that women have a predisposition towards a soft approach. And then, the social construction of science reinforces this preference. Science waves its flag as "hard" in a way that repels women. This means that, in our culture, women are too often faced with the not necessarily conscious choice of putting themselves at odds either with the cultural meanings of being a scientist or with the cultural constructions of being a woman. Such choices do not have to be made in an all-or-nothing way. The "not-me" strategy we mentioned earlier anticipated a phenomenon of costly partial surrender. Women who enter centers of power give eloquent testimony, not only to the pressure, but to the seduction of having achieved the right to use the male discourse that predominates there. And they also speak to the conflict that this engenders, a kind of conflict that considerably complicates our story of how women appropriate technology. We have suggested that many women have a preference for attachment and relationship with technological objects as a means of appropriating them -- but we have also pointed to the association of these objects with a construction of the male that stresses aggression, domination, and competition. This construction of technology may lead to a conflict between a close encounter with technology and women's image of themselves as women. Such a conflict is apparent when we look at women and computers. When women neutralize the computer as "just a tool," it is more than a way of withdrawing because of