Using the lenses of feminist theories to focus on women, science, and technology, Sue Rosser opened the International Congress Symposium of the 12th International Conference on Women in Engineering with a startlingly simple yet poignant question. Looking out at the crowd of over 200 conference participants, she asked, "What can we learn about women's studies as we embark on women in science fields?" Rosser is not the first to show interest in this area. The National Science Foundation, through a three million-dollar Advance grant, also recognized that there must be institutional reform in this area. Rosser's presentation centered around several different feminist theories ranging from radical feminism and psychoanalytic feminism to existentialist feminism and cyber feminism. Using examples from recent history to illustrate the disparity of equality between men and women in the science fields, Rosser addressed the many facets of feminism.

• Liberal Feminism centers around the belief that women are suppressed in contemporary society because they suffer unjust discrimination. This theory does not seek special privileges for women, just equality. Rosser used this theory to describe the pivotal role that the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) plays in advocacy for women in engineering and technology markets. This is one of AWIS's major goals.
• Existentialist Feminism is a system of thought that explains how social inequality is not caused directly by biological differences but rather by the value that society assigns to biological differences. This has led women to play the role of the "other." This theory is illustrated through gender bias in such widely different arenas as public policy and industrial design. For example, cockpits are designed with size specifications that comfortably fit 90% of all male body types, but only 30% of female body types. This blatantly excludes the majority of women from ever being pilots.
• Psychoanalytic Feminism is based on the idea that anatomy is destiny. Inevitably, male domination is condoned because women are seen as caregivers; men as leaders. These differences between men and women may alter their approaches to certain problem solving. For example, computer science studies have shown that women approach a problem with empathy and a holistic view while men tend to focus on the formulas themselves.
• Essentialist Feminism proclaims sexual equality as well as celebrating the differences, and uniting all women through biology. This theory claims that women are closer to the environment because of their hormones and that this leads them to develop technology that is socially conscious. Because of their biological makeup, men tend to develop technologies to conquer and develop the modern world and to give death and destruction to the natural world.
• Radical Feminism is the most extreme of the feminist viewpoints. The oppression of women is the most fundamental form of oppression, one that cuts across boundaries of race, culture, and economic class; therefore, this movement is intent on social change. Radical feminism questions why roles are based on biology. Radical feminism attempts to differentiate between biologically-determined behavior and culturally-determined behavior in order to free both men and women, as much as possible, from narrow gender roles.
• Post-Modernist Feminism opposes the idea that women can speak in a unified voice and can be universally addressed. The grouping of all women into one big category no longer makes sense because women are not uniform and interchangeable. Any assumptions as to the overall abilities or inabilities of women are fundamentally flawed, because women are all individuals.
• Post-Colonial Feminism is the idea that patriarchy continues to dominate and that culture, science, and technology of the colonizer remain superior. The present explosion of information technology has served as a type of recolonization of developing countries. Alongside this is a fascination with "indigenous science" and an insistence that developing countries restructure their local economies to compete. This exploitation is apparent, for example, in the treatment of garment workers worldwide.
• 21st Century Capitalistic Feminism states that capitalism and economic factors determine the direction of technology and science, naturally favoring the interests of the dominant class. Thus, capitalism and patriarchy are mutually reinforcing the class and gender status quo.
• Socialist Feminism rejects individuality and defines all knowledge as socially constructed emerging from human involvement in production. One problem with this way of thinking is that there is usually a failure to count childbearing as production.
• Cyber Feminism is a 1990's development that fuses information technology with feminism and explores the ways that the Internet provides avenues to liberate (or oppress) women. Some aspects of the Internet such as e-sex, mail order brides, and porn overtly exploit women and serve to package power relations in a new veneer, while sites such as www.awis.org and chillyclimate.orgserve to encourage women in the sciences and offer them otherwise unavailable resources.

  This wide spectrum of feminist theories shows different viewpoints of feminism and science and technology. Understanding these views on feminism may help today's women better understand the options they have ---- and may enable them to develop science and technology that can benefit all facets of society. In her presentation, Rosser succeeded in unifying issues of gender and science with the academic rigor of women's studies. She advocated collaboration between scolars of women's studies and women scientists, with the result of increasing women's equal participation in the science workforce ---- and beyond.