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Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.

Cheris Kramarae

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"What are the technological resources available and how are they distributed? Who are the experts? The users? Who is doing the washing, cooking, child care and transporting of groceries; and how are they doing it? What is the social status of the differing work they do?

Similar questions can (and should) be asked about men’s interaction. And in fact, asking these questions about women encourages our consideration of all communication patterns. But many other scholars have been concerned with male involvement with technology. Not perhaps in the ways suggested by this book (and not even explicitly as men’s experiences and values), but Western history of technology has been basically men’s history. In fact, one way of describing what has traditionally been considered as technology is to say it consists of the devices, machinery and processes which men are interested in. (This is a reason why we do not find discussions of child care devices in men’s books on technology.)

There are, of course, other definitions of technology. The least helpful are those which refer only to devices and machinery and to the techniques used to make things work. This is similar to the lopsided way of describing housework in terms of dust cloths and cleaning fluids without reference to the social systems which determine who it is who does the dusting and cleaning. The most helpful (at least for our interest in women’s social relations) are the definitions which places social practices at the center. For example, Arnold Pacey (1983) describes technology practice as ‘the application of scientific and other knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems that involve people and organizations, living things and machines’ (6). David Noble (1977; 1984) introduces technology as the transformation of science into a means of capital accumulation. In these definitions, technology is a human political and social activity.

Because they are compact and because they spotlight the basic concerns and assumptions of their writers, definitions are often useful. But they are too often too cryptic. For the purposes of extended discussions such as contained in this book I would add these points:

Technology, like all aspects of ‘progress,’ is usually thought of as a masculine invention and activity. In actuality we are all intensely involved in and affected by technology practices. Official and professional development and evaluation of technology has been done by men who have limited knowledge about women’s daily lives and problems, and very limited interest in expanding women’s economic and social freedom.

New technological processes are usually considered part of modernization which many think inevitably leads to the improvement of the status and well-being of the people involved. Actually, modernization has resulted in women losing traditional roles in agriculture and handicrafts production, and thus losing some of their autonomy, influence, and access to resources (Tiano 1984). This erosion has not, however, ‘freed’ them to become full-time homemakers and child rearers; women typically have double work loads of familial and other, income-generating responsibilities. Because their domestic tasks are stressed and are considered to be insular activities, men do not consider women to be part of any important communication networks.

Technology is usually considered ‘big world’ talk, connected in communication research with the ‘public’ sphere, men, mass media, machines, and market prices. To connect women and technology is to challenge the private/public division present throughout malestream communication theorizing.

Most Western technological change is linked to traditional, patriarchal work practices. Ironically what seems new for men often turns out to be very much the same old thing for women. Since the industrial revolution—with the separation of men from daily domestic life and the separation of unpaid house and child care work from other work—social hierarchies have remained amazingly consistent. In this sense, much of the seemingly revolutionary technology is actually very conservative. The relationship between change and continuity is one of the topics of this book.

The concept of technological innovation today has the central significance that theological discussions had in medieval times (see editors’ note for essay by Judith McGaw 1982, 798). Many of our current debates about politics, history, change, values, lifestyles and liberation center on concerns about technology.

The tech-fix, the belief that technology can solve all kinds of problems, even social ones (Bush 1983, 152), has not worked to make a better world for women. This is not to say that women do not use and profit from many innovations. Technological change can be positive for women, either through chance benefits resulting from changes introduced primarily by business managers for themselves or from conscious addressing of women’s problems. It is just that this has seldom happened. As Arditti et al. (1984), writing about reproductive technologies, state, ‘Each new technology is born in a mire of complex social issues—issues the technologists, apparently, never stop to debate’ (4). Equity in assessment and management of technology would itself be the most major of technological changes.

Many of the technological developments which are thought of as primarily tools to complement human skills also have critical importance to women’s social relations. As Margaret Lowe Benson (this volume) points out, the scientific/technical language and world view is increasingly accepted as the only legitimate model for discussing and interpreting reality—with world- and word-shaking implications for the subject matter and form of discourse.

If technology practices are human structures and organizations, how strange that most historians, scientists and social critics haven’t included consideration of women’s social relations as essential to understanding technology. (Strange—but actually we are not astonished because to many people, technology = science = men; Dale Spender (1982; 1983), Jan Zimmerman (1986), Joan Rothschild (1983), and other feminist theoreticians have given us accounts of how women have been separated from historical and social criticism.)"

— Technology and Women's Voices: Keeping in Touch (1988)

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Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.

Cheris Kramarae

#feminism #cheris kramarae #such a radical notion #women #girls #equality #activism #human rights #women's rights

Cheris Kramarae

Cheris Kramarae is the co-editor of the new Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge, and a past professor of communications and of women's studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is a visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Women and Men Speaking; editor of Technology and Women's Voices; and co-editor of Feminism Challenges in the Information Age; Women,Information Technology and Scholarship; The Information Explosion; Feminism Challenges in the Information Age; The Revolution in Words: Righting Women 18680-1871; Radical Press of the 1850's; A Feminist Dictionary; For Alma Mater: Feminist Scholarship in Theory and Practice; Language and Power; Language, Gender and Society; and The Voices and Words of Women and Men, as well as dozens of chapters and articles on language, education, radical feminism, and technology.

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