The Making of the “Third World” Gendered Technological Subject in Development

• In Event: 450 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Development

Abstract

In the past 20 years there has been a race to include women in the knowledge economy. The importance of integrating women as users, producers, consumers, designers and developers of technologies has become a global mantra in the struggle against inequality. Two of the most prominent areas of inclusion are through capacity building and training in digital information and communication technologies, and through a diverse array of strategies to foster the participation and retention of women in the science and technology fields. But this exciting future being constructed, in which women are considered key figures full of potentiality, contains in its fold subtle, and not so subtle, forms of exclusion. In this essay, I draw from textual analysis of United Nations and World Bank reports on gender, technology and science, and in-depth interviews with UN officials to analyze the framing of this “Third World” Woman technological subject. I found that although technology and science are framed as predominantly entrepreneurial tools for economic advancement, the “rational economic woman” is also portrayed as an emotional woman. I argue that development policy fuses technology and intimacy by incorporating gendered tropes in the making of an ideal neoliberal Third World woman entrepreneur. This technological woman is thus drenched in affective imagery: her emotions will serve well.

Author

• Firuzeh Shokooh-Valle, Clark University