Boys and Their Toys

Gender as a category of analysis emerged in technological history during the 1970s, but gender meant "women" until the 1990s. Then Carroll Pursell, in an article titled "Boys and Their Toys" and a 1991 address to the SHOT annual meeting, espoused combining masculinity and technology. The guest editors of Technology and Culture's special issue of January 1997, "Gender Analysis and the History of Technology," dissolved boundaries between home and work, production and consumption, and masculine and feminine, usually in the context of women and technology. Nevertheless, Arwen Mohun's essay on laundrymen and Ruth Oldenziel's on Fisher Body, reprinted in Boys and Their Toys? Masculinity, Class, and Technology in America, highlighted masculinity. Oldenziel broadened her focus in Making Technology Masculine (1999), analyzing the definition of engineering as technology and technology as masculine

Class (philosophy) · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · History of technology · Masculinity · Social science · Sociology · Architecture, Design, and Social History · Computer Science · Crafts, Textile, and Design · Gender Studies · History · Science Education and Perceptions