FROM WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENDERED TECHNOSCIENCE

摘要

This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of Jeminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early Jeminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender—technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that Jeminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.