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10.1177/1097184X03260956
MEN
Lohan,
AND
Faulkner
MASCULINITIES
/ MASCULINITIES
/ AprilAND
2004TECHNOLOGIES
Masculinities and Technologies
Some Introductory Remarks
MARIA LOHAN
Trinity College
WENDY FAULKNER
University of Edinburgh
This special issue is concerned with the social and cultural aligning of
technologies and masculinities—how it happens and how we might make
sense of it. Technology is an extremely significant site of gender negotiations
in relation to occupations, symbols, and identities, and gender in all these
areas has an extremely significant shaping influence on the design and use of
technologies. As Cynthia Cockburn has argued (1992), since technology and
gender are both socially constructed and socially pervasive, we can never
fully understand one without also understanding the other. By the same
token, since men and masculinities are particularly prominent within gendertechnology relations, technology should be a vital strand within the field of
men/masculinity studies, and masculinities should be a vital strand within the
field of technology studies. Yet relationships between men/masculinities and
technologies are seriously underresearched in both fields.
The relative dearth of related research in men and masculinities studies is
surprising given that science and technology are widely acknowledged as
powerful motifs of hegemonic masculinity. Useful studies of blue-collar
occupations where men work closely with technologies have been collected
in a special issue of Men and Masculinities, titled “Boys and Their Toys.”1
But we have not seen similar scrutiny of other sites in which men encounter
technologies or of the cultural equations drawn between masculinity and
technology and the roles these may play in wider gender relations. The relative dearth of research on masculinities and technologies within technology
studies is surprising given the frequent acknowledgment that powerful technological roles are predominantly occupied by men who thereby have a disproportionate influence in shaping new technologies. But only recently have
men/masculinities become a distinct theme of feminist technology studies
(see below).
We chose to compile this special issue in part to stimulate research on the
topic and in part because we believe that both men/masculinities studies and
feminist technology studies have much to contribute and learn from one
Men and Masculinities, Vol. 6 No. 4, April 2004 319-329
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X03260956
© 2004 Sage Publications
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another in the study of masculinities and technologies. Conceptually, each
field is arguably weak in the other’s area of expertise. So, men/masculinities
studies, as with gender studies in general (Faulkner 2001), has tended to
undertheorize technology, while technology studies, even feminist technology studies, has tended to undertheorize masculinity. Accordingly, masculinity studies has an important contribution to make to further studies of men
and technologies—for example, Bob Connell’s (1987) concept of hegemonic masculinity and the emphasis on the complexity and contingency of
gender identities (e.g., Brod and Kaufman 1994; Bird 1996; Demetriou
2001). The understanding of technology as socially constructed, which is
paradigmatic within technology studies, has a vital role to play in any further
research on the topic—for example, the insistence of feminist technology
studies that gender and technology be understood as mutually shaping one
another or coproduced (see below).
Our own engagement with the topic has grown out of this latter tradition.
Moreover, in spite of our having solicited contributions widely, all of the articles submitted for publication in this special issue came from the field of feminist technology studies. On the assumption that this scholarship will be
largely unfamiliar to the readership of this journal, we start our opening
remarks by outlining some of the key antecedents and concepts. We then
introduce the articles selected for inclusion in the special issue and conclude
by reflecting on the contribution we hope they make and on themes for future
research.
FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY STUDIES—ANTECEDENTS
AND CONCEPTS
Feminist technology studies may be distinguished from other feminist
scholarship on technology insofar as it starts from a constructivist understanding of technology. Other, nonconstructivist feminist scholarship on
technology falls largely under two headings: women in technology and
women and technology. The first strand of research, which is small, but longstanding, addresses the question, why so few women in technology? In engineering and computing especially, this is an issue now firmly on the agendas
of governments and industry. For the most part, the literature on women in
technology remains within the liberal tradition and problematizes women
rather than technology (Henwood 1996). Yet there is a strong case that the
male dominance of engineering, for example, is sustained in part by a wider
cultural marking of technology as masculine (e.g., Håpnes and Rasmussen
1991) and brings with it a masculine culture that is inimical to women’s
progression within the occupation (McIlwee and Robinson 1992). The second—and larger—stream of (nonconstructivist) research on women and
technology emerged during the late 1970s, prompted by the advent of word-
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processing technology (see Webster 1990) and by women’s health activism
around various medical technologies (e.g., Stanworth 1987). This shift effectively broadened the agenda beyond the obvious equity issue, reflecting the
fact that the vast majority of women encounter technology as users rather
than designers. Much of the feminist research on women and individual technologies has tended to be either techno-optimist or techno-pessimist, with
the latter portraying women as victims of men’s technology (Berg 1997,
chap. 1). Technology per se is not theorized beyond this (Faulkner 2001).
In contrast, technology studies avoids these polar opposites, precisely
because it sees technology as socially shaped and therefore potentially
reshapeable. The constructivist framing of technology (see below) emphasizes complexity and contingency in ways that accord much more authentically with the ambivalence that typically characterizes women’s encounters
with technology (Faulkner 2001). Accordingly, technology studies is selfconsciously neither optimistic nor pessimistic about technology. The small,
but growing, body of what now gets called feminist technology studies grew
jointly out of this tradition and out of existing feminist work on technology
and was clearly identifiable by the 1990s.2 This (third) stream of research
tends to be couched in terms of gender and technology rather than women
and technology, signaling an insistence that technology as well as gender
should be understood as socially constructed.
Early work in feminist technology studies sought to explore the various
ways in which technologies are gendered. Cynthia Cockburn’s work (1983,
1985) was extremely formative. Her seminal study of printing demonstrated
how technical skills and artifacts3 can be constructed in ways which favor
men over women in the paid labor force. These themes were well rehearsed in
labor process studies (e.g., McNeil 1987), in accounts of how powerful technological roles came to be marked as masculine during the course of industrialization (Cockburn 1985; Oldenziel 1999), and in studies of kitchen technology and domestic labor (notably, Cowan 1983). Increasingly, feminist
technology studies highlighted not only how gender can shape technology
but also how the design and/or use of technologies can constitute gender
identities and relations. During the 1990s, much of the empirical research
within this tradition focused on the use and users of technologies in everyday
life, especially in the home (see, e.g., Sørensen and Berg, 1991; Lie and
Sørensen 1996; Silverstone and Hirsch 1992; Cockburn and Dilic 1994;
Cockburn and Ormrod 1993). Only recently have men/masculinities been
singled out for attention in this work (e.g., Lie 1995; Lohan 2001; Oudshoorn
1999) or has feminist technology studies focused on engineers who design
new technologies (e.g., Mellström 1995; Oldenziel 1999; Faulkner 2000a,
2000b).
Before moving on to elaborate this (fourth) strand of research on men/
masculinities and technologies, let us pause to rehearse the key conceptual
tenets of feminist technology studies that frame this work.
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The starting point of constructivist studies of technology is a rejection of
two prevalent understandings of technology—that technology is neutral or
asocial and that it determines social change. An important concept here is
Thomas Hughes’s (1986) notion of the “sociotechnical.” The unusual step of
creating a composite, nonhyphenated word is intended to convey that technology is never just technical or just social. Rather, the relationship between
the technical and the social is a densely interactive, “seamless web” (Hughes
1986). This means that the process of designing and developing new technology is necessarily heterogeneous (Law 1987); that is, it involves social as
well as technical expertise and choices.4 Heterogeneity also means that technology is understood as being thoroughly part of the social fabric, thus warranting a sociological gaze.5 One consequence of this is that in a very real
sense, those who design new technologies are, by the same stroke, designing
society (Latour 1988; Bijker and Law 1992). But the process of designing
technologies and societies is not straightforward, because technology is subject to considerable interpretative flexibility. Technology is shaped as a result
of complex social processes in which, typically, diverse groups do battle over
what the artifact should do, look like, and so forth.6 The possibility always
exists that a technology and its outcomes could be otherwise.
We may summarize the constructivist framework by saying that the relationship between technology and society is seen as mutually constituted. By
the same token, gender and technology are seen as mutually shaping or, in a
more poststructural trope, as coproduced. This is a central tenet of feminist
technology studies. It means that specific technological artifacts may be gender shaped and may have gender consequences and that this process can be
charted in the design and use of technologies.7 Thus, the feminist technology
studies outlined above have demonstrated how gendered presumptions may
be designed into artifacts and how those same artifacts may be flexibly reinterpreted by users to have different meanings and uses. In this way, they illuminate the different social contexts within which particular gender constructions and particular technologies appear, thus demonstrating that even the
nuts and bolts of technology warrant a feminist gaze.
A poststructural turn is palpable within the broad church of feminist technology studies. On one hand, there are tensions between a structuralist
emphasis on the historical roots and durability of cultural equation between
masculinity and technology, and, on the other hand, there is the antiessentialist refusal to see either technology or men as necessarily about control and domination (Lohan 2000). Cynthia Cockburn has argued that groups
of men historically have positioned themselves in key technological roles—
for example, metal working in feudal times and machine tooling in industrial
times (1985, chap. 1). And numerous writers have shown how modern science and technology, hegemonic masculinity, and industrial capitalism are
all linked symbolically by themes of control and domination (e.g., Merchant
1982; Easlea 1981; Noble 1991). The “mastery of nature” remains a power-
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ful emblem of technology (e.g., Caputi 1988), and, for this and other reasons,
Judy Wajcman has suggested (1991, chap. 7) that technology may be understood as a “masculine culture.” During the 1990s, such pronouncements were
challenged by colleagues in technology studies for tending to essentialize
both gender and technology, although some would argue such challenges did
not go far enough (e.g., Grint and Gill 1995, chap. 1; Grint and Woolgar
1995).8 A common response of feminist technology studies to this challenge
(e.g., Berg 1997; Lerman, Mohun, and Oldenziel 1997)—one that we
share—has been to hold on to gender as an analytical category while empirically remaining open to the existence of a diverse range of potentially contradictory gender-technology relations. This position eschews any residual tendency to view technology as deterministically patriarchal (or capitalist or
imperialist); at the same time, however, it is concerned to explore the distinct,
but related, links between structure, symbolism, and identity in gender-technology relations.9
So, what is framing existing scholarship on men/masculinities and technologies? First, it has a diverse empirical focus, encompassing those men
who work/play intimately with technologies, who are often portrayed as
being “in love” with technologies, as well as those who have no particular
affinity with technologies but encounter them (as we all do) in daily life.10
Second, this stream of research is concerned to examine how masculinities
and technologies converge (or otherwise) in terms of subjectivities and identities, practices, and symbols. This conceptual focus is justified by the apparently durable and pervasive equations drawn between masculinity and technology. It reflects an interest in research that serves, on one hand, to
understand the continuing stability of equations between masculinity and
technology and, on the other hand, to destabilize such equations by exploring
contexts within which new relationships between masculinities and technologies might be developing.
THE COLLECTION
The collection of articles in this special issue reflects both the empirical
range and the issues of stability and fluidity that mark scholarship on masculinities and technologies in general. Two of the articles are about men in technology—specifically, various types of engineering—and two are about men
and technology—specifically, two new reproductive technologies. The two
articles on engineering span different contexts of time and place. Lisa Frehill
investigates the development and professionalization of engineering in the
United States around the turn of the 20th century, while Ulf Mellström investigates craft car mechanics in Malaysia and professional automotive engineers in Sweden at the turn of the twenty-first century. The two articles also
tell somewhat different stories from different empirical bases on stability or,
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more accurately, on the construction and reconstruction of equations
between masculinity and technology.
Drawing on contemporary engineering journals, Frehill demonstrates that
the male dominance of professional engineering in the United States historically was not a given. Rather, the professionalization of engineering was
accompanied by the active creation of a new version of masculinity, one consistent with concurrent changes in hegemonic masculinity occurring in the
United States at the time. In particular, she draws attention to the development of engineering education as test of “real manhood.” Mellström’s fascinating ethnographic observations of Penang car mechanics also address the
acquisition of technical skill and status, which is shown to be grounded in an
early embodiment of machines and technology. In spite of the obvious differences between the car mechanics in Penang and professional engineers in
Sweden, technology provides a focus for homosocial enactments of hegemonic masculinity in both groups. In addition, Mellström shows how important technology can be to such men’s identities and subjectivities; he reveals
an affinity to, and passionate pleasure in, machines, which, in some cases,
involves a heterosexual anthropomorphizing of the machine. Similarly, Tine
Kleif’s study of technology hobbyists (Kleif and Faulkner 2003) revealed
both intimacy with technology and intimacy with other men around technology. Significantly, both forms of pleasure largely exclude women and are
thus interpreted as part of patriarchal power around technologies.
By contrast to the case of engineering, reproductive technologies are not
conventionally associated with men; this is an area where one might expect
familiar ideas about masculinities and technologies to be particularly
destabilized. A somewhat more complex picture emerges from Karen
Thorsby and Ros Gill’s interviews of men’s experiences with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United Kingdom. There is no taken-for-granted affinity
here between the male participants and this technology; they reported that
they “were going along for the sake of their partners” and to act as the “rational brake” on when to stop. At the same time, there are interesting contradictions regarding how the men tried to make sense of this technology as a
means of treating infertility. On one hand, IVF was favored over other “lowtech” fertility treatments as the very best science had to offer, thus recreating
the bond between men and high technology. On the other hand, IVF was
simultaneously rationalized as being not really technical; it was simply offering nature a helping hand; thus, the participants’ identity as fertile men (and
so virile) was not undermined. For all the newness of the technology, the
paper points to considerable gender conservatism in the close link drawn
between male fertility and virility in the men’s friendships and in the fairly
conventional division of emotional labor around the IVF within the couples
studied.
By contrast, the potential for gender change is far more apparent in Nelly
Oudshoorn’s account of the men who participated in European clinical trials
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for a male hormonal contraceptive. The technology of contraception was
feminized in the latter half of the twentieth century, when women came to be
seen as the sex responsible for contraception. This feminization was brought
about by a complex social network, including the feminist movement,
family-planning policies and clinics, scientists, and pharmaceutical industries. Drawing on a range of sources, Oudshoorn demonstrates how the
strong cultural and social alignment of hormonal contraceptive technologies
with women meant that the development of a male contraception inevitably
came into conflict with hegemonic masculinity, thus creating challenges for
the identity of the technology and for the identity of the male trial users. This
article, more than any other, provides an empirical illustration of the
coproduction of gender and technological artifacts.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
Our aim in producing this special issue has been to put the topic of masculinities and technologies on the map for future research and reflection and, in
the process, to open a window for cross-fertilization of ideas, concerns, and
concepts between feminist technology studies and men/masculinities studies. We have argued that both fields need to include masculinities and technologies in their research agendas. The field of technology studies needs to
address men/masculinities because of the crucial role of male-dominated
technical occupations in shaping new technology and the wider cultural
equations of technology and masculinity, which shape this and other gendertechnology relations. The field of men/masculinities studies needs to address
technology per se because of the apparently enduring connections between
hegemonic forms of masculinity (both blue and white collar) and technology
in terms of symbols, practices, identities, and structures.
We have also argued that both fields have much to learn from one another.
Since this special issue comes from the field of feminist technology studies,
we have sought in this introduction to highlight the value of the constructivist
approach to technology, which understands gender and technology as
coproduced and seeks to investigate the practices by which this happens.
Accordingly, the articles in this collection illustrate in a range of settings that
when technology is molded, gender is too and vice versa. They also highlight
some key themes about men’s subjective encounters with technology as well
as the close affinity that some men feel and the ambivalence of others. Such
contrasts highlight the need to look at the specificities of particular technologies and particular social settings. But alongside these contrasts, there are
also recurring themes, evident, not least, in the frequent reference to hegemonic masculinity (or masculinities) in these articles. We suspect that our
use of this concept could be refined considerably, and this is an area where the
field of men/masculinities studies clearly has a contribution to make. How,
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for example, might we think about the coexistence of and relationship
between the two very distinct blue- and white-collar versions of men’s
affinity to technology epitomized by the car mechanic and the computer
nerd?
Finally, we are struck by the intricate coexistence of change and continuity in the seamless web surrounding masculinities and technologies. It is rare
to find individual cases where gender-technology relations are clearly changing for the better or entrenching for the worse. Although there are clear
destabilizing trends—the existence of female hackers who experience
deep pleasures in technology, for instance—any future pattern in gendertechnology relations remains unclear. As we look forward in the new century,
we can envisage a world in which technologies become ever more part of our
social and personal fabric, not only information and communication technologies but also various biotechnologies. Neither of these technologies carries
the strong trope of the muscular, hands-on engagement that so marked the
mechanical technologies of the industrial revolution and remains such a
strong theme in blue-collar masculinities. So, will there be new gender battles over primacy in these new sociotechnical domains? Will the masculinitytechnology equation be undermined as a result, or will it merely change in
character?
NOTES
1. This collection is now an edited book (see Horowitz 2001).
2. Smothered by Invention (Arnold & Faulkner 1985) was the first collection of empirical
material across diverse technologies and sites. Judy Wajcman’s (1991) overview Feminism Confronts Technology very effectively brought together current evidence and debates regarding individual technologies and sites. Both anticipated the emergence of the “gender and technology”
stream of scholarship, and both talked of “technology as masculine,” with reference to its historical roots and its cultures, although this language has since been criticized as essentialist (Gill and
Grint 1995).
3. The gendered construction of artifacts may be less obvious to readers. In the printing
study, Cockburn (1983) showed how specific design choices—that is, to opt for the development
of linotype technology with a keyboard different from the QWERTY keyboard—acted to
maintain women’s exclusion from compositing work. And more recently, Ruth Oldenziel
(1999, chap. 1) demonstrated that the emergence of professional engineering as a predominantly
male occupation was accompanied by a narrowing of contemporary definitions of technology to
focus on industrial machinery, which acted to eclipse other categories of artifacts to which
women had contributed inventions.
4. Thomas Edison’s success with the electric lightbulb, for example, rested not only on technical inventiveness about filaments but also on economic calculations about what properties the
filament needed to have for electric lighting to compete with gas lighting and on his having the
entrepreneurial and political acumen to mobilize financiers and city authorities to back the establishment of the requisite infrastructure (Hughes 1983).
5. Most notably, Bruno Latour (1992) has argued that sociology cannot afford to ignore the
“missing masses” of “mundane artefacts.” He argues that artifacts need to be treated as nonhuman actors that are inscripted (Akrich 1992) to have certain material (sociotechnical) effects—
self-closing fire doors being his classic example.
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6. For instance, there were numerous, bizarre configurations of frame, wheels, pedals, and
seats before the modern bicycle emerged in its now familiar shape, reflecting in part the divergent
interests of different users (Pinch and Bijker, 1984).
7. The best example of such work, which investigated design, marketing, and use, is the
study of the early development of the microwave by Cynthia Cockburn and Susan Ormrod (1993;
see also Ormrod 1994).
8. At the same time, constructivist and actor network approaches to the study of technological change have been criticized by feminists in the field for failing to take account of the history
and durability of particular gender arrangements and for neglecting the social construction of artifacts and the building of networks that take place in the context of the use of technology (e.g.,
Cockburn 1992). Various positions taken around feminism and constructivism in technology
studies are presented in a special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values (1995) on feminist and constructivist perspectives on new technology and in Grint and Gill (1995).
9. There has been limited research done on this theme. Most notable in our view is the sustained work of Merete Lie (1995, 1998), which explores the role of gender symbolism around
technology. The main drift of her work has been to reveal how gender symbols tend to change less
quickly than do technologies.
10. As an indication of the potential range of topics that might be investigated under a masculinities and technologies banner, the articles submitted for consideration in this collection included work on mountain biking, truck driving, internet chat rooms, and domestic leisure
technologies.
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Maria Lohan is a lecturer in sociology in the School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies at
Trinity College, Dublin. She has published articles in the area of gender and technologies, with specific reference to masculinities and technologies and feminist methodologies. She is currently researching men’s health and men in health care.
Wendy Faulkner is a senior lecturer in social and economic research on technology at the
Science Studies Unit, Department of Sociology, University of Edinburgh. She has a longstanding involvement in research on gender and technology and on technological innovation. Her current research is on gender in/of engineering.