Science, technology, and gender

From our most fundamental understandings of the science of sex differences, to seemingly far-off fantastical possibilities of artificial intelligence, science, technology and gender are deeply intertwined social phenomena. Gender studies scholars, particularly those in the field of Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS), study the complex entanglements between science, technology, gender, and a host of other salient socially defined identities such as race, class, sexuality, and disability. At stake in scholarship about the connections between science, technology and gender are questions of what and who counts as human; the nature of knowledge, truth, and reality; and the relationships between science, technology and social justice. In this chapter, I briefly survey insights from the diverse, interdisciplinary and intersectional field of gender studies about the relationship between science, technology, and gender, with special emphasis on FSTS. I discuss several inter-related strands of scholarship: history and critiques of the science of sex/gender, gendered patterns of participation in science and technology fields, and the history of gendered social injustices in relation to technoscience. I conclude with an examination of the ways in which technoscience might contribute to increasing justice.