Gender and Technology at the Mondragon System of Producer Cooperatives

Abstract

Mondragon is known as a system of democratically structured producer cooperatives, yet the condition of women workers is only somewhat better, relative to men, than in capitalist or already existing socialist organizations. Three major factors appear responsible. First, waged or not, women have responsibility for the home. Second, a capitalist market devalues social goals. Third, and the primary topic of this paper, men control decisions about technology, commonly understood. As in other industrial settings, the manufacturing technology of the cooperatives, and much of their administrative apparatus, have origins in patriarchal military institutions. Engineering education, also with roots in military institutions, is one source of gender maintenance during times of technological transformation. This hierarchical organization of technology stands in contradiction to the ideology and core elements of cooperative structure.