ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology” » February 20th: Technology and Gender

February 20th: Technology and Gender

Plan for the Day

  • Technology and Yourself Essay Revisions Due, Friday, 3/01, 11:00pm, on Canvas
  • Finishing Up Love as a Technology
  • Finish up David Noble’s The Religion of Technology (Appendix)
  • Rachel N. Weber’s “Manufacturing Gender…”
  • Ruth Scwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home…”
  • Preview your next essay: Social Construction of Technology Essays

Is Love a Technology? (time permitting)

Head back to 2/15’s page on love and stuff. Let me briefly point out some important “science” in the article and show how the article reports on an academic research.

What’s lost and/or gained when a topic originally aimed at one audience is filtered for another audience? Does the title capture the substance of the article?

Social Construction of Technology Essays

Let’s preview your next essay, which is due You should have been thinking about this for a while. After all, it’s been on the Assignments page all semester: Social Construction of Technology Essays. Before we even look at the guidelines, I want to stress that this essay asks you to think of a social value or cultural belief (or condition) that appears to drive the production and/or use of a technology. It isn’t predominantly about a technology–it’s about showing how a technology can tell us about the culture from which it comes.

Rachel N. Weber’s “Manufacturing Gender in Military Cockpit Design”

Before we get into this, I need to make a disclaimer and focus our attention to more productive places. This reading (and the others) aren’t supposed to make you experts for or provide technical details on specific technologies. The readings try to help you understand the rhetoric of technology by demonstrating the how/why/when/where/who surrounding technology. Even if some technologies seem out of date, the readings still have value for two reasons: 1) the critical distance historical analysis allows and 2) analyzing the discourse and culture surrounding the technology. We’re more concerned with analyzing the cultural reasons, a story for why a technology came to be as opposed to trying to assess whether or not a technology was the “best” option. These historical analyses should help you (re)think about contemporary technologies. Your own analyses will be influenced by what others say about technologies because that discourse is loaded with cultural values. Remember, we use read technologies to discover something about our culture.

This article raises an important discussion about technological determinism. There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if one argues that women can’t be pilots because they don’t fit into the cockpits. Well, if the cockpits are created for men…

  • Traditional feminist view is military weapons are the extension of the phallus (p. 373).
    • “‘inherent’ masculinity of such [military] technologies is socially constructed” (p. 373).
    • What are some commercial, non-military technologies that you can think of that have design bias against other body types?
    • Giant Head and coach seats…
  • Ergonomics and Anthropometrics: guidelines for designing equipment (p. 374).
  • “Design bias has far-reaching implications for gender equity in the military” (p. 375)
  • Cockpit designs protect traditionally male occupations (p. 375).

Relevant Social Groups

I want to look at the following passage for two reasons: 1) it’s relevant to Weber’s article and the rhetoric of technology in general, and 2) it demonstrates how to synthesize quotations, which is something you need to work on for your Technology and Yourself Essay revisions…

  • From Marconi’s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology (Toscano 2012, p. 36):

    No matter how well an invention works, it must also adhere to larger cultural values. Relevant social groups immersed in a particular culture affix meaning to inventions, thus, building technological frames. Bijker (1995) explains that “[a] technological frame is built up when interaction ‘around’ an artifact begins”; therefore, if a frame is not built up in order to “move members of an emerging relevant social group in the same direction,” a technology will fail (p. 123). Before users will accept a technology, they must believe the product adheres to social values. These values give meaning to a technological frame. Bijker observes that “[a] technological frame comprises all elements that influence the interactions within relevant social groups and lead to the attribution of meanings to technical artifacts—and thus to constituting technology” (p. 123). Therefore, these frames can be understood as sets of meaning(s) groups affix to technology.
  • “The process of design accommodation in the military became a process of negotiation between various social groups who held different stakes in and interpretations of the technology in question” (paraphrasing Pinch and Bijker, 1984).
    • So what does this mean for Weber’s analysis? This reading (and Fallows) are about the relevant social groups within the military who affix meaning and push for particular technological developments. Technologies don’t just come to be because they are the best–they are made to fit the values of a particular culture (big and small cultures).
  • Les Aspin’s directive to include more women in combat (p. 376).
    • “negotiations over accommodation arose as a result of changes made in policies regarding women in combat” (p. 376).
    • New JPATS sitting height threshold to reach 80% of eligible women (p. 376).
  • Pragmatists note that design changes could mean more foreign sales (p. 377). $$$$$ = motivation

Framing the Discussion/Setting the Rules

  • Changing the “debate” from accommodating women to accommodating all service members (top of p. 378).
    • Notice that Weber’s argument is that change happened, in part, because of rhetoric: The major strategy wasn’t to claim the changes were for expanding women’s opportunities but for expanding opportunities for more military personnel.
  • The perspective of female officers seeing a demand of special rights from women in the military (p. 378).
  • Winning aircraft contracts linked to crew accommodations: This policy decision drives what features and to what specifications new technologies (aircraft) will be designed–politics of technology (p. 379).
  • Tailhook scandal and Anita Hill–early 1990s and sexual harassment awareness.

Questions for this article:

  • What’s feminism got to do with manly stuff like science and technology?
  • What’s the goal of this article?
  • What happens when spaces have to be designed?
  • Is it fair to say the military was sexist because of its “typical” or assumed pilot size?
  • Cause and effect. Could it be that gender exclusion led to the androcentric (male oriented) design? In other words, what comes first: sexism or sexist products?

Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home”

Before we get into Cowan’s article/chapter, we need to get your minds going, so let me ask some questions:

  • What is or what defines the middle class? Who are they, what do they look like, where do they live?
  • What are some prevailing attitudes surrounding housewives (homemakers) and women’s work?
  • List the chores you had to do as a child and the ones you have to do today. What technologies did you use?
  • How is Cowan making her case? What common ways does she support her arguments?
  • Obviously, the title tells readers they’re going to learn about technological change in the home. However, Cowan appears to have a larger point. Reflect on the conclusion, and come up with what’s behind the surface discussion of housewives of (mostly) Muncie, IN in the 1910s-1930s.

Cowan mentions the phrase “functionalist approach” when referring to past ideas about technology and social change. The functionalist approach follows technological determinism, which claims technology comes about and changes society. We know that’s too simple an explanation. The functionalist approach is somewhat opposed to Cowan’s (and our) sociological approach to studying technology:

  • Functionalist approach: The parts of human systems can be studied in isolation without much regard for worrying about the effects of the various parts of the system on the whole. All the various parts contribute to the entirety of the system, society. The goal of study is to try to improve society by identifying what works but not necessarily asking for change/activism. Activism would disrupt the “natural” path to ordering society.
  • Cowan’s approach: Human systems are complex webs and we need to compare appropriate parts of society (whether historical or contemporary) to understand. The goal might be to improve society, but it could also just be to describe society and offer possible interpretations. Cowan’s goal is to look at “one kind of technological change affecting one aspect of family life in only one of the many social classes of families” (p. 283). She feels the other approach is making too many sweeping generalizations because it’s trying to have one change affect too much (too many across a diverse land). Also, she doesn’t think they have the appropriate evidence.
  • Which is the more postmodern philosophy?

Cowan’s exact research question: “What happened, I asked, to middle-class American women when the implements with which they did their everyday household work changed?” (p. 283)

Below are some key quotations/sections we should address:

  • p. 283: Defining middle-class women through magazine readership.
  • p. 285: New household technologies eliminated (or reduced the time it took to complete) some chores, but they added new ones.
  • p. 286: “marked structural changes in the work force, changes that increased the work load and the job description of the workers that remained. New jobs were created for which new skills were required.”
  • p. 287: Decline of free help and “the servant problem.”
  • pp. 288-289: Advertising to condition housewives and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’–not a direct quote.
  • p. 290: mothers “were willing and able to read about the latest discoveries in nutrition, in the control of contagious diseases, or in the techniques of behavioral psychology.”
  • p. 291: Guilt and shame for having stinky children or a bathroom full of invisible germs.
  • p. 294: “[F]or middle-class American housewives between the wars [WWI and WWII]…social changes were concomitant with a series of technological changes in the equipment that was used to do the work.”

Preview Technology Project

Let’s preview your Technology Project. This project is worth 200 points–20% of your grade. I have reduced the page requirement, but please know that this is a writing intensive course, so I absolutely have to have writing from you. You have the option to do visual “essays” for this assignment, but, if you didn’t do all the required writing for the other two essays, I suggest you pick an essay for this final project.

This project isn’t going to be a process work–I’m not collecting drafts–so I’m going to be more lenient on it than the previous essays. However, you still must do a presentation based on your Technology Project, and we’ll discuss that later this semester.

Next Class

Your “Technology and Yourself” Essay revisions are due next class–3/01.

Keep up with your reading. We’ll discuss James Fallows’s “The American Army and the M-16 Rifle” and Hunter Havelin Adams, III’s “African Observers of the Universe” on Thursday, 2/22. This chapter is mainly about who can legitimately claim to be a scientist based on the “rules” set forth by scientific authorities. It’s longer than the other articles, so you’ll need more than 20 mins to read it. A close reading will allow you to reflect more on what the author is saying. More reflection, more chance to relate the ideas to your own experiences.