Feminism is more than (and often not even) an interest in women’s issues. For our robotics research, we use feminist theory as an analytical toolbox, filled with terms and insights to make visible and probe questions of power, representation, and expectations about and between humans and robots in the entangled encounters produced by social robots. Some of these questions are related to gender. Feminist theory gives us a vocabulary to talk about the materiality of robots, but also their positioning in our social encounters, real and imaginary… and how they position us, the users, in those encounters. This keynote will present some of the theoretical insights from feminism and intersectionality that we have found useful & generative; discuss how and where we apply them to our studies of social robots; and reflect on our experiences using these concepts to teach engineering students.
Ericka Johnson's oral presentation was given in her role as an invited keynote speaker.