Gendered Bodies, Gendered Knowledges

Abstract

This article explores the body and its relation to occupational/professional knowledge to understand the gendering of work practices associated with use of personal computers (PCs) in Australian family farms. The central aim of the article is to expose the gendered interactions, understandings, and communications inherent in everyday work practices and consider how these shape relations of technology and gender. In-depth semistructured personal interviews held separately with farming women and men are used to explore relations between use of information technologies, gendered work practice, and sense of self as workers. The data demonstrate that the performative aspects of masculinity result in the appropriation of knowledge by men that genders PC use and reproduces gender hierarchies in farming.