The 113th Annual Meeting of American Sociological Association
Abstract
Prior studies on innovation adoption have underscored that the refusal to adopt popular
innovations becomes less accepted as such innovations spread. In this paper, I reexamine
this prevailing account using the lens of gender. Focusing on the adoption of
bird photography, a technologically advanced method to help save wild birds that
became widespread in early 20th-century America, I examine how gendered
expectations in society shaped the adoption of an innovation. Using a unique database
coded from archival documents of the first American bird protection movement, which
was prominent between 1899 and 1920, I find that the non-adoption of a technological
innovation is rather accepted when the meaning of the innovation is gendered and its
(non)adoption is accountably masculine (or feminine). Stemming from that historical
case, the results of this study have contemporary relevance to understanding the role of
gendered expectations in shaping innovation adoption, particularly in science and
technology
