I think "feminist engineering" is a funny phrase. I imagine machines generating feminists, housewives engineering their children to be feminists, engineering students designing with women in mind as a potential end-user, an engineering philosophy that acknowledges and subverts the effect of patriarchal society on design - both what is designed and how.
As a funny side note, other people have come up with their own ideas. David Durlach, founder of Technofrolics, defines a feminist engineer as someone who is inspired to create affectionate technology. In other words, a feminist engineer designs products with emotional value. I think it's an interesting idea, a bit heavy-handed as far as relying on stereotypes, but interesting. I kind of want to work for them.
This whole discussion is part of why I got involved in SWE in the first place. I want to talk about what it means to do feminist engineering and be a feminist engineer. I want to encourage more women and minorities to get engineering degrees. I want to be surrounded by people who feel similarly. I mean honestly, SWE is the closest thing we have to a women's group on campus (I'm not going to count Girls' Bible Study - first off, it's for girls). I really want SWE to mean more to me than planning stupid study breaks. I'm really starting to hate study breaks. That's part of why I decided to RSVP "yes" to the SWE Collegiate Leadership Forum - I'm hoping it will help me get a new perspective on the organization.
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About Me
- Casey
- A graduate of Garrison Forest and currently a student at Olin College, I am interested in the intersections of feminism, philosophy, and engineering.
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1 comment:
You could start something at Olin. Not necessarily something official. For three years, my roommate and I had a designated "uppity women" section of our bookshelf, containing everything from Pippi Longstocking books to Marjane Satrapi graphic novels to feminist and gender theory to cookbooks. People were often intrigued by the books with more provocative titles, which led to good conversations.
Do they still have Gender and Engineering as a cocurricular at Olin? That wasn't exclusively a women's group, but they did delve into issues that SWE does not.
Sort of on a tangent... I do value time spent with exclusively female groups, but I also think it's crucial to engage men in the conversation. Too often I think we talk about things like street harrassment or gender bias only with other women, and men tend to miss out on the nuances and varied experiences, hearing only the loudest voices (which also happen to often be the most bitter and least constructive ones--naturally, when you've been pushed to the breaking point and are finally forced to speak up, you're not going to be choosing your words to spare anyone's feelings).
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