Summary: | The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine how gender is produced in a contemporary technological sphere. I am examining a department called MST within the School of Electrical Engineering at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) primarily by focus group interviews and in depth interviews with a doing gender perspective. I also carry out participant observations for additional background information. I argue from a gender studies perspective that KTH as a technological institution and workplace is reproducing ideals that confirms men as norm. Furthermore, I suggest that the technical sphere and historically traditional (male) gendered environment that which KTH represents, embodies and reproduces, makes it more challenging for female PhD-students to compete against their male counterparts when it comes to gaining recognition than it is vice versa. I am studying the awareness of gender norms in a technical milieu as well as thoughts about the daily negotiations and biased representations of gender on postgraduate/research level among the female PhD-students at MST. Moreover, I suggest that there are certain connotations with and cultural conceptions of what it means to be and to work as an engineer.
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