Passionate men and rational women: gender contradictions in engineering

Abstract

The dualism of rational/irrational and its relationship with masculinity and femininity has for a long time functioned as a process of including men in and excluding women from the fields of technology and engineering. This article highlights individuals, life stories, and everyday practices that deviate from this stereotypical division in order to pave the way for more diversified perceptions of the gender practices performed in engineering, specifically in relation to the place that technology has when women and men choose a career in engineering. Contradictory examples may thus serve to undermine the processes and the generalization perpetuating the stereotypical and prevalent perceptions of women and men and serve to challenge essential assumptions of gender and technology. The findings show that there are significant differences between the gender stereotypes of the engineer and engineers in reality, and that the ideology of rational men and irrational women in engineering is mistaken. This underlines the fact that neither gender nor technology is a constant or a given, but that it should continuously be reinterpreted. The empirical data consists of the life stories of 46 computer and mechanical engineers, 26 of whom are women and 20 men.