Women and technology: connections, implications and effects.(MOVEABLE TYPE)

Technology goes far beyond engineering. It's not just the choice and design of tools but also their distribution and use. Eleven contributors to Women, Gender, and Technology (University of Illinois Press, 2006) examine ways gender influences technology and vice versa.

Editors are Dr. Mary Frank Fox, professor of public policy and co-director of the Center for the Study of Women, Science and Technology at Georgia Institute of Technology; Dr. Deborah G. Johnson, professor of applied ethics in the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Dr. Sue V. Rosser, dean of liberal arts at Georgia Tech.

Barriers to women in academic engineering are just part of the story. Looking through various feminist lenses, Rosser writes that men design technology for male users. "Smart" houses centralize command-and-control aspects rather than eliminate housework. Military airplane cockpits were designed to fit 90% of men, then used to define size requirements that excluded 70% of women from training as pilots.

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Girls use computers to communicate, boys to fool around or play games; how might computers be different if women designed them to prioritize relationships over data? Women took the lead in developing folding cribs, disposable diapers and medicine for vaginal yeast infections. The first step toward technology that really serves women is to have more women deciding what to design.

Women as students

Engineering is the nation's most male-dominated profession, Fox writes. Of all the American workers in 2001 who held engineering degrees, only 7.4% were women.