SOC3061- Lecture 04

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SOC3061- Lecture 04

• Gender and Technology

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Domestic technologies / Reproductive technologies

• Early feminist writings on reproductive
  technologies (1970s) endorse a form of
  Technological Determinism
• New Technologies ? free women from the tyranny
  of the household. Towards womens equality
• E.g. the contraceptive pill ? sexual
  revolution, sexual equality

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Domestic technologies

• Ruth Schwartz Cowan
• Critique of Talcott Parsons model for the
  crisis of the modern family.
• Case-study. The mechanization of the household
  in the US (1920s-1930s)
• - Middle-class wives do not get jobs
• - Mechanized housework is equally time-consuming
• - Isolated household technology is not shared
• - New ideology of the perfect housewife-mother

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• Gender relations shape the design of domestic
  technologies.
• E.g. white good /black goods
• Cockburn-Ormod case-study on the microwave
• Ann Jorum Berg case-study on the smart house
• Which priorities can be found in our domestic
  technologies?
• Alternative domestic technologies Moyra Doorly
  on Victorian feminists and their project for
  cooperative residential neighbourhoods

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Reproductive technologies

• IVF, egg donation, artificial insemination,
  surrogacy, cloning, etc. (changes in the notion
  of parenthood and family)
• In fact, our choices are highly constrained by
  economic and social factors. Many roads are not
  taken (e.g. delay in studying a male pill)
• History of fertility control are essentially
  technological determinist in their approach

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• Nelly Oudshoorn on ideologies of gender as
  shaping medical technologies, and human bodies as
  well.
• Male/female bodies as essentially different
• Gynaecology/ sex endocrinology contraception
  research focuses on womans body until the 1980s
• Contraceptive campaigns in Africa (hormonal
  implants)
• E.g. the gender discourse shaped the pill? the
  pill shaped womens bodies

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A social shaping perspective

• Society and culture (priorities, agendas for
  research and design technologies)

• Domestic and reproductive technologies, and
  ways of using them

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