ABSTRACT
The Introduction presents the book’s purpose, to identify: the factors that motivate some women to engage with masculine-sphere technologies, the formal and informal ways they develop technological proficiency, individual and collective strategies used to overcome gender-based cultural biases to use technology with confidence, and the resulting benefits they derive. Five original case studies serve as the basis of the research, capturing women’s own voices across historical periods and geographic locations. A multidisciplinary analytical framework derived from adult learning theory, feminist scholarship on women and technology, STS (science, technology and society) studies, and labor studies is used to argue that women’s empowered use of technology is based on their ability to exert control over its introduction, cultural context, and knowledge. The book’s rich and unique case studies illustrate how breast cancer survivors in Newfoundland hand built a wooden dragon boat for racing, how Egyptian feminist activists used social media in their struggle for democracy, how pioneering women learned live and studio audio engineering thereby contributing to the women’s music movement, how a university-educated woman learned to do underground sewer repair and maintenance in Detroit, and how female commercial airline pilots in the United States mastered the skill of flying large, technologically complex aircraft.
