11 'Keeping Up My Image': Balancing Engineering Identity with Gender Identity

摘要

While the disparity of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations stresses the nation's economic capacity and growth in a time of global competitiveness, the most pressing issue regarding the dearth of females in STEM professions concerns the principle of social equality. Gender and technology are in an interrelated and continuous process constantly being reconstructed in a dynamic and relational manner with the individual and the environment. As the culture of technological work and its environment are associated with masculinity and power, the lack of females pursuing engineering degrees creates an unbalanced power structure regarding the creation and advancement of technology, whereby science/ technology is not gender neutral and gender is not a fixed essential trait.