Gender, Culture and Technology - Assignment Example

Gender and Technology Section Number of How does society participate in the social construction of gender? Using specific examples and theory, describe the personal and social consequences of gender dichotomies. Society allocates different sets of roles to men and women thereby categorizing them as specific genders. This is known as the social construction of gender. It is suggested that “gender is a socially constructed category and that the relation between the two genders are basically social relations” (Beall, 1993, pp. 131). Culture and cognitions manifest in social norms and the way think about and process information tend to reinforce our ideas of appropriate gender roles. Stereotyping also plays an important role in the way we learn to identify gender from society. Sex stereotypes are defined as “socially shared beliefs that certain qualities can be assigned to individuals, based on their membership in the female or male half of the human race” (Lips, 1993, pp. 2). The individual tends to conform to the roles defined or constructed by the society. Individuals are so influenced by the socially specified categories that they tend to organize themselves according to these categories. A woman speaks in one way when she is speaking to another woman, and in a different way when she is speaking to a man. She may behave differently when she is working with a group of men than when she is working with a group of females. This is because the woman has learnt through modeling, practice and reinforcement, to behave differently in situations that differ only in relation to the gender of the partner or the group. Her role vis-à-vis to the gender she is interacting with has already been prescribed and defined by society. Bohan (1993, pp.6) suggests that the differences between boys and girls and men and women can be explained by two different perspectives – Essentialism and Constructionism. Essentialism locates the origin of the gender qualities within the individual whereas Constructionism locates these gender qualities outside the individual as a component of the acts and actions of the individualism. Gender is therefore made external to the self. It is not intrinsic. It is only in what the actions of the individual. Gender qualities, from this perspective, are not intrinsic characteristics based on biological sex. Bohan argues that gender is not something that the individual possesses but something that the individual does. Essentialism on the other hand locates gender within the individual as intrinsic. The constructionist perspective actually locates gender in the social realm. It defines gender in terms of ‘doing’. West and Zimmerman (1993, pp. 380) define gender itself as “a routine, methodical and recurring accomplishment.” They contend that men and women undertake the ‘doing’ of gender to fit in the roles as competent members of the society. Viewed in this way, gender is not a set of traits or roles that we possess but is a product of social action manifest by something we do. Gender therefore becomes an active rather than a passive concept. Many examples of ‘doing’ gender can be found in our day-to-day life. The differences in dress codes between men and women, different types of facilities for men and women such as public washrooms, different social functions such as bridal showers and stag parties, different way of evaluating the same behavior in men and women as in the act of crying – these are all ‘doing’ gender. In social construction of gender, the focus is on the interaction of people with one another rather than on the inherent behavior of individuals. Describe, using theory and examples, how myths of “man the maker” and “women as consumer” (Oldenziel, 2001) have mutually shaped constructions of both gender and technology Women have always been at the receiving end of technology. They have always been viewed as users of technology rather than the maker or creator – a role that has been almost exclusively reserved for men throughout. It is as if women lack the technical acumen that is required to be the originator or maker of technology. This concept of the woman as the consumer and the man as the maker has been augmented by the engineering framework of the history of technology. Those who wrote the history of technology, many of them lapsed engineers or historians who taught at technical institutions, tended to restrict technology and what they termed as technical inventions within the domain of engineers and the engineering profession. Anything falling out of that specified domain did not qualify as technology or technological inventions. “This engineering genesis of the filed unwittingly excluded those historical actors operating outside its definitions of the engineering professions.” (Oldenziel, 2001, pp. 128) This narrow perspective of technology banished other creative activities such as bonnet-making, sewing and bread-making in which women were more involved, outside the realm of technology and technological inventions. This engineering framework in the history of technology combined with the emphasis on business history making up and reinforcing what can be termed as the paradigm of production. This paradigm of production placed far greater importance on tangible products, objects, hard work and character rather than on knowledge, institutions, users, leisure and personality (Oldenziel, 2001, pp. 128). Translated into practical application this paradigm meant dominance of design over use, patent activity over tacit knowledge, engineering products over non-engineering products and capital-intensive technologies over labor-intensive technologies. It placed men plumb in the centre of the technological world and relegated women somewhere to the fringes as users of technology – users who had no role in the making or shaping of the technology. This leads us directly to the third perspective that is based on the implied opposite – the world of production assumes an opposite world of consumption. The active world of production is the man’s world, and the passive world of consumption is woman’s world. The woman is assumed to be a passive consumer. It denies the consumer any role in technological developments. It ignores the fact that it was women who led to the invention of the refrigerator by exploring alternative uses of the farm car engine, that it was women again who showed how the telephone could be put to a variety of other uses than just conveying terse business instructions and messages as it was conceived for in the very beginning. Initially women were not even considered as important consumers. They were thought to be too technically unsophisticated to be able to appreciate new technologies. Most of the engineering products were first designed for the use by men. The bicycle, the combustion car, the radio and the telephone all were first designed for use by men. It was only when women began to reveal how these products could be utilized by other and for a variety of other reasons, and when the producers began to realize that women constituted a large market for their products, that they focused on women as consumers. The engineering-productionist paradigm therefore shaped the social constructions of both gender and technology. What [does] it mean for computing to be masculine and how [did] it become so? A masculine culture of computing refers to the social construction of computers and computing as male. Such a perspective implies that computing is essentially a male domain, best suited to male aptitudes. It is by default a rejection of female participation and involvement in the field of computing. Women are assumed not to possess the aptitude required for computing. This is expressed in several ways: women do not have the mathematical or logical brains required for computing, they do not appreciate technology, they do not possess the dedication, level of interest or obsession that is required of computer professionals. It is of interest to note that many women were considered pioneers in computing. The reason behind this could be that before the advent of the digital computer in the 1940s, the term ‘computer’ referred to a person, usually a woman, who carried out calculations by hand or with the help of mechanical computers. The task itself would be monotonous and labelled as clerical, requiring no special skill or faculty. That was perhaps why women such as Grace Hopper were the renowned names in the early development of computers and computing. Jean Sammet of IBM is also another formidable name from the early days of computer technology. Many of the first programmers for the ENIAC were women. There could be many reasons why the number of women in computing had fallen drastically after the beginning. The end of the Second World War had seen men returning to work from the war and replacing women in many jobs at home that they had held during the course of the War. The women working in the field of computing could have been directed back home. Many of the first programmers of ENIAC also give the common reason of careers being cut short by marriage and the birth of children. The most plausible reason however could be that men realized that unlike calculating, computing was a challenging enterprise, both creatively and intellectually. Computing also promised lucrative rewards and high reputations. Computer programming in the United States of the 1950s was not closeted by academic environment. Rather, imbibed with a vital frontier enthusiasm. Action, competition and innovation marked the field. This easily led to a masculine computing fraternity. “Recognition in the small programming fraternity was more likely to be accorded for a colourful personality, an extraordinary feat of coding, or the ability to hold a lot of liquor well than it was for an intellectual insight. Ideas flowed freely along with the liquor at innumerable meetings, as well as in sober private discussions and informally distributed papers.”(Backus, 1980) Computing soon assumed the characteristics of a hard-drinking boys’ club. The mythical impression of the computer ‘nerd’ and the ‘hacker’ added to the masculinity of computing. Computing was perceived to be the exclusive preserve of male loners addicted to the machines. Loners who had no social life and spent most of their waking hours with the computers. The crux of the matter is that the gendering of the field of computing has been a process of social construct. The computer as a concept is protean. A computer can be male or female only in the way we assign or ascribe certain characteristics to it. In practice computing is what we have made of it since the late 1940s and the early 1950s. “Computing has no nature. It is what it is because people have made it so. Those people have been overwhelmingly men.” (Mahoney, 2001, pp. 172) How do men and women differ in terms of their approaches to “doing” computer science in working environments and to learning in academic environments? Using theory and examples, describe the consequences—to men and to women—of these differences. Since computing is viewed essentially as a masculine field men and women tend to adopt different approaches in ‘doing’ computer science to conform to the socially constructed gender. The first and very obvious implication is the reluctance of women to enter the field. “It is evident that women have not played, and still do not play, much of a role in computer science or in the design and development of computer systems, whether mainframe, minicomputer or personal computer. They seem to be more proportionately represented among the consumers of computing, where their representation would seem to be determined more by their presence in business and the professions than by a particular stance towards computers” (Mahoney, 2001, pp. 172). This bears out the fact that women are actually staying away from computing and computer science basically because society has chosen to construct that the field is more suitable for the ‘nerdy’ guys and the hacker types. Women had made important contribution to the development of computing since its very inception. Many women programmers worked on early computers such as the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). Women such as Adele Goldstine were also the pioneering programmers of America’s military computer programming. Augusta Ada Byron Lovelace is known as the first computer programmer. Dr Grace Murray Hopper, known as the grandmother of COBOL, helped develop the first computer programming language COBOL. She also played a crucial role in the development of the first modern IBM computer. Judy Levenson and Thelma Estrin both of whom received graduate degrees in the early Fifties made significant contributions to the field. The scenario has however changed drastically over the years. The participation of women in computing has taken a nosedive. This is largely indicated by the dropping percentage of women participating in computer science programs in universities and the inadequate presence of women in the higher reaches of computing fields and careers. The Information Technology Association of America (2005) recorded a decline of 18.5 percent in the percentage of women in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) workforce since 1996. That the field is now predominantly dominated by men is evidence enough of the difference in approach to ‘doing’ computer science between men and women, and how it has affected the fate of each. In the academic arena the effect is all the more marked. In what has been termed the ‘incredible shrinking pipeline’ (Camp, 1997; Camp, Miller, & Davies, 1998; Davies & Camp, 2000) it has been found that the percentage of participation of women in computer science courses in universities all across the United States has fallen in the last two decades. In 1984, there were 37 percent of women enrolled in the programs for bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science. In 1996, the figure had come down to 25 percent. (National Science Foundation, 2000). More undergraduate women who have enrolled for computer science have left the major than their male counterparts (Cohoon, 2001). Besides, although there has been a dramatic increase in the percentage of women graduate students, women still account for less than 25 percent of computer science graduate degrees (National Science Foundation, 2000). The consistent low representation of women in computing and in computer science programs in universities could not only be the result of women adopting to the socially constructed gender of the field but could also involve broader differences in approaches such as the computer science curricula oriented in a manner that could be more suited to men. Computer science curricula has traditionally been oriented on the basis of male ‘fascinations’ with the aspects of the subject that may appeal to women students being largely ignored (Enderton, 2003, pp. 23). The differences in their approaches to ‘doing’ computer science have therefore been largely to the advantage of men and the disadvantage of women. References -01 Backus, J., 1980, Programming in America in the 1950s – Some Personal Impressions, In A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, ed. N., Metropolis, et al. New York Academic Press. Beall, 1993, Bohan, 1993, Camp, T., 1997, The incredible shrinking pipeline, Communications of theACM, 40 (10),103-110. Available. http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/tcamp/ cacm/paper.html [February 25, 2008] Camp, T., Miller, K, & Davies, V.,2000, The incredible shrinking pipeline unlikely to reverse. Available. http://www.mines.edu/fs_home/tcamp/ new-study / new-study.html [February 25, 2008] Cohoon, J., M., 2001, Toward improving female retention in the computer science major. Communications of the ACM, 44, 108-114. Enderton, M., 2003, Women in Computer Science: Two Studies on the Effects of Stereotypes, Psychology Department, Macalester College. Information Technology Association of America, 2005), Untapped talent: Diversity, competition, and Americas high tech future. June 21, 2005. Arlington, VA. Lips, 1993, Mahoney, M. (2001). Boys’ toys and women’s work. In A. Creager, E. Lunbeck, & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Feminism in twentieth-century science, technology, and medicine (pp. 169-185). Chicago: University of Chicago. National Science Foundation, 2000, Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering 2000. Available. http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf00327/start.htm [February 25, 2008] Oldenziel, R., 2001, Man the maker, woman the consumer. In A. Craeger, E. Lunbeck, & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Feminism in twentieth-century science, technology, and medicine (pp. 128-148). Chicago: University of Chicago. West and Zimmerman, 1993, Read More