Time and Technology: a gender aproach for the Portuguese context

This paper addresses a project in progress, which envisages an account and understanding of the ways of employment of technology in the domestic space. According to the principal thesis adopted, gender is assumed as the structuring variable in the ways of appropriation and negotiation of spaces and times, and technology contains the distinctive orders of the masculine and feminine positions. In brief, an attempt is made to understand how perceptions and representations of technology and time are gendered, and create distinct and differentiated ways of use of space and time. In the paper, interim results are presented of the research, in particular of the survey carried out in the beginning of 2010 among couples in two regions of Portugal with different levels of development. This is preceded by an overview of some major studies about the relationship between time and technology, focusing on household equipment, its assumed and real time-saving effects for women and its repercussions on social organization within the household.