Women as technology

Why is it that virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and Cortana often have a female-sounding name and voice? Why was it that in the 1940s the calculating power of computers was expressed in ‘girl hours’? And why is it that we still don’t know exactly how the reproductive process works?

Women as technology presents four imposed roles that are as significant as they are problematic: women as domestic machines, computing machines, incubating machines and sex machines. The exhibition uses these traditional, gender-normative roles to highlight the ambivalent relationship between women and technology. And technology itself is far from neutral in this regard: its development invariably reflects prevailing social attitudes and has actively shaped gender expectations. At the same time, you will discover the important contributions that women have made to the development of technology in the home, in computing and in the medical discipline of fertility. We present current societal issues and structures, venture back in time and speculate about the future.