Gender Race Technology

What does race and gender have to do with technology?

This module examines how ideas of gender, race and sexuality have shaped the development of particular technologies, and how these technologies, in turn, have reproduced the categories of race, gender and sexuality. In this module, we will have two starting assumptions: (1) neither gender nor race can be distilled down to only biology or only culture, and (2) technology is not neutral - far from it. One only need to look at the public opposition to facial recognition technologies or the widespread critiques that algorithms are biased to understand that technologies are inscribed with the power relations of their builders and users.

In this module we will examine how gender, race and technologies intersect in history, culture and contemporary politics. Using case studies that vary geographically, students will learn about the gender and racial politics of technology in media and film, biomedicine, international development, the environment, work and home, and artificial intelligence. We will focus on the following questions:

• Instead of viewing women and minorities as passive consumers of technology who have not produced anything, how have they actively produced different technologies, often with different goals in mind?
• How have technological advancements shaped how we think of gender and race, such as biomedicine and genetics, housework, surveillance, artificial intelligence, social media and international development?
• How have technologies perpetuated injustices related to gender, race, and sexuality?