ABSTRACT
Historically, science and technology have been constructed as areas of masculine interest and expertise (Harding 1986), part of the ‘public sphere’ outside the home from which girls and women were excluded. In contemporary Britain, the gendering of science and technology is reflected in subject choices made by girls and boys in further and higher education (see Chapter 2) and in the structure of paid work (see Chapter 3). Masculinity continues to be partly defined through rational thought, technological competence and ‘mastery over machines’. By contrast, femininity continues to be partly defined as irrational/emotional, technologically incompetent, and via women’s reproductive capacities and mothering roles, as closer to ‘nature’ than to science (Harding 1986; Wajcman 1991). The persistence of such associations in the late twentieth century is highly significant, given both the value placed on technological ‘progress’ and ‘advancement’ and the rapid pace and widespread nature of technological developments. From genetically modified food and the cloning of sheep, to the computer and telecommunications technologies which transform the use of space, time and modes of interpersonal contact, human (mainly masculine) control over the ‘natural world’ is extending ever further.
