Gendering of Boundary work in Engineering

The central starting point of the project is the assumption that distinctions (boundaries) made in professional engineering knowledge and debates are relevant for gender research. In the history of German engineering especially, the theory/practice difference has been of major concern for the emergence of the modern understanding of technology. The questions of whether engineering is a fully rationalistic scientific endeavour, whether it is mainly an applied science or whether it is a more productive (rather than cognitive) version of science based on experience and tacit knowledge, have remained crucial for technological concepts. As a result, there have been different variations of boundary work between theory and practice within the field. The project aims at analysing the constructions of gender that go along with these distinctions in the professional knowledge of engineering in the German-speaking area. Central questions are: Which social constructions of gender are connected with the theory/practice boundary? Which can be found in historical as well as in current ways of drawing the boundary? How are different constructions of masculinity co-produced with professional understandings of technology and of the discipline? How have these social constructions worked as excluding mechanisms? The empirical investigation will first comprise a longitudinal study: Professional discourse in engineering journals and its reflection in general knowledge as can be found in encyclopaedias will be studied comparatively. In addition, a qualitative cross-sectional study is designed for investigating different selected sub-domains of today`s engineering. In detail the questions are as follows: How do gender-relevant patterns of the theory-practice distinction change in the long-run within the engineering professional discourse? Which patterns of distribution into general knowledge emerge? Which forms are currently identifiable in more established or in more innovative sub-domains of engineering? Thus the theory-practice boundary is to be illuminated mutually in the diachronic process and in the synchronic distribution in order to get a more complex image of the social field of technology. Methodological approaches of empirical gender research with regard to gendered knowledge (in engineering) shall constitute a further benefit. The broader aim of the project is to contribute to the de-construction of stereotypical gendered images of technology, arguing on the basis of the very fundamentals of engineering professional knowledge. In this way, it contributes to de-stabilising the governing effects of social exclusion that work on a symbolic level and also enhances a more heterogeneous cultural understanding of engineering.

Starting from the social studies of science and technology and from a sociology of knowledge as well as from a gender studies perspective, the project focuses on how definitions and demarcations of scientific territories, professional practices and images of German engineering have been historically and are currently linked to social ideas about gender.A long-term analysis of central professional debates within German engineering shows how understandings of the engineering profession have oscillated between an orientation towards theory respectively practice since its professionalization as an academic discipline in the mid-19th century, and how these diverse professional understandings have been linked to specific understandings of masculinity. Practitioners and theoreticians have developed diverse ideas about the masculinity of engineers; contrariwise masculinity in its specific forms has become a symbolic prerequisite for the success of engineers within academia. An in parallel conducted long-term analysis of historical general knowledge, as it is reflected in encyclopedias, shows how the establishment of the modern notion of technology is the result of a narrowing-process, including multiple shifts, of what is considered as technology. In this process practices of craftsmanship and engineering design become scientific; alongside, the engineering profession is formed as a 'masculine' civil profession.A cross-sectional analysis of a broader range of subdisciplines in current academic engineering at Austrian technical universities shows that there are two diverse concepts of the engineering profession that dominate in rather fundamental, theory-oriented respectively rather applied practice-oriented areas. The concept of the engineering theorist as well as of the engineering generalist are both implicitly coded masculine, thus, displaying two current forms of engineering masculinity. In sum, the project gained the following results: 1., the concepts of engineering as an academic discipline and the images of the engineer are variable and highly depending on context in historical as well as in current perspective. 2., ways of constructing masculinity must be understood as complex phenomena when thinking about gender and technology. A monolithic idea of the male engineer appears to be foreshortened in several ways. 3., concerning gender equality programs, it can be noted that the (latent) male gender coding of engineerings professional concepts needs to be taken into account.