Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women and Technological Change in History

Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women and Technological Change in History, first published by Scarecrow Press in 1979, was one of the first books published on the history of women and technology and laid the groundwork for decades of impressive and increasing scholarship in this field. An edited collection of eleven essays based on scholarly research, it explores many of the ways women have affected technological change historically and how technology has impinged on them. Both European and American topics, from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, are included, although the United States in the last 100 years is the focus.

The book is divided into two main sections, each subdivided with introductions. The first covers "women as active participants in technological change" and contains essays on women industrial workers, inventors, and scientists. The second section views "effects of technological change on women in the domestic spheres", covering women as homemakers, bearers, and rearers of children.

Today, with the renewed interest in women's contributions in all fields, including science, engineering, and technology, women's history, and women's and gender studies programs, this paperback edition will certainly continue to be a very useful and now more affordable reference work for students and individual scholars, as well as university, school, and public libraries.