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New Publication: Chapter in Handbook of Innovation by Bianca Prietl and Tanja Paulitz

Handbook of Innovation Cover

A new article by Bianca Prietl and Tanja Paulitz discusses feminist and gender perspectives on innovation and design, highlighting transformative potentials of reflexive co-constructions of gender and technology.

The chapter starts out with feminist reflections on androcentric concepts of innovation and technology and the resulting marginalization of women in innovation and research. It then suggests that gender and innovation, particularly technological development and the design of artifacts, should be understood and studied as co-constructed or co-produced. On this basis, a diverse set of proposals for how to intervene in technological development and the design of artifacts are discussed. These propositions range from diversity-oriented approaches aimed at better representing diverse users in design to transformative approaches that call for reflexively challenging and disrupting dominant social norms and relations in and through design. 

Feminist and gender perspectives on innovation and design do not simply affirm innovation as something desirable in and of itself. However, they consider innovation and design as possible starting points for questioning and reducing social inequalities, exclusions, and marginalizations based on gender (and other social axes of domination). They can, thus, themselves be understood as innovative.

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