WHAT DOES THE WORD TECHNOLOGY MEAN? 
TO LIVE ONE'S LONGING OR TO MAKE USE OF THEM?

By Ms. Maria Ud*n, Division of Industrial Work Environment, Department of
Human Work Sciences, The LuleŚ University of Technology, S-971 87 LULE*,
Sweden.

In Sweden campaigns aimed at attracting girls to choose traditionally male
education have been going on for 20 years. Since then the proportion of female
students at the engineering education has increased. So also has the awareness of the special needs and potentials of women. Teachers, administrators, researchers and women engineers try to find ways to change curriculums, methods and professional cultures to fit and inspire women. 

This paper is a report of a pilot study of a qualitative methodological research
study on languages and cultures of technology as applied to Swedish women.
Five women engineers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview
method. The two major findings presented and discussed are the content of the
word technology that the different women conveyed, and the crucial difference it
made in the women's stories if their world views integrated the engineering
profession with themselves or not. In the paper's title an attempt is made to give a first picture of the questions that the findings have raised for the researcher. This hopefully makes sense connected to the presumptions that: Meaning is perceptible as a difference (e.g. between what is and should be), and is therefore revealed as a longing; And that technology can be seen, not only as a means to use for different purposes, but also as a strongly male institution, something existing in itself, 'beyond the temporary existence of the individuals that "happen" to live today'. The word technology therefore carries especially
interesting meanings to a woman engineer.


INTRODUCTION

In Sweden campaigns aimed at attracting women to education traditionally
preferred by and formerly reserved for men, have been going on for some 20
years. Since then the proportion of female students in engineering education has
increased (steadily it is about 20% since a decade). So also has the awareness of the special needs and potentials of women. Teachers, administrators, researchers and women engineers try to find ways to change curriculums, methods and professional cultures to fit and inspire women. We have found reasons to ask
ourselves how we can make it possible to talk about and act on technology in
such a way that technology becomes a part of us, instead of us being part of it. 

This paper is a report of a pilot study of a qualitative methodological research
study on languages and cultures of technology as applied to Swedish women. Two
questions that formed in the pilot study, and the elaboration of them will be
presented. The aim of the pilot project was exploratory, namely to develop a more precise idea of what categories would be relevant to further research. The
standpoint is that every language (verbal, graphic etc), and every culture, is built on specific experiences and that having access to language and social patterns that genuinely reflects one's comprehension of reality is a condition for acting in accordance to one's interest. By asking questions about what restrains the personal resources of individual women engineers, and what opens up for them, new knowledge about engineering is gained. This on the ground that every relationship has at least two parties. The actions and reactions of the women engineers may tell us something about women, but if we turn it the other way around, maybe it tells us even more about engineering and modern technology?

A semi-structured interview method was used, as an openness towards what could
come up in each interview was considered necessary, but also some ideas about
certain dimensions of work was considered to be of interest to cover in a
continuous way. These ideas showed to be out of interest, which of course is an
issue of importance that will be commented on in the conclusions. But they
served as a structure, which possibly gave some results in itself. As will be
commented on further, the ideas where strongly confronted by the women's
conversation, and the openness left the way free for unexpected patterns of
information.

THE INTERVIEWS

Five women engineers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview
method. The 1-3 hours long interviews (effective time) were tape recorded and/or
taken on notes. Transcripts of the complete interviews were made shortly after,
and these became the main source in the following steps of research.

The women interviewed where all active as engineers in different branches. They
were found via different sources of information, the criterion being that they
would represent experiences from different branches, regions and universities.
This was to avoid a magnification of such effects as current business cycles of
specific branches, regional economic situations or "vogues en mode" of
university discourse. This criterion course signifies that the validity emphasis was put on the professional part of the women's situation. 

The ages of the women were evenly distributed between the ages of 25-45. This
means, that they had completed their education and started working as engineers
by the time that the actual rise in the rate of women engineers occurred and, from what can be seen at present, possibly stabilised in terms of education (the last decade 20% women students). Although their education is considered high in
Sweden, and they had professional positions adjusted to this fact, none of the
women can be said to represent an upper class. Rather, there was a tendency that
their choices of education represented a conscious strategy of social climbing of their families - to do something "more", to make an effort to have better jobs, expected to relate to having better lives. Because of the development of the Swedish economy and the country's type of technological structure, the result of this was, largely, that these women had managed to keep up a relatively secure social position that their grandparents also had. The Swedish sociologist Boel Berner has shown how the "exclusivity" and power of university educated engineers has decreased, and their number increased in Sweden.

In terms of private life the interviewed group was homogeneous. They were all
married to men of equal education, and with exception of the youngest, they had
children.
	
TWO MAJOR FINDINGS

The two major findings of the pilot project that will be presented and discussed in this paper are, first, the content of the word technology that the women
conveyed, and second, the crucial difference it made to the tone of the women's
stories whether their world views integrated the engineering profession with
themselves or not. They are chosen as they are "tricky" to handle and thus call for profound adaptation. Largely they confine what we already know so well. Still it
is "tricky" to handle this in the concrete. Why?

THE WORK 'TECHNOLOGY'

All the interviews where carried out in Swedish, but in the following, to ease the reading, an entirely English vocabulary will be used in presentation and
discussion. The English technology is chosen for the Swedish 'teknik', the word
originally used in the interviews, as they are in everyday, political and most
scientific circumstances used in the same way. Opposite to the broad content of
the English technology, with its more narrow and precise use of technique, the
Swedish 'teknologi' (the theory of teknik) is narrowly used, while 'teknik' covers many concepts. An example of this is the newly founded chair of my university, The LuleŚ University of Technology, that is in Swedish called Genus och teknik, which translated to English is 'gender and technology'. 

The interviewed women conveyed two meanings of the word technology in
itself. The first one actually being empty, that is no meaning, without contents, and the other male.

As mentioned, when planning the interviews there were some aspects that where
intended to be covered. Because of that the interviewer started used the word
technology. But this word, as became evident, could not be used without further
guidance. The use of it would cause a stop of flow in the conversation, as it made the interviewees confused. Often they responded to the interviewers attempts to conversation by searching for one more object on which to attach their associations. In an everyday fashion one could say that the word technology did not inspire the women to talk. This can be made clearer by an example, a conversation could turn out like this:

		Interviewer: How do you use technology?
		Interviewee: Whatever it is (laughs)
		Interviewer: Have you thought about that?
		Interviewee: Do you mean in work or in private?
		Interviewer: If you see any difference... Have you thought about this in 		     work but not at home or the other way around or...
		Interviewee: Technology is such a wide concept to me... technology exists all around us... Well, to me technology is both apparatus technology and
methodology, so to speak.
		Interviewer: Yes?
		Interviewee: (laughs, a bit reluctantly) so I don't really know what you are aiming at?

This pattern was repeated. When the interviewer asked something about
technology, or otherwise used the specific word, it got hard to talk. Is it not
surprising to meet such reactions from active engineers? The woman of the
example above has an acknowledged both deep and highly specialised engineer's
competence, is she not in the position to define what we where talking about? 
This effect of the specific word became even clearer as each woman did, when not
urged by the interviewer to focus on the word technology, successfully connect
technology as phenomenon to other themes. Under those circumstances the
concept of technology together with this other object was both inspiring and
legitimate to talk about. The women could talk at length, and they would make
judgments and definitions without searching for support of any kind by the
interviewer.

(The woman in the example above was never satisfied with "apparatus
technology" and "methodology" either. The idea of these concepts did not inspire
her to talk.)

The other meaning of the word that was conveyed by the interviewees has been
named "male" above. If technology on the one hand is empty in itself, on the
other it is something anyhow. This can be shown by this example where the
interviewer and the interviewee talks about reasons for girls to choose
engineering education:

	Interviewer: And one has to earn one's living, too?
	Interviewee: But there are many ways to earn one's living, but why one chooses science and technology, is probably because one has an interest in this. But it does not have do be in the same way as . . .  a mechanic. The interest in mechanical work. It does not have to be that, just because one is interested in technology. Often that is what one gets to think about. As if one has to be interested in doing mechanical work just because one is interested in technology. As if you have to be interested in mending your car just because you are a technician. It is not like that at all.
	
This understanding, or awareness of this understanding, of what it "shall" imply
to be technologically competent, recurs through the interview material, and it is in many ways an understanding of gender rather than anything else. Another
woman put it like this, as she had time to reflect over how she had answered
questions from the interviewer containing the word "technology":

	Interviewee: Well, the first I associate to, it is steel and oil, when one hears "technology". It is a bit . . . I associate to mechanical engineering. If one says . . . milling machines and welds and . . . yes, it has a smell of steel and oil. But then, when one starts to think a bit more, one comes to think of both this and that. Almost everything. 

This woman was not attracted by steel and oil, and in this she saw a pattern of
gender which she gave structure by using a "hard and soft" terminology:

	Interviewee: It gets softer to talk about environment and such things. I believe that women like that more than . . . well, they are not challenged by constructing airplanes in the same way as men are. That is more the "boyhood dream". (She is silent for a while) It is easier to have a feeling for the environment. Or that one cares for people and chooses to work in the health care sector. I guess that is something inherited since thousands of years, so there is probably not so much to do about it. And of course there are exceptions.	

We can now try to understand the pattern made by these two meanings of the
word technology. What we see is, for one thing, something familiar; technology is primarily male in industrialized contexts. Technology can here be seen, not only as a means to use for different purposes, but also as a strongly male institution, something existing in itself and beyond the temporary existence of the individuals that "happen" to live today.

	On the other hand, we see an emptiness which might make us confused. That
"women" are unacquainted with technology, and therefore might not have so
much to say about the topic, is perhaps quite expected. But active engineers? As
was lain emphasis on above, it was the word technology and nothing else that
caused the women's silence. They were not unable to talk about their work or
otherwise of what actually is technology. 

	This emptiness must therefore be examined as a specific signal, and for the
purpose of examining something as abstract as silence or nonexistence, theory and academic tradition can be of help. During the different steps of analyzing the interviews and interview transcripts, it was helpful to use a simple statement from the Sociology of Knowledge, in trying to get a grasp over the phenomenon:

		The consciousness is always intentional; it always has an intention or a direction towards an object. We can never apprehend a supposed substrate of
consciousness in itself, only a consciousness of this or that. 
		
		(Berger & Luckmann 1979, p 32. My  translation from a Swedish edition.)

As what is presented appeared in the material as a robust pattern of conformity,
which was resistant to differentiation in interviewing it can be stated that:

		technology did not exist to the interviewees as a self-sufficient object of awareness

Probably it was a result of the researcher's pre formulations, that the use of the word technology got questioned with such plainness by the interviews. The first question in the quotes made in this text is confrontational, and focusing on this word: "How do you use technology?", is quite a stupid question. What should
 anyone answer to that? But we must remember that this we can say by now -
afterwards. It could not have been said for sure in advance as there are possible answers. One of them, applicable to both the English and the original Swedish question is: "To get things done!", another: "As gently as possible". But these where not the answers, and that is the point. Of all possible answers we had: "I don't really know what you are aiming at". It seems as only a confrontation between expectations and reality could have brought this forth. 

	It is questionable, though, if the next quality of the interviewed women's
relationship to their occupation would have been noticed without openness from
the part of the interviewer. 

WORLD VIEW

The interviewed women all had strong ambitions to gain and create for
themselves a room in the public sphere where they would be active parts. Put in
the terms of one of the interviewees, they wanted to "have something of their
own". From what they told about their lives, it can be said that they where ready and able to make major efforts to reach this - as long as this could be done without causing their children harm. But then, this was not all.

	In every story there was a ground note that did not disappear, in spite of whatever every woman also said. Some women conveyed harmony, others displacement
and worry, in the relation to their occupation and occupational tasks. In the
harmonious stories, the women told about unconfrontational relations with their
employer and the working place, although they also had criticisms, and did not
always have an easy time there. Even if these women had considered other
possibilities of education, they felt good about being engineers. In the worrying, displaced stories, the women showed a double doubt; towards themselves as engineers and towards the profession/ the working place (these where
intertwined).

	How can such a sharp difference become understandable? The logic of how this
appeared could not be easily assigned to other data of the interviews. On the
contrary, a story conveying personal harmony in relation to the profession could
come from a woman quite aware of - and bothered by - shortcomings and
problems with engineering. A woman most distressed, as cause of her doubts if
she could ever fit, could be proud of her working place, and loyal. The women's
technical interest was neither usable as a "marker", nor were private interests and social activities. As previously indicated the social positions of the women's families was also quite comparable.

	The pattern of difference became understandable connected to the way in which the women placed themselves and their dreams contra the engineering
profession and tasks. It seemed to make a crucial difference to the tone of the
women's stories if their world views integrated the engineering profession with
themselves or not. An integration was connected to a harmonious story, whilst
worry was connected to lack of integration. Harmony partly seemed to be a cause
of a personal protection given by the integration in itself. If the world view of the women integrated the engineering profession, they would in their everyday life benefit from placing "normality" out of the scope of the culture of their working place, thus claiming the right of judgement for themselves. Thus they "made use" of their ideas within the profession, both in an altruistic sense and towards themselves. Otherwise two systems of legitimacy of judgement was, at varying degrees, in constant confrontation, by a "living" of what was not placed (did not have place?) within the profession.  

In the following I concentrate on the stories which lacked integration, the
worrying and displaced ones. The reason for this is that I see it as a necessary step to take, in the development of the discourse on women and technology, to
integrate to it, and make use, also of fears and failures as well as our more
positive emotions and experiences. 

In a case such as this the attempts to explain what emerged must themselves be
examined. I have stated that it made a crucial difference to the tone of the
women's stories if their world views integrated the engineering profession with
themselves or not. But which was the cause and which was the effect? The tone
or the integration? Or, were they both effects of something quite else, not possible to see within the frames of these interviews? Are we talking about personal factors? Two factors point towards the interpretation made. They will both be accounted for. It is in place though, to first establish that the relationship between possibilities of integration of the personal sense of meaning and personal welfare within a social setting is a well established fact. In the attempts to explain how someone can "fit in", while someone else must feel as an outsider and adopt an ambiguous attitude to her/his work, one must consider the possibilities the environment gives this person to formulate her/his goals in harmony with her/his activity. This problem is steadily brought to the fore by new generations and new movements for social, philosophical and religious change. In their different stages of development it will show from different angles, and is thus debated again and again.

	Of the internal empirical factors strengthening the above interpretation, it can first be noticed that ideological changes were spontaneously recognized as having importance among all the interviewed women. Two of the women  also laid
emphasis in their telling, on changes of ideology made in their working places
and/or branches, that had eased their professional life. Secondly, the type of
world view connected to the disharmonious stories could have been foreseen
from theoretical and earlier empirical work on gender and technology. Helpful
factors for the individual woman's integration of engineering into the whole her
life story, that showed in the interviews, were the growing awareness of
environmental hazards, and the present emphasis on quality within industrial
management. But the women who were strongly directed towards the immediate
welfare of the individual had not found a helpful surrounding in terms of
possibilities for practice or ideological integration. This specific sense of
responsibility is, as we know, shared by many women.

The reported study is a small one, aimed towards finding qualitative categories.
The result accounted for above is therefore first and foremost a reminder of the
existence and weight of dreams and longings in the individuals relationship to
her work. A reminder about their existence also among engineers - a profession
often carrying professional cultures where they are strongly denied, as among
others Professor Sally Hacker reported.

	Nevertheless, if the result is not possible to generalise, it could have been expected, and is therefore quite discouraging in the case of women in
engineering. If women are encouraged to become engineers, and many women
share this specific type of sense of responsibility - what kind of lives are the
women who follow this encouragement actually supposed to live?

	But, when searching new knowledge on technology, possibly that is not the point. We can turn it over, and stop looking at what technology could not contain, in the experience of these women, but what it had once the potential of being to them. And this is a way of relating to women's identifications of technology that I do want to suggest as possible to generalise as a practice. For a development of the discourse on engineering technology, the point must be the impossible positive identifications made. 

	In spite of the displaced tone of these women's stories, and the lack of integration of personal dreams in their professional activities today, it was clearly said that they had once chosen to study for an engineering degree because it seemed to have potentials for containing these. What these women told witnessed strong ambitions and a lively technical interest. It is worth noting that a decisive factor when choosing among engineering specialisations, had been their enjoyment in performing and planning technical tasks of the respective specialisations they chose. A serious consideration of this complex of possibilities of defining has a potential for technological discovery.

DISCUSSION OF THE METHOD.

The strength of the qualitative interview is its theory generating capacity. The
information gained is not primarily the "hard facts" of what actually takes place, as it can be from, for example, an observational method. Possibly, this method stands somewhere between the studies of facts and the studies of fiction. Fiction shares the meanings in circulation, while facts accounts for the practices in use. Possibly, what we meet in the interview, as a source of information, can be formulated as the sense of meaning that is constructed from what is apprehended to take place. In any case, it is precisely vagueness as circumstance, that carries the generating capacity of the method. If we turn to the Sociology of Knowledge, we see that the face-to-face situation is the situation in which the possibilities to construct the other have their minimum. Therefore, the possibilities to impose one's own, or what is considered and internalised as an objective reality on the others telling are restricted. Reality becomes vague, so new ways of defining reality (objectivising reality) can emerge. 

 	But, when a relation to work is the topic of interest, the interview also has severe weaknesses in terms of information generation. What we learn to do in
apprenticeship and education and what we repeatedly do to carry our tasks
further, is, concerning the most basic patterns of execution, under normal
circumstances not available to our conscious thought. Therefore this will not be
possible to tell or discuss. Parts of this disadvantage can be alleviated by the
recurrence of interviews, but of both cognitive, psychological and social reasons, this will be to a limited extent. Why this is of importance above pure reasons of scrutiny can be shown with the help of the work of Michael Polanyi, who created the theory on tacit knowledge. Professional knowledge, as Michael Polanyi puts it, is not foremost a question of having abilities, but of a way of relating. For example, what children and young people learn from schoolbooks and teachers are not basically facts, or how to handle facts in order to produce some kind of result. Basically what they learn is the way in which things are talked about and acted on. As Polanyi puts this, what is first and foremost taught are the basic assumptions behind the methods that resulted in what is presented. (From Personal Knowledge, chapter 4; Skills ) This is why the normal everyday routines, which we apprehend as uncharged and uncomplicated, carry and reproduce specific values. This is also why some of the academic work on science and technology proven to be most beneficial, deals with the details of performance and organisation, for example the works of the internationally influential Sandra Harding and Evelyn Fox Keller and, in Sweden, Louise Wald*n. 

In the continuance of the research project here presented by the part of the pilot study, published material is used. The source is the stipulated final technical reports presented by engineering students to earn their degrees (Master of Science), which are made by women students at the LuleŚ University of
Technology from its start in the  early seventies until 1993 (430 pcs). These studies are planned to be followed up by further interviews, this time with women who have earned their M.Sc. Engineering Degrees at the LuleŚ University of
Technology.

CONCLUSIONS

One reason why the initial idea of topics to be covered showed to be out of
interest was their objective character. One weakness in this refers to the formal sphere: It is of no interest to investigate as such "the use of technology", if the meaning of technology in itself is not established among the group in question. Here I refer to a profound, not a synthetic, understanding. A caution as to what is taken for granted in the categories used must be observed. 

	Another weakness refers to the emotive sphere, this taking too much for granted, dealing with "what is known", that is "what is established"; The situation of women engineers is very new. Cultural patterns are not developed. Meaning, what matters and what does not, then becomes an ever present question, and meaning, as we know, cannot be reduced to formalities but in meaninglessness. Also therefore, the subjective must be the point of interest. This is where ideas and reality refracts.

If we consider that meaning is perceptible as a difference (e.g. between what is and should be), and that people strive to find meaning in their lives, the quite abstract conception of world view can be concretised as longings. So, what I want to say, is that it seems to be through the subjective, through longings and dreams, that the new knowledge on technology, which we actually are in need of, can be found.

For this kind of searching to be possible, though, an ability is required to give the individuals whose voices we hear ownership of truth. The full content of this appears when we realise that women whose world views are centred around the welfare of the individual, once had reasons to believe that they could live and make a difference in accordance to that, within and through engineering. This tells us something about women, certainly. But if we let these women's dreams be as real as the science fiction of Jules Verne once was to its many readers, it also tells about what technology can be, and therefore something about what the technology we meet in different situations is. If something is to be learnt about reality, at the same time reality must be undone.
	
For some reason - who can truly say she knows why? - women are now asked and
willing to take part in institutionally male activities. They do what men do. This process surely "un-makes" gender in some respects; transgresses it, overcomes its split. But also it accentuates the personal and institutional dependence on the manifestation of gender. One reason for this is the break of order in that women through engineering gain new types of power positions - engineers directly change the physical and organisational frames of societies. In industrialised or industrialising society this kind of activity has formerly been reserved for men. Being a change or break of order this process represents a threat towards both men, other women and the women engineers themselves. Often this lies latent but, as we know, this threat from time to time is apprehended as becoming so concrete, that individual or groups of women engineers or engineering students
are physically, verbally or institutionally attacked. But also under friendly and positive circumstances gender is accentuated for women in engineering. They are and act as engineers among men. They are surrounded by men's items. The
languages and practices that they learn, what constitutes the tools available to
them in performing their tasks, are developed by men, according to men's
knowledge and experiences. This calls for reorganisations of individual patterns
as of extensive cultural patterns, reorganisations of ways of being and being
together. Why this is inevitable can be talked about in accordance with different traditions of science. We can say that at parts, in many cases the "in break" into the institutionally masculine put the individual women in worlds arranged according to cognitive patterns they do not have. We can also say that as they still are women, they are bound to women's bodies and social positions, women's rhythms of life, so they will be different in a male environment. We can also say that they carry women's wishes and dreams, and that those are not the same as those of men. A conclusion from the pilot project is that no absolute distinction between these levels of explanation is necessary, and that an equal respect for the information gained through the different channels of communication to which they correspond, is necessary for gaining knowledge on the matter of something that is in change in our own time.

References

Berner, Boel (1982). Kvinnor, kunskap och makt i teknikens vSrld.  From
Kvinnovetenskaplig Tidsskrift nr 3 1982.

Polanyi, Michael (1958). Personal Knowledge - Towards a Post-Critical
Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.