Understanding gender, technology and work

This thesis has contributed to the theory of gender, the theory of gendered organisations, and the feminist literature on the relations between gender and technology on five counts. First, existing studies have mainly been concerned with engineering and IT, the two typical examples of technology-related work. Examining these occupations, they pointed to the male dominance in technological occupations, the masculine culture of technology-related work, and the masculine image of the ideal technological worker, to explain the gender-based problems women professionals encounter in the workplace. This thesis, on the other hand, explored the gender inequality question in an example of technology-related work, industrial design in Turkey, that is neither dominated by men, nor identified with a masculine occupational culture and a masculine worker image. Doing this enabled us to see that in such an example gender asymmetry still persists in a way that puts women in a disadvantaged status. However, the gender-related problems women face in such an example differ from what the existing studies found by examining typical examples of technology-related work.

Women industrial designers’ work experiences are gendered in more subtle and ambiguous ways, due to the complicated and contradictory nature of the relationship between their individual femininity (which means being a woman), the femininity of their occupation (in the contexts where it is defined as aesthetics-related work), and the masculinity of technological and technical work settings (where they are in close relations with engineers and production workers).

Moreover, in the existing literature there are two bodies of work, namely feminist technology studies and feminist organisation studies, that are concerned with gender inequality in technology-related work. Although recent studies in both fields parallel each other in that they conceptualise gender as processual, multiple and complex in character, and underline its symbolic, structural and individual dimensions, they are not in dialogue. As a result, ‘technology’ seems to remain undertheorised in feminist organisation studies, as does ‘work’ in feminist technology studies. This study brought together these two separate bodies of literature addressing this gap. In the analysis, the significance of taking into account both ‘work’ and ‘technology’ was evidenced particularly in the discussion of the ‘ideal worker image’. As I discussed in Chapter 6, in the office environment, the ideal image of the professional worker is characterised as serious, rational and doing ‘real’ and ‘objective’ work. Industrial designers, who meet this image in terms of neither appearance and dress norms, nor the nature of the expertise, find it difficult to prove their competence for managerial roles. However, the analysis showed that this image, and the industrial designer’s unsuitability for it, are sharpened in organisational contexts that are dominated by engineers. This is because in such contexts the ideal image of the professional worker is reinforced by the ideal images of technology. This is where theorising technology and incorporating its ideal images, which are discussed by feminist technology scholars, into analysis become essential.

Faulkner (2001) helps us elaborate on the ideal images of technology which shape the thought of engineering and IT. She states that the association of technology, as it is defined in these two fields, with scientific methods brings along some long-standing dualisms: on one side there is “an objectivist rationality associated with emotional detachment and with abstract theoretical (especially mathematical) and reductionist approaches to problem solving”, whilst there is “a more subjective rationality associated with emotional connectedness and with concrete, empirical, and holistic approaches to problem solving” on the other side (85). She underlines that although both sides are required within engineering

and IT practice, the ideal images of technology are linked to the former in a way that values the objective over subjective, and rational over emotional. In this thesis looking at the stories of the participants working in engineer-dominated companies, we see that this ideal image of the technological worker strengthens the above-defined image of the professional worker, which is defined as serious, rational and doing ‘real’ and ‘objective’ work. As the findings demonstrated, in organisational contexts where the management consists of engineers, the strong ties of engineering with the ‘certainty’ afforded by its reliance on the so-called scientific and objective problem solving approach can mark the designer’s approach, which is more comfortable with uncertainty, as subjective, less valid and less professional. Drawing on these findings, this study contributes to the investigation of the gendering of technology- related work, highlighting the role that the popular images of technology play in the construction of the ideal professional worker image in organisational contexts.

Furthermore, and as an implication of this, the findings of this thesis suggest the need to rethink how Harding’s (1986) gender triad is used in feminist technology studies. The significance of examining the relations between the symbols, structures and identities of gender and technology has been underlined in these studies (see for example Cockburn and Ormrod 1993; Faulkner 2000a, 2001; Henwood and Hart 2003; Lie 1995; Mellström 2002; Webster 1995). Such an analytical framework enabled these studies to explore the association of technology with masculinity through historical and cultural processes, women’s exclusion from technology-related occupations, and women’s hesitance and unwillingness to enter such occupations. However, the findings of this thesis demonstrated that the gendered experiences of individuals in a technology-related occupation (as well as the definition of technology- related work) are dependant on work context, too. It varies depending on, for example, the industry, the type of organisation, and the interaction between different occupational groups. This thesis argues that research focusing on gender inequality in technological areas should take into consideration the symbolic, structural and interactional dimensions of ‘work’, too; since both gender and technology are constructed in different ways in various work settings. For instance, as the link between the industrial designer’s work and technology dramatically changed in the engineer-dominated office and the shop floor, so did the gender associations of the ideal image of the industrial designer. Therefore, we should apply the triad of symbols, structures and interactions to another triad of gender, technology and work to capture the complexity of the gendering of technology-related work.

In the above-mentioned feminist technology studies, Harding’s triad has been taken as a basic analytical tool. Whilst these studies have emphasised the interdependency of the three dimensions, they do not provide us with a detailed description of the nature of this interdependency. The following figure illustrates my interpretation of the relationship between symbols, structures and interactions.

Figure 8.1. The relationship between the three dimensions of the symbols-structures- interactions triad

Figure 8.1 stresses that all three dimensions are influential on each other. It is not possible to fully account for one dimension without taking into account the other two. If we examine the shop floor as an example, the ideal image of the industrial designer is associated with masculinity through its characterisation by aggression, self-sufficiency and toughness. This symbolic association is both supported by the male domination in production work, and shapes the male and female designers’ choices regarding working in the production site. At the structural level, it does not offer a welcoming environment to women, whilst it addresses men as the gender authentic members of the production site. Experiencing this strong association, and being aware of the problems that women encounter on the shop floor, both female and male industrial designers indicate that ‘the shop floor is not for every women’. According to men, shop floor is only for the women who can demonstrate the necessary masculinity. Some women also share this view, arguing that fragile, weak and shy women have no place in the production site. This conforming attitude of professionals at the individual level, in turn, supports the masculine image of the ideal worker on the shop floor at the symbolic level, and justifies the ‘gender inauthenticity’ of ‘typical’ women for the production site at the structural level.