Chinar Mehta

Media

Writing

Teaching

Research

About

DHS 316 · IIIT Bangalore

Explores the intersections of gender and technology through feminist theory and STS frameworks, examining how technologies are designed, used, and contested across different social and cultural settings.

A 4-credit ELECTIVE course taught to B.Tech. and 5-year Integrated M.Tech. students in:

  • Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)
  • Electronics & Communication Engineering (ECE)

Assessment

The course runs through a semester-long group project - pairs of students pick a technology of their choice and critically analyze it through feminist theory and STS frameworks. The project culminates in a group presentation (preceded by a viva) and a term paper. Two written assignments to be written using given prompts across the semester to build analytical skills.

All project-related assessments are group submissions. Individual grades come from class participation and a mid-term exam.

Individual Class Participation (15%)
Individual Mid-term Exam (20%)
Group Assignment 1 (10%)

Answer any one of the following in 1000–1500 words:

  • Take an Indian film of your choice. Pick one or more characters of any gender and use prescribed readings to analyze how they construct or perform gender through clothing, actions, and behaviours; how cinematic features reinforce the charmed circle vs. outer limits of the sex hierarchy; and how religious or caste-based patriarchal norms are enacted.
  • Through a close study of cases of "gender testing" in sports, analyze how sex is constructed through the language of medicine. Use concrete examples and critically analyze the truth claims in these constructions.
  • Pick any contemporary technology and critically analyze the technologically deterministic language around it.
Group Assignment 2 (10%)

Answer any one of the following in 1000–1500 words:

  • Through any common household technology, examine how household technologies have paradoxically increased rather than reduced women's work burdens — attending to globalization, gendered domestic labor, caste and class hierarchies between homemaker and domestic worker, and how the technology's design and marketing produce an image of femininity and domesticity.
  • Critically analyze the biases embedded in one specific Indian digital health platform or government health scheme. How do these biases reflect and reproduce gender and class inequalities? Whose body is understood as the default or universal body?
Group Group Viva (15%)

An oral examination conducted in pairs the day before your group presentation (~20–30 minutes). Expects questions about your chosen technology, the theoretical frameworks covered in class, and the arguments you are making. Questions will be open-ended and may push back on your arguments — this is not a trap but an opportunity to demonstrate depth of thinking. Both group members are expected to participate equally; you cannot speak on behalf of your partner.

Group Group Presentation + Contribution Note (15%)

A 10-minute critical analysis (not a summary) of your chosen technology. Your presentation must cover three things: briefly introduce the technology and explain why it is worth examining through a gender and society lens; present your critical analysis — how the technology constructs or enacts gender and other forms of social stratification, whose perspectives are privileged, and what its material properties demand of users; and apply theoretical frameworks from the course with specific evidence (screenshots, data, policy documents, examples from public life).

Each group member also submits an individual contribution note detailing what they did for the presentation and analysis.

Group Term Paper (15%)

Pick any technology of your choice and critically analyze it through the concepts and theories discussed in class and the prescribed readings. Marked on:

  • Evidence and case study: specific examples — quotes, screenshots, images, policies, laws, any other data sources.
  • Critical analysis: asking questions beyond "is it good or bad?" — how is gender (and other social stratifications) constructed or enacted through the technology? What does the materiality of the technology prescribe for its users? How does it intersect with popular culture? Whose standpoints are privileged?

Course Modules

Module I: Understanding Gender

Session 1: What is Gender?
Session 2: What is Patriarchy?
  • Arya, S. (2020). Dalit or Brahmanical Patriarchy? Rethinking Indian Feminism. CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, 1(1), 217–228.
  • Chakravarti, U. (1993). Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State. Economic and Political Weekly, 28(14), 579–585.
  • Chakraborty, U. (2003). Gendering Caste through a Feminist Lens. Popular Prakashan.
  • Lerner, G. (1987). The Creation of Patriarchy (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press.
  • Omvedt, G. (1987). The Origin of Patriarchy. Economic and Political Weekly, 22(44).
  • Walby, S. (1989). Theorising Patriarchy. Sociology, 23(2), 213–234.
Session 3: Religion, Caste, Gender in India
  • Bama (2021). Two. In Karukku (L. Holmstrom, Trans.).
  • Mushtaq, B. (2025). Black Cobras (D. Bhasthi, Trans.). In Heart Lamp: Selected Stories. Penguin Random House India.
  • Rege, S. (1998). Dalit Women Talk Differently: A Critique of 'Difference' and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint Position. Economic and Political Weekly, WS39–WS46.
  • Hasan, Z. (2010). Gender, Religion and Democratic Politics in India. Third World Quarterly, 31(6), 939–954.
  • Ambedkar, B. R. (1916). Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development. Readings in Indian Government and Politics: Class, Caste, Gender, 131–153.
  • Banerjee, S. & Ghosh, N. (2019). Caste and Gender in Contemporary India. Routledge India.
  • Dube, L. (1988). On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India. Economic and Political Weekly, WS11–WS19.
  • Agnes, F. (1995). Hindu Men, Monogamy and Uniform Civil Code. Economic and Political Weekly, 3238–3244.
  • Moghissi, H. (2011). Islamic Feminism Revisited. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 31(1), 76–84.
  • Pawar, U. & Moon, M. (2014). We Also Made History: Women in the Ambe (W. Sonalkar, Trans.). Zubaan Books.
Session 4: Feminist Approaches to Gender

Module II: Ways of Knowing in Science and Technology

Session 5: Introduction to Philosophy of Science and IT
Session 6: Positivism and Hermeneutics
  • Johansson, R. (2004). Theory of Science and Research Methodology. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
  • Little, D. (1995). Objectivity, Truth and Method: A Philosopher's Perspective on the Social Sciences. Anthropology Newsletter, 36(8), 42–43.
Session 7: Feminist Approaches to Science

Module III: Refuting Technological Determinism

Session 8: Foundations of Anti-Technological Determinism
  • Wyatt, S. (2008). Technological Determinism Is Dead; Long Live Technological Determinism. In Hackett et al. (Eds.), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (3rd Ed.). MIT Press.
  • Pinch, T. & Bijker, W. E. (2012). The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. In The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Anniversary Ed.). MIT Press.
  • Williams, R. (1994). The Political and Feminist Dimensions of Technological Determinism. In Smith & Marx (Eds.), Does Technology Drive History? MIT Press.
Session 9: Materialities
  • Callon, M. (1984). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. The Sociological Review, 32(1_suppl), 196–233.
  • Chun, W. H. K. (2005). On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge. Grey Room, 26–51.
  • Gitelman, L. (2013). Introduction. In "Raw Data" Is an Oxymoron. MIT Press.
  • Starosielski, N. (2015). Introduction: Against Flow. In The Undersea Network. Duke University Press.
  • Thompson, E. P. (2017). Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Class: The Anthology, 27–40.
Session 10: Gender-ing Technology
  • Gray, A. (1992). Chapter 5: Technology in the Domestic Environment. In Video Playtime: The Gendering of a Leisure Technology. Routledge.
  • Craiut, M.-V. & Iancu, I. R. (2022). Is Technology Gender Neutral? A Systematic Literature Review on Gender Stereotypes Attached to Artificial Intelligence. Human Technology, 18(3), 297–315.
  • Gray, D. A. (1992). Introduction. In Video Playtime: The Gendering of a Leisure Technology. Routledge.
  • Ames, M. G. (2019). The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child. MIT Press.
  • Silverstone et al. (2003). Chapter 7: The Meaning of Domestic Technologies. In Consuming Technologies. Routledge.
  • Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Halton, E. (1981). The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge University Press.
  • Miller, D. (2001). Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. Berg Publishers.
  • Pink, S. (2020). Home Truths: Gender, Domestic Objects and Everyday Life. Routledge.
  • Wheelock, J. (2003). Chapter 6: Personal Computers, Gender, and an Institutional Model of the Household. In Consuming Technologies. Routledge.

Module IV: Society and Technology

Session 11: Society and Culture
Session 12: Historiography of Technology
Session 13: Postcolonialism
Session 14: Globalization
  • Connell, R. (2011). Chapter 1: Change among the Gatekeepers: Men, Masculinities and Gender Equality. In Confronting Equality. Allen & Unwin.
  • Channa, S. M. (2004). Globalization and Modernity in India: A Gendered Critique. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 37–71.
  • Connell, R. (2011). Chapter 9: Antonio Negri's Theory of Empire. In Confronting Equality. Allen & Unwin.
  • Lee, K.-F. (2018). Introduction. In AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  • Ritzer, G. (2003). The Globalization of Nothing. SAIS Review, 23(2), 189–200.
Session 15: War, Disaster, Risk, Technology
  • Abbate, J. (2010). Cold War and White Heat: The Origins and Meanings of Packet Switching. In MacKenzie & Wajcman (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (2nd ed.). Open University Press.
  • Bassett, R. (2009). Aligning India in the Cold War Era: Indian Technical Elites, the IIT Kanpur, and Computing in India and the United States. Technology and Culture, 50(4), 783–810.
  • Knowles, S. G. (2014). Learning from Disaster? The History of Technology and the Future of Disaster Research. Technology and Culture, 55(4), 773–784.
  • Cockburn, C. (2004). The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace. In Giles & Hyndman (Eds.), Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones. University of California Press.
  • Manjikian, M. (2014). Becoming Unmanned: The Gendering of Lethal Autonomous Warfare Technology. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(1), 48–65.
Session 16: Labor, Work, Technology
  • Orr, J. E. (1996). Introduction. In Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Cornell University Press.
  • Rosenblat, A. & Stark, L. (2016). Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber's Drivers. International Journal of Communication, 10.
  • Costagliola, A. (2021). Labor Participation and Gender Inequalities in India. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 64(3), 531–542.
  • Darokar, S. (2021). Dalit Women, Dehumanised Labour and Struggles for Dignity. In John & Gopal (Eds.), Women in the Worlds of Labour. Orient BlackSwan.
  • Gupta, N. (2015). Rethinking the Relationship between Gender and Technology: A Study of the Indian Example. Work, Employment and Society, 29(4), 661–672.

Module V: Feminist Preoccupations with Technology

Session 17: Women, Work, Family, Technology
  • Cowan, R. S. (2010). The Industrial Revolution in the Home. In MacKenzie & Wajcman (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (2nd ed., pp. 181–201). Open University Press.
  • Datta, A., Endow, T. & Mehta, B. S. (2020). Education, Caste and Women's Work in India. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 63(2), 387–406.
  • Dhanaraj, S. & Mahambare, V. (2019). Family Structure, Education and Women's Employment in Rural India. World Development, 115, 17–29.
  • Dutta, M. (2021). Factory Girls. In John & Gopal (Eds.), Women in the Worlds of Labour. Orient BlackSwan.
  • Sabharwal, N. S. & Sonalkar, W. (2015). Dalit Women in India: At the Crossroads of Gender, Class, and Caste. Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, 8(1).
Session 18: The Body
  • Lennon, K. & Fischer, C. (2024). Feminist Perspectives on the Body. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  • Tharu, S. (1996). The Impossible Subject: Caste and the Gendered Body. Economic and Political Weekly, 1311–1315.
  • Waldby, C. & Cooper, M. (2013). From Reproductive Work to Regenerative Labor: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries. In Wyer et al. (Eds.), Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies. Routledge.
  • Wissinger, E. (2017). Wearable Tech, Bodies, and Gender. Sociology Compass, 11(11), e12514.
Session 19: Health and Medical Technology
  • Figueroa, C. A. et al. (2021). The Need for Feminist Intersectionality in Digital Health. The Lancet Digital Health, 3(8), e526–e533.
  • Iyer, A., Sen, G. & George, A. (2007). The Dynamics of Gender and Class in Access to Health Care: Evidence from Rural Karnataka, India. International Journal of Health Services, 37(3), 537–554.
  • Ahmed, S. M. et al. (2005). Socioeconomic Status Overrides Age and Gender in Determining Health-Seeking Behaviour in Rural Bangladesh. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83, 109–117.
  • Pandya, A. K. & Redcay, A. (2021). Access to Health Services: Barriers Faced by the Transgender Population in India. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 25(2), 132–154.
  • Rieker, P. P. & Bird, C. E. (2005). Rethinking Gender Differences in Health: Why We Need to Integrate Social and Biological Perspectives. The Journals of Gerontology Series B, 60(Special_Issue_2), S40–S47.
Session 20: Media Representation and Identity

Module VI: Doing Technology

Session 21: The Masculine World of Computing
  • Ensmenger, N. (2010). Introduction: Computer Revolutionaries. In The Computer Boys Take Over. MIT Press.
  • Lie, M. (1995). Technology and Masculinity: The Case of the Computer. European Journal of Women's Studies, 2(3), 379–394.
  • Misu, N. A. (2001). The Cultural Construction of the Computer as a Masculine Technology: An Analysis of Computer Advertisements in Korea. Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 7(3), 93–114.
  • Turkle, S. (2005). Chapter 6: Hackers: Loving the Machine for Itself. In The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (20th Anniv. Ed.). MIT Press.
  • Na, M. (2001). The Home Computer in Korea: Gender, Technology, and the Family. Feminist Media Studies, 1(3), 291–306.
Session 22: Sexism by Design
  • Hicks, M. (2021). Chapter 6: Sexism Is a Feature, Not a Bug. In Mullaney et al. (Eds.), Your Computer Is on Fire. MIT Press.
  • Carrigan, C. (2024). Chapter 1: Gendered Labor in Computing. In Cracking the Bro Code. MIT Press.
Session 23: Caste-ing Technology
Session 24: Women and Engineering
Session 25: Surrogate Humanity: Robots and AI
  • Atanasoski, N. & Vora, K. (2019). Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures. Duke University Press.
  • Noble, S. U. (2021). Chapter 9: Your Robot Isn't Neutral. In Mullaney et al. (Eds.), Your Computer Is on Fire. MIT Press.

Module VII: Politics of Gender and Technology

Session 26: Gender and Nation Building
  • Chadha, G. (2018). Nature, Nation, Science and Gender. Sociological Bulletin, 67(3), 334–347.
  • Oza, R. (2006). Chapter 2: The New Liberal Indian Woman and Globalization. In The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization. Taylor & Francis.
Session 27: Democracy, Technology, Media
Session 28: Gender and Governance
  • Basu, A. (2003). Gender and Governance: Concepts and Contexts. In Nussbaum, Basu & Tambiah (Eds.), Essays on Gender and Governance.
  • Morozov, E. (2013). Chapter 1: Solutionism and Its Discontents. In To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. PublicAffairs.
  • Menon, N. (2009). Sexuality, Caste, Governmentality: Contests over 'Gender' in India. Feminist Review, 91(1), 94–112.
Session 29: Gender and ICTs
  • Odame, H. H. (2005). Gender and ICTs for Development: Setting the Context. Gender and ICTs for Development: A Global Sourcebook, 13–24.
  • Gurumurthy, A. et al. (2014). Digital Technologies and Gender Justice in India. IT for Change.