote, incomprehensible, inhuman, scientific, expensive and- above all- male. What does it have to do with women?” (Faulkner and Arnold in Grint and Gill: 3). They suggest here that it is the common belief that women have nothing to do with technology. This to an extent this is completely true. The technology may be designed for women but it is certainly not by women. Any technological products that women will use are more than likely to come from a male dominated design ...

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