Theorising the Machine: Gender, education and computing

Abstract

The article provides a theoretical overview of the relationship between gender, education and computing. It explores the role of education in the continued reproduction of computing, and latterly information communications technology, as masculine domains. Gendered social relations are inscribed into the development of computing technology and the ideological separation of the 'expert' from end-users. The article offers a critique of the strong sociology of science and postmodernist analyses of technology for reducing technology to the social, and of technological determinism. It argues instead that we need to understand how computing is constituted historically and the ways computing can be understood as a concrete science. The article brings together perspectives on technology derived from a critical realist perspective with some aspects of the feminist standpoint paradigm. The author examines three key educational locales in the reproduction of gender ideologies of the machine. These are schools, universities, and the multiple sites of lifelong learning. The article concludes that the gendering of computing as a masculine discourse continues, and that the analysis of technology and the sociology of education needs to reconnect within a broader critique of society if women's continuing marginalisation in the dominant discourse is to be understood and challenged.