The Gendered Language of Technology

The aim of this article is to examine the partly unquestioned notions of how to ask about technology use and gender in a socio-cultural historical community of the 1950s-1980s with a focus on education. For in this defined historical and systematic framework, the connection between technology — language — gender, which is central to industrialized nations, becomes apparent for the first time. Accordingly, two problematization discourses come into particular focus: 1) Historically: How have different meanings of gender and technology manifested in Western discourse in the 20th century and thus continued into the present? 2) Philosophically: How have self-perceptions of gender in individuals been shaped by technology-related language? Where can we recognize interpretative sovereignties in the linguistic images and terminologies and what are the conditions and premises for this? Without the perspective on scientific history, philosophy and continuity, the current digital gender gap, as decidedly highlighted by the D21 initiative, cannot be understood and problematized in its complexity and historicity. The aim is to use a dual approach to contextualize and reflect on ideas of technology and gendered characteristics in linguistic images, as otherwise 1) language determines our approach to technology too hastily and 2) language can only be used in a standardized way. Self-attributions of actors in technology-related language images are historically contingent and systematically processed. Language use can become as a self-fulfilling prophecy and manifest (self-) conceptions such as «women understand less about technology» or «women cannot use technology» and thus expose people and entire groups to discriminatory social practices.