The chapter starts out with feminist reflections on androcentric concepts of innovation and technology and the resulting marginalization of women in innovation processes as well as in innovation 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.

The chapter within the Handbook of Innovation. Perspectives from the Social Sciences can be found here.

Keywords: Feminist technology studies, Feminist innovation research, Feminist design, Feminist intervention in technological development