ld be evaluated in relation to the gendered culture of technology. Technology has never been neutral in terms of gender (Wajcman, 2001) and has been constructed culturally and historically as masculine (Cockburn, 1999). It should be noted that this argument does not presuppose the idea that technology has to be masculine in its essence. Technology has always been a site for continuing discursive struggles on meanings, images and representations. The
history of technology provides cases of fields which were crowded with women in the beginning but developed into `naturally' masculine domains. The current configuration of technological occupations shows that women `operate the machinery' instead of `managing technology, developing it is use or maintaining or servicing it' (Cockburn, 1999). In other words, women work as operators pushing the buttons or the keys and work on the machine without knowing what is going on inside of it.
This gendered segregation in technical professions points to the fact that the dominant discourse in technology is masculine. One of the ways through which the masculine discourse of technology constructs and legitimises itself is the naturalisation of the constructed differences between men and women; emphasising especially the male competence, female incompetence in technical knowledge and skills.
Nevertheless, as Cockburn (1999) argues the low number of women in the fields of technology and engineering cannot be explained by theories that argue that there are `essential' difference between women and men
Women and men are equally represented in College Education but more important are differences in types of education. (Khatib, 2009) argues that at very early in the school boys express more interests in science and mathematics, and girls excel in verbal skills, which resulted in over representation of men in fields of hard cord science discipline and engineering and women in education and humanities.
But who is better student? If occupational aspirations by sex and different success in mathematics and hard sciences can be seen very early as a result of modelling traditional behaviour pattern, it can be expected that women in engineering are not as good students as their male colleagues having lower grades and longer period of studying. Female students are better in both dimensions they have higher grades and shorter period of studying. In another words women who want to make career in engineering have to do much better than men and are much higher motivated (Khatib, 2009).
It can be argued that women's entrance into a technical field and engineering is not an easy task. For women to cross into male work is to transgress gender rules and to invite penalties. It involves abandoning women's traditional values and concerns (Lloyd, 2003)
In Libya the pattern of engineering being a male dominated field repeats. Engineering departments have the lowest percentage of women both as students and professors. In 2002, there were 9,650 female engineers in Libya, comprising 13.6 per cent of all engineers (Alfateh University, 2002). This percentage is the first lowest in all professions in all sectors. When the distribution of female students and professors within Alfatah university engineering programs is assessed, the ratios likewise favour men. The percentage of female students was 12.6 percent in engineering departments in 2002, while i
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