Addressing Women's Ways of Knowing to Improve the Technology Education Environment for All Students

Young women today, given the opportunity to do so, are still not taking technology education courses in great numbers. Women and girls often perceive the subject of technology education as a male domain, especially after they have had a course in technology education. Yet, women are technologists. Women are and have always been significant contributors to the making of the environment of which we are a part. Every woman has been a technological being, using and often inventing tools, materials, and processes in order to adapt and modify her world. Their contributions have been either focused on the traditional homemaking roles of females, or they have been diminished in the records of industrial and economic spheres (Wajcman, 1991). In addition to diminishing the role of women in technology and engineering, many technical occupations, including science, have a low representation of women. Are there differences between women and men which might influence their choice of study and which need to be addressed? Can technology educators begin to address the lack of participation of women and girls in technology education without understanding the potential for differences between men and women with regard to technology and to education? I want to explore these questions by discussing feminist theories of science and technology and of women's ways of knowing in order to bring cultural feminists' concerns to the attention of technology educators