STS Seminar Series

Avdelningen STS arrangerar två seminarieserier:

• STS-seminariet
  
• Teknik- och vetenskapshistoriska seminariet
  

Du hittar tider för båda seminarieserierna nedan.

Title: What Late-Career and Retired Women Engineers Tell Us: Gender Challenges in Historical Context
Time: 15.30-17.00
Where: Vera Sandbergs Allé 8, TME Room 2356 Järntorget
 
Abstract: Women engineers who graduated from college in the 1970s, a time in U.S. history when women’s entry into engineering seemed most promising but failed to gain traction, offer important perspectives on the challenges facing women engineers in the past and today. To that end, we surveyed 251 women engineers from that generation to understand their perspectives and experiences. We found that the challenges faced by so many of the women engineers reflect gender issues that are deeply embedded in our interpersonal interactions and social structures – so much so that progress for women in engineering has been slow despite the anticipation that as more women went into the field, things would have gotten better. Although, as many participants noted, these challenges are rooted in gender inequity at social and institutional levels, participants often recommended individual-level solutions, encouraging young women to ‘just do it’ and persist in spite of the challenges. Our historical framing and gender analysis of participants’ responses help to explain their beliefs about why change has been slow and why, despite the continued challenges, they have persisted and encourage young women to do the same.


JUNE 4
Assistant Professor Jillet Sam and PhD student Rajorshi Ray, from IIT Kanpur

Title: Sensemaking of digital money among female peripheral agents: a short ethnographic study of informal workers in North India
Time: 10.15-12.00
Where: Vera Sandbergs Allé 8, TME Room 2356 Järntorget
 
Abstract: This essay compares how digital money is conceptualized by the government of India with sense-making and practices among women workers in North India. The government promotes and envisions a future with large sections of the population within the fold of ‘Digital India’. The policy rhetoric emphasizes capacity building, both in terms of improving infrastructure and training people to be able to use cashless modes of payments. However, in its positive narrative, the inclusion of women is mentioned only in passing, thereby rendering them peripheral in the government’s vision of a digital economy. Further, through focus group discussions and interviews carried out with women working at the intersection of formal and informal economy, the analysis establishes that our respondents are peripheral agents because of the economic and social structures which constrain them from formal and effective access to digital money.
 
JUNE 4
Assistant Professor Jillet Sam and PhD student Rajorshi Ray, from IIT Kanpur
Title: Roundtable: Digitalization of Society
Time: 13:15-15.00
Where: Vera Sandbergs Allé 8, TME Room 3443 Brunnsparken


More information: Digitalization involves a complex non-linear set of process that is informed by pre-existing  social configurations. At the same time, it holds a transformative potential to mediate, and even drastically alter, existing social relations.
 
This roundtable will address the various dimensions of digitalization of society through a focus on empirically informed discussions. Adopting a comparative historical lens in charting out the contours of digitalization, this roundtable will explore what digitalization means in the context of different societies. It will also consider the manner in which  digitalization has been envisioned across different points in time.

In our series of lunchtime book discussions, members of the faculty talk informally about their current reading.  During these sessions, we cover new releases and classics that inform our research at STS - as well as Chalmers TME - while also being relevant to broader audiences.

 

The series is arranged by Karl Palmås, Anna Åberg, Catharina Landström, and Per Lundin.