ABSTRACT
The institutionalization of engineering as a specialized and socially valued profession occurred in Sweden, as it did in many other industrializing European countries, by the end of the nineteenth century. Engineers acquired prestige and power because of their mastery of modern technology and socio-technical systems.1 The profession organized itself as a masculine domain, monopolized by men and invested with masculine ideals and ambitions. My purpose in this chapter is to show that such genderization of professional engineering should not be regarded as a self-evident fact, but rather as an ongoing social process, as a form of ‘history-in-the-making’ within the realm of education and work. We shall see how identities were defined and redefined through social practices, in which the distinction between male and female positions in social hierarchies and the boundaries between masculine and feminine areas of technical expertise were at once being contested, defended, and sometimes, redrawn.
