Women, Technology, and the Myth of Progress (review)

Eileen Leonard's extensively researched text was written in order to provide needed reflection on whether technology has taken U.S. society in directions that are beneficial in various basic ways. Of importance are questions of racial equality, nutrition, medical care, financial stability, and the power of self-determination. Not surprisingly, Leonard finds that technology is a blind instrument incapable of guiding its users toward social wellbeing. The best one can hope for is that technologies do not impede social progress (which must arise from old-fashioned activism, grass-roots organizing and coalition-building). As Sandra Harding remarked in her Whose Science, Whose Knowledge?: "Studies in the uses and abuses . . . (of) technology show how they have been used in the service of sexism, racism, homophobia and class exploitation" (1991, 34). Readers will appreciate Leonard's mindfulness of issues of race and class, and the high density of references to numerous data on how people of color and white people differ with respect to crucial metrics.

In Chapter 3, Leonard is pessimistic about the way that technological "miracles" are optimistically portrayed by the print media, and how these claims serve to disinform and disempower consumers. Her observations are true to common experience and they agree with those of many sociologists of science (Henry Bauer, Margaret Wertheim, John Ziman, Jacob Brownowski) who have described the dichotomous popular perception versus the realities of science. It is, however, unclear on what statistical analysis Leonard's descriptions rest, and whether factors like the publication source, gender, or educational training of the author make a difference.

Detailed discussions of technologies are limited to three areas: reproduction (Chapter 5), office work (Chapter 6) and housework (Chapter 7). Limits are a good idea, given the unmanageably broad reach of our technology which, according to Leonard, is inseparable from notions of modernity, "Western-ity," and progress. An already-knowledgeable reader might only fault the book on two counts: a theoretical analysis of issues is lacking and some prominent issues are not discussed.

Chapters 4 and 5 tell a compelling story of inferior medical care for women, and increased morbidity and poorer perinatal care available to women of color. A minor point: the reader would benefit from more specificity in some instances, for example, what is meant by "adequate" prenatal care? (Care by a midwife is not contrasted with care by a doctor in the book.) Is seven deaths per 1,000 significantly different than eight deaths per 1,000? Rigorous distinctions are occasionally lacking, as are statistics corrected for important factors like income and education.

Leonard brings a sociologist's perspective to issues around long-term birth control (Norplant and Depo-Provera) and infertility therapies. Her good arguments are based in inequitable delivery of services, lack of affordability, and unreliable information about success rates of therapy. Epistemological critiques are not made. For example, a scientist mentions human/animal hybrids via uniting gorilla sperm with human eggs. This choice goes unanalyzed, despite its resonance with sperm and egg mythologies as described by Emily Martin or Scott Gilbert, and the King-Kong-esque, European myths of human-ape couplings (always male apes and human females) described by historian Londa Schiebinger. In parting, Chapter 5 leaves the impression that existing reproductive technologies would serve the greater social good if only they were better documented, better distributed, and administered in the absence of racism or coercion.

In Chapters 6 and 7, Leonard contrasts various employment situations adroitly, making us realize how the "piece work" sewn in home sweatshops, thanks to the invention of the sewing machine, is similar to the data entry work done at home by "cottage keyers," thanks to the invention of the networked computer. A historical view supports her observations about modern homework and housework. (From at least the 16th century onward, Western people were employed in homework or extramural employment in very different ways depending on gender, race and class.)

Leonard rests much of her analysis in Chapter 8 on the...