Feminism Confronts Technology provides a lively and engaging exploration of the impact of technology on women′s lives from word processors to food processors, and genetic engineering to the design of cities. Comprehensive and critical, this book surveys the sociological and feminist literature on technology, highlighting the male bias in the way technology is defined as well as developed. Wajcman sets the scene with an overview of feminist theories of science and technology: encompassing the technologies of production and reproduction as well as domestic technology. The author challenges the common assumption that technology is gender neutral, looking at whether technology can liberate women or whether the new technologies are reinforcing sexual divisions in society.

There can be no doubt that feminism, and its influence on the academy, has wrought enormous changes on the social sciences in general and sociology in particular. This edited volume is an outgrowth of a discussion that began on the Sociologists for Women in Society Listserve, in which participants were asked to talk about key pieces in feminist scholarship that had particularly influenced their sociological thinking. Editors Kristen A. Myers, Cynthia D. Anderson, and Barbara J. Risman have chosen articles that fall into what they consider the intellectual genres that compose feminist sociology. This collection differs from others because the editors avoid organizing material by substantive specialty areas (i.e., family, race and ethnicity, criminology, or methods). Their vision instead sees sociology as an integrated discipline, where feminist contributions have systematically influenced the shape of the whole by similarly influencing the distinct parts. In addition to simply compiling a comprehensive list of important articles from the last two decades, the editors have invited major feminist scholars to comment and reflect on the articles in each section of the book. These reflections help provide the historical and social context in which feminist scholarship has taken place. This book will be of obvious appeal to feminist scholars and gender sociologists. Yet, as feminist thought rightfully takes its place away from the margins and toward the center of the discipline, this book stands as a rich and useful resource for any contemporary theory course.