Engineering Ignorance: The Problem of Gender Equity in Engineering

Abstract

Feminist politics aims to dismantle women's inequality by naming and challenging sexual oppression and gender disadvantage. In modern Western feminism, work is an important site for this politics. It is both means and ends. Feminists argue that work itself should be redefined so that work activities outside the labor market are recognized and demand that the conditions of work within the labor market be transformed to recognize diverse gender relations and practices. Feminists therefore argue that women's unpaid work should be valued, that we should be aware of how certain tasks become gendered, that things valued as feminine should be reevaluated, and that women have equal access to all forms of work so that unpaid work is distributed more equally.2 These gains are the means to achieving feminist ends. Feminism brought women's work, which has been largely invisible, onto the stage and has effectively destabilized assumptions that women's work is gender-neutral (paid) or unimportant (unpaid).3 Feminist campaigns for political change through women's access to paid work on equal terms with men have challenged assumptions about men's natural capacities, as much as they have women's.4