GENDER AND TECHNOLOGY

Gender and Technology

Gender and Technology

Introduction

A study of Technology and Gender are a subset of the studies of Science, Technology and Society (CTS) and deal with many issues. Mainly, examine existing relationships held between women and science and technology. Science and technology are fundamental to the economic development of countries. Yet despite the growing rise of women in scientific and technological studies, your professional presence is still well below the expected percentage. The reasons for this are various, being identifiable in the first instance, motivation, social and institutional exclusion, and even identification of the scientific and technological 'masculine' (Maxwell, 2000). For this reason, most countries consider the variable of sex (and age) as a prerequisite for the development of diagnosis of the situation of women in science and technology system. In recent decades, feminist theory has shown an increasing ability to analyze and challenge the science and technology from specific perspectives, which highlights the contradiction between a general world and the supposed neutrality of science and technology.

Definition of gender and technology

Gender technology is a concept elaborated by the author from the Foucauldian thesis of "technologies of sex. The author argues that sexuality-as opposed to what at first might think, is not a natural impulse of bodies but that "sex, however, is the speculative element, more ideal and more on a device within the power of sexuality organizes in its takeover of the body, its materiality, its strengths and pleasures.

Parallel to this "technology of sex" speaks of "technology of gender", understanding that gender-in the same way that sexuality is a manifestation, not natural and spontaneous expression of sex or intrinsic characteristics and sexed bodies specific to male or female, but the bodies are something like a surface that will sculpt, not without some resistance from the subjects, models and representations of masculinity and femininity disseminated by the hegemonic cultural forms of each society according to age (Opie, 2008). Among the dominant discursive practices that act of "technology of gender" the author includes the educational system, institutional discourses, practices of everyday life, film, media, speeches, literary, historical and so on. I.e. all those disciplines or practices used in each practice time and the dominant culture to name, define, capture or represent femininity (or masculinity), but while the name, define, embody or represent also created, so " the construction of gender is both product and process of self-representation. In short, what the author wants to say is that the constitution of the subject process is not without gender determination, we become gendered subjects and that, therefore, and femininity (or masculinity) is a construction, a procedure which a result is to be the male or female biological sex a woman or a man.

Main ideas out of material

The author has traced the effects of these differences on women's sense of belonging and comfort in the program, and on their decisions to stay or leave. While most of the male students describe an early and persistent magnetic attraction between themselves and computers, women much more ...