Feminising Innovation: Challenges in Science and Technology Studies (STS)

Gabriele Griffin

doi:10.20897/femenc/11161

Abstract

This article explores why innovation, conventionally associated with the masculine (e.g., Andersson et al., 2012; Lindberg, 2012), might also be framed as feminine, indeed on occasion feminist. It does so via an exploration of the embedding of a new academic discipline, in this instance Digital Humanities, in existing higher education institutions in the Nordic countries. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in 2017-18 with Digital Humanities practitioners in Finland, Sweden and Norway, this article argues that the feminisation of innovation in higher education institutions can lead to the material and symbolic marginalisation of those disciplines, with specific consequences both for their practitioners and for those disciplines. As part of this, the article analyses how innovation can be considered both desirable and disruptive (innovation as such constitutes a disruptive technology), and utilises Fiona Mackay’s (2014) notions of ‘embedded newness’ and the ‘liability of newness’ to explore the gendered implications of the feminising of innovation.

Highlights

Innovation and innovation studies have come to the fore in the past twenty years or so, and with this, a concern regarding the role of gender in innovation (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Alsos et al, 2013; Marlow and McAdam, 2012; Pettersson and Lindberg, 2013)
Mackay’s depiction of ‘nested newness’ with its mechanisms of ‘remembering the old’ and ‘forgetting the new’ as props to mitigate the liability of newness aptly depicts what can happen to disciplinary innovation as it hits the buffers of institutional legacies
This is clearly one of the major challenges that innovation faces. It is an effect of the feminised position in which newly emerging disciplines in academe can find themselves, one of spatial and symbolic marginalisation

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Innovation and innovation studies have come to the fore in the past twenty years or so, and with this, a concern regarding the role of gender in innovation (Ahl and Marlow, 2012; Alsos et al, 2013; Marlow and McAdam, 2012; Pettersson and Lindberg, 2013). It aligns with the notion that innovation concerns new products and processes, as these occur in maledominated, technology-driven work contexts This view of innovation has been widely challenged in feminist work on innovation, entrepreneurship, and organisation studies (see Acker, 2006; Alsos et al, 2013; Alsos, Hytti and Ljunggren, 2016; Marlow and McAdam, 2013; Pettersson and Lindberg, 2013). Their attendant discourses, the I can exercise critique (Butler, 2005: 17) and in doing so challenge gender binaries through a critical engagement with them It is in this spirit that I suggest that innovation may be considered feminine, and for the following three theoretical reasons: 1) Innovation is constructed as that which constitutes or makes a difference, a difference from what has gone before. I shall briefly outline the research methods employed in this study and information about my informants before discussing my findings

RESEARCH METHODS AND INFORMANTS

CONCLUSIONS