Making technology masculine
Subtitle: men, women and modern machines in America, 1870-1945
By: Ruth Oldenziel.
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Amsterdam
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
Subjects: Labor -- United States -- History.; Labor -- North America -- History.; Human-machine systems -- United States -- History.; Sexual division of labor -- United States -- History.; Women -- Employment -- United States -- History.
Description: "Ruth Oldenziel maps the historical process through which men laid claims to technology as their exclusive terrain. She also explores how women contested this ascendancy of the male discourse and engineered alternative plots. From the moral gymnasium of the shop floor to the staging grounds of World's Fairs, engineers, inventors, social scientists, activists, and novelists emplotted and questioned technology as our modern male myth. Oldenziel recounts the history of technology - both as intellectual construct and material practice - by analyzing these struggles. Drawing on a broad range of sources, she explains why male machines rather than female fabrics have become the modern markers of technology. She shows how technology developed as a narrative production of modern manliness, allowing women little room for negotiation."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [232]-261) and index.