The Evolution from Horse to Automobile: A Comparative International Study
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The Evolution from Horse to Automobile: A Comparative Internation ...

Chapter 1:  Converting Consumers: The Conceptual Dependence of Controversial Artifacts
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Gender

Gender studies tend to answer these questions in terms of humans subjugating other humans. Around the time Woolgar published his article on user configuration, Wajcman published Feminism Confronts Technology, which proposes that technology is a product of the “distribution of power and resources between different groups in society” and challenges the way social constructivism casts technology as neutral.55 Although later studies on gender issues deemphasized the theme of disenfranchisement, the idea of technology as a thoroughly male dominion resonated in gender literature for many years.

As with science, the very language of technology, its symbolism, is masculine. It is not simply a question of acquiring skills, because these skills are embedded in a culture of masculinity that is largely coterminous with the culture of technology. Both at school and in the workplace this culture is incompatible with femininity. Therefore, to enter this world, to learn its language, women have first to forsake their femininity.56

Wajcman describes the technological world as imprinted with male agenda. Thus the analyst’s task is to understand the different ways in which women are subjugated by or excluded from this world. For example, in her analysis of the diffusion of the automobile, Wajcman argues that transportation has the paradoxical effect of confining women to rather than liberating them from their homes.

I will argue that the transport system, and in particular the dominance of the car, restricts women’s mobility and exacerbates women’s confinement to the home and the immediate locality.57

Wajcman, citing Langdon Winner’s article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,”58 uses Winner’s view of technology as politicized artifacts, systems, and structures59 to show how the dependence of American women on public transportation has restricted their access to certain areas, preventing them from taking full advantage of the various economic and social opportunities society offers.