Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945 [Paperback]

Ruth Oldenziel (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 9053563814 | ISBN-13: 978-9053563816 | Publication Date: September 8, 2004 | Edition: 1

To say that technology is male comes as no surprise, but the claim that its history is a short one strikes a new note. Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945 maps the historical process through which men laid claims to technology as their exclusive terrain. It also explores how women contested this ascendancy of the male discourse and engineered alternative plots. From the moral gymnasium of the shop floor to the staging grounds of World's Fairs, engineers, inventors, social scientists, activists, and novelists emplotted and questioned technology as our modern male myth. Oldenziel recounts the history of technology - both as intellectual construct and material practice - by analyzing these struggles. Drawing on a broad range of sources, she explains why male machines rather than female fabrics have become the modern markers of technology. She shows how technology developed as a narrative production of modern manliness, allowing women little room for negotiation

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ruth Oldenziel is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD degree American Studies from Yale University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 271 pages
• Publisher: Amsterdam University Press; 1 edition (September 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9053563814
• ISBN-13: 978-9053563816
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,082,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How and Why Do We Think of "Technology" as "Masculine"?, July 23, 2000

By 

sidney eve matrix - See all my reviews

This review is from: Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945 (Paperback)

Highly recommended accessibly-written feminist text contributes to history of technology studies and to feminist science studies scholarship.

Oldenziel presents a hundred-year geneaology of our modern idea of "technology" in the US during the 19th-20th centuries, arguing that its definition was explicitly linked to modernist and white male subjectivity and masculine cultural production, while both women's work and the work of racial others was disqualified as non-technological.

Relying on archival research, discourse analysis and feminist theory, Oldenziel examines engineering's creation of a "cultural infrastructure" of myths, metaphors and images which effectively promoted a "male mystique" about men's affinity with machines and computer technologies, as part of the erection of a "a modern male and western prowess." She shows how this discursive formation depended on a corresponding invention of female "technophobia."

To ask, "why are so few women figured in engineering?" is to pose the wrong question according to Oldenziel, since it is biased by the conventional defintion of technology as inherently masculine. Instead we should inquire as to *how* the illusion of the invisibility (and inadequacy) of the labor of women and all non-white subjects was achieved in the official history of technology. Thus Olednziel investigates the legitimation strategies and methods of systemic exclusion according to which only certain inventions/products were considered "technology" and only certain subjects'labor was recognized as "inventive genius" and authorized as "engineering."

This text is a history of engineering, an example of feminist cultural studies and of gender & masculinity studies, and will be of interest to anyone teaching a course on gender + technology. (suitable for undergraduates) I read it for pleasure and found it truly informative, engaging, and inspiring scholarship.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Technology as a modern male myth, November 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945 (Paperback)

This is a pioneering cultural study of the relations between gender and technology. Why do we think of engineers as stereotypically male and of technology as part of the masculine realm? Ruth Oldenziel has cleverly utilized many kinds of sources - including an astonishing amount of information about American women engineers - and has applied insights from cultural and feminist studies in order to create this fascinating answer to those two questions.