Women's Technologies, Women's Literacies: Sewing and Computing across the Years

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2001

Women's Technologies, Women's Literacies: Sewing and Computing across the Years

Liz Rohan University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

This article compares the historical and contemporary clothing industry with the current microelectronics industry. It argues that the development of paper patterns, along with the perfection of the sewing machine as a technology in the 1870s, “democratized fashion” for lower and middle class women just as the development of the World Wide Web and Web-making software has democratized publishing for authors before unable to gain access to an audience for their writing. Comparing the businesses of three groups of women using the World Wide Web, this article finally problematizes these historical and contemporary democratizing technologies—the sewing machine and the computer—by pointing out both obvious and more subtle socioeconomic realities which undercut some utopian promises of publishing in Cyberspace. Women are … without class because the cut and fall of the skirt and good leather shoes can take you across the river and to the other side: the fairytales tell you that goose-girls may marry kings [1, pp. 15–16].

Journal: Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published: 2001-04-01
DOI: 10.2190/yvam-ya46-qn90-tdka
Open Access: Closed
Topics: writing across the curriculum multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

Moran et al. (2012)

A Bibliography of Works Published in the History of Professional Communication …

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Thompson et al. (2006)

Women and Feminism in Technical Communication—An Update

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Durack (2003)

Observations on Entrepreneurship, Instructional Texts, and Personal Interaction

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

Cites in this index (2)

Sullivan (1999)

Wired women writing: Towards a feminist theorization of hypertext

Computers and Composition
LeCourt et al. (1999)

Writing multiplicity: Hypertext and feminist textual politics

Computers and Composition

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