ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the methodology of feminist research into gender and technology. In feminist research on gender and technology, for instance, this amounts to explorations of how pre-existing social relations of patriarchy express and shape technology. Feminist sociologies of technology tend towards approaches which examine how long-standing, institutionalized and structural patterns of male power, sometimes designated as patriarchy, express and shape technology. The prime assumption in feminism's use of patriarchy is that men collectively exercise a force throughout society which collectively oppresses or represses women. The concept of patriarchy, which accepts the predominant concept of power as capacity which is held and wielded over others, arises through feminist acceptance of a mainstream sociology which distinguishes between the individual and society or between agency and structure. The chapter argues that the recognition of the multiple meanings of gender and technology relations without assuming a priori relations of gender and technology which might black-box and foreclose the analysis.
