Gilberto Fernandes

My fourth and final article to come out of my research project Laborem Ex Machina: A History of Construction Machinery and Operating Engineers in Canada was published in the October issue of Technology and Culture. Find it here: “Gendering ‘Intelligent’ Machines:
How Operating Engineers Constructed their Masculinity,” Technology and Culture 66: 4 (2025): 1111-41

Keywords: Advertising; children and youth; literature; unions; war; toys; gender

Abstract: This article examines how construction machines have historically embodied and reinforced white masculine labor identities in North America. Focusing on operating engineers from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, the article shows how these machines were symbolically cast as maternal, monstrous, or boyish, in ways that naturalized male dominance in skilled trades. Drawing on feminist technology studies and cultural analysis, the article demonstrates how human–machine relationships operated as gendered and racialized constructs in literature, propaganda, and labor publications. This article enriches histories of labor and technology by foregrounding how gender and power were co-constructed through machine imagery.