The Gendering of Technology Education: minority Ethnic Students’ Experiences of a Women-Dominated Vocational Dental Technology Programme

ABSTRACT The gendering of technology-related work and education has spurred a lively debate. While the majority of research assumes that women and minority ethnic groups are under-represented in technology, there is a lack of research on their typical paths and positions in vocational technology education. This intersectional study examines students’ experiences of dental technology, which is a women-dominated study programme in which minority ethnic groups are also well represented. The article identifies a key discourse that the interviewees use in distinguishing dental technology from men-dominated technology education: describing it as detailed work done with one’s hands. The study strengthens existing research on the gendering of technology by providing the first vocational school-based example of how the feminine qualities associated with certain technologies can create a space for feminine identities in technology while simultaneously limiting the technological study programmes considered by women. The study further complements existing research through its intersectional approach, by showing that although feminine images associated with some technology education programmes can attract many women to study these subjects, minority ethnic students might be later excluded from working in related vocations.

However, the majority of this research incorporates an underlying assumption that women and minority ethnic groups are under-represented in the field of technology, and many focus on the specificities that women face in education programmes and workplaces dominated by men (see however some studies on gender-balanced technology education programmes, including chemical and industrial engineering (Ottemo, 2015;Blosser, 2017;Kelley & Bryan, 2018), digital humanities (Griffin, 2019) and ICTs in certain contexts (Lagesen, 2008;Mellström, 2009;Gupta, 2015). Further, the majority of the research on gender and technology education focuses on higher education or on women's "leaky pipelines" (Blickenstaff, 2005) into and within established professions that require higher education. This focus has left vocational education-where many minority ethnic groups are well represented-relatively unexplored. In consequence, there is a lack of research on the typical paths and positions of women and minority ethnic groups in vocational technology education and of studies that examine how gendering happens in a women-dominated technology education programme. This study strengthens existing research on the gendering of technology through its intersectional approach and by providing the first vocational school-based example of a womendominated technology study programme. Understanding women's and minority ethnic groups' experiences in women-dominated vocational technology education nuances our understanding of the relationship of gender and technology and provides us new answers to the question of why women are under-represented in some but not all areas of technology-related work, and to which women feminine technology-related work is available to. The gendering of various educational programmes is one of the mechanisms that (re)produces educational and occupational gender segregation, which makes the research topic particularly meaningful and highlights the importance of Nordic research. The Nordic countries are in the centre of a heated international debate on what causes gender segregation in the economically developed and rather gender equal countries (Barone, 2011;Breda, Jouini, Napp, & Thebault, 2020;Charles & Bradley, 2009;Stoet & Geary, 2018). Intersectional and context-specific studies on local reasons for gender segregation in the Nordic countries can contribute to this debate, too. Also, the findings of American and British studies cannot always be generalized to the Nordic countries, which highlights the importance of Nordic research for the purposes of policy making.
This study examines students' experiences of vocational dental technology study programme taught in Helsinki, Finland's capital city. The programme is one of the few women-dominated technology study programmes: in Finland, 75% of dental technology students are women (Education Statistics Finland, 2021). Dental technology studies lead to a vocational qualification as a dental laboratory technician, whose job is to produce dental prosthetics and orthodontic corrective devices. The vocation is not prestigious in terms of pay: a dental laboratory technician's minimum monthly salary is 1726 euros, compared with Finland's median monthly salary of 3140 euros in 2019. Minority ethnic students are well represented in dental technology education: during 2017-2021, 69% of students beginning their studies in a primary-school-based dental technology programme spoke a foreign language (other than the national languages Finnish, Swedish and Sámi) as their first language. This is likely to indicate that the students in question had migrated to Finland at some point of their lives, because the number of second-generation adult migrants is relatively low in Finland. In 2020, migrants and their children made up 9% of the Finnish population; of these, 83% were born abroad (Statistics Finland, 2021). Thus, my study focuses mainly on students who are fairly typical (not under-represented) in their study context but represent minorities in the Finnish society.
Dental technology education provides a fruitful setting to examine women-dominated technology education. The research questions of the study are thus: How do the students of a womendominated technology education programme, dental technology, (re)produce discourses that construct their subject as feminine and/or masculine? What implications does this have for the gendering of technology education? The empirical material includes observations of dental technology classes, and interviews with students, most of whom had migrated to Finland. Eight of the interviewed students identified as women and three as men. The analysis draws on critical discourse studies, which focuses on the role that discourse can play in (re)producing or changing unequal power relations, such as social domination, marginalization and exclusion of some people by others (Fairclough, 2016, p. 88). Also, the study takes an intersectional approach (Collins & Bilge, 2016) in considering how gendered discourses on technology have affected the educational options that students have considered and examine how students perceive their prospects for finding work in the industry.

The relationship between technologies and masculinities
Many influential researchers argue that there is a strong relationship between technology and masculinity, and they demonstrate this by exploring the various ways in which both men and women connect technologies to different forms of masculinities (Cockburn, 1985;Faulkner, 2000;Mellström, 2002;Vehviläinen, 2005;Wajcman, 2010). For Faulkner (2000Faulkner ( , 2001 identifies many gendered dualisms regarding technology and engineering, such as technical/social, mind/body, hard/soft and large/small. All of these dualisms play a role in constructing work with technology as masculine by connecting the first part of the pair to masculinity and the second to femininity. As an example of the technical/social dualism, technology professionals are stereotypically perceived to be focused on machines and technology rather than on people and social interactions, even though this might not be true in practice (Faulkner, 2000). Although the relationship between technologies and masculinities is well-researched, it is typical that this is denied in common discussions by, for instance, stating that an interest in technology is not gendered but depends solely on the personality of the individual (Vehviläinen, 2005, p. 150).
It is important to remember that masculinity is not something that only men do. In this article, gender is understood as produced through identificatory and performative practices that are both discursive and embodied (Butler, 1990(Butler, , 1993. This means that people with various (feminine, masculine, androgynous) gender identities and various types of bodies can perform tasks that are usually associated with masculinity. However, gender still matters because, depending on one's gender identity and embodied appearance, one faces different challenges in constructing one's gendered and professional identities in technology (Alfrey & Winddance Twine, 2017;Cech, 2015;Faulkner, 2001;Silfver, Gonsalves, Danilesson, & Berge, 2021). For instance, since most culturally valued characteristics in engineering are associated with masculinity, women are often not perceived to be as competent as men, and they might have more difficulties in feeling they belong in engineering (Cech, 2015). Also, the male-dominated workplace culture hinders women's career development in various ways (Wentling, 2009). However, some women may benefit from the value placed on masculinity: a study on women programmers in the San Francisco tech industry showed that women who had a gender-fluid appearance were perceived to be more competent by their colleagues and reported a greater sense of belonging in comparison with conventionally feminine women (Alfrey & Winddance Twine, 2017).

A relationship between technologies and femininities?
There are some tasks and occupations in the field of technology that are typically associated with femininity and conducted by women. Although these tasks and occupations have received less scholarly attention, some researchers have explored them. First, researchers have studied lessvalued technological production tasks that are connected to women and femininity. For instance, Cockburn (1985, pp. 142-166) showed that women in technology are typically employed to do detailed, routine work with their hands, whether building machine parts or producing other products with machines. Qualities that are often perceived as feminine and associated with production work include patience and the ability to do detailed work. Also, some researchers (Crump et al., 2007) have shown that when women work in ICT, they often work in "softer" side of ICT, such as in business positions in which they interpret and translate between the ICT developers and the client.
Second, some researchers (Gupta, 2015;Lagesen, 2008;Mellström, 2009) argue that the relationship between technologies and masculinities is not as static as has often been presented in Western research. They back up this claim by showing that computer engineering is not as strongly gendercoded in all countries as it is in Australia, Europe and the United States. For example, according to a study on computer science students in a Malaysian university (Lagesen, 2008), women students perceive software programming as feminine and fitting for women because they associate it with office work. More interestingly, they also see programming as theoretical, and they associate theoretical work with femininity-in contrast to physical activities such as working with electronics and mechanical objects, which they perceive as masculine (Lagesen, 2008). These studies on software programmers in gender-balanced environments provide interesting new insights regarding how different technological professions are feminized or masculinized, and how gendered dichotomies can vary. However, I argue that such findings should be compared not only with other studies on programmers but also with other studies on women-dominated technology environments.
Third, there are some studies that examine the gendering of women-dominated or genderbalanced technology education such as biomedical science (Orupabo, 2018), chemical engineering (Blosser, 2017;Ottemo, 2015), digital humanities (Griffin, 2019) and industrial engineering (Blosser, 2017), showing that many of these subjects are at least partly perceived as feminine. For instance, according to an American study (Blosser, 2017), faculty members largely perceive genderbalanced education programmes in industrial and biological engineering as feminine and describe them in terms of feminine qualities, such as the social nature of the work. Here we can find similarities with the study on Malaysian computer science students: in both cases, a genderbalanced subject is seen as suitable for women and is described with feminine characteristics.
Interestingly, Blosser (2017) also found that one gender-balanced engineering major-chemical engineering-was positioned as masculine by descriptions of it as difficult and challenging. Some of the faculty members in Blosser's study explained women's relatively strong presence on the programme by noting that women and men were equally exposed to chemistry in primary school, and that the image of the ideal engineering student was less gender-stereotypical in chemical engineering than in mechanical or civil engineering. Another study (Ottemo, 2015) found that before their studies, many chemical engineering students in Sweden associated chemical engineering with chemistry and laboratory work-areas in which women are seen as highly competent. However, during their studies, the women students discovered that the programme was more about technology than they had originally thought. Nonetheless, this did not result in their quitting the programme. Instead, both women and men students adopted a somewhat instrumental attitude towards their studies, and this instrumentality made it easier for different kinds of students, including both men and women, to identify with the subject (Ottemo, 2015).

Intersectional studies on the gendering of technology education
Intersectionality refers to the understanding that social divisions based on categorizations such as gender, ethnicity, race and class mutually construct social inequalities (Collins & Bilge, 2016, pp. 1-13). The aim of intersectional analysis is to reveal how our social positionings impact on how we see and experience the world, often in order to emphasize the experiences of marginalized groups (Collins & Bilge, 2016, pp. 2-5) but also to analyse privileges and social stratification as a whole (Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 8). While there are various intersections to explore, gender and race/ethnicity are mostly in the centre of the analysis, to respect the roots of intersectional theorizing in the experiences of black women in the US (Collins, 2000;Crenshaw, 1991). The importance of this has been highlighted also in recent writings of Nordic scholars (Lykke, 2020).
A growing number of studies incorporate intersectional analyses of gender and ethnicity/race in technology education (Blosser, 2020;Cain & Trauth, 2022;Frederick et al., 2020;Ireland et al., 2018;Ong et al. 2011;Orupabo, 2018). For instance, Blosser (2020) discusses the experiences of black women in engineering on a primarily white campus in the United States, showing that many of the black women felt isolated, as they were often the only black women in their classes. In the same study, black women in the more gender-balanced environment of chemical engineering reported similar experiences of isolation, indicating that gender balance alone did not improve their conditions for study. Black women also suffered from hypervisibility and negative stereotypes, and experienced microaggressions (Blosser, 2020). A study on black men majoring in IT in the United States (Cain & Trauth, 2022) showed that black men felt isolated in white campuses and internship places as well, the difference to black women being that they discussed their race, age, and family but not their gender as they described their experiences and paths to IT education. Frederick et al. (2020) adopted an intersectional approach to analyse the experiences of women of colour, this time in a Hispanic-serving university located on the US/Mexico border. Most of the STEM student interviewees said they had not experienced any kind of alienation due to their race or ethnicity. The authors suggest that this Hispanic-majority community shielded students from racial discrimination at this point in their lives, but that they might experience such discrimination later when they entered predominantly white universities, graduate schools and workplaces (Frederick et al., 2020). The study reminds us that under-representation is a context-specific issue.
A Norwegian study (Orupabo, 2018) of biomedical science students found out that women students positioned themselves as technically competent and truly interested in their subject, doing so partly by distancing themselves from minority ethnic men, who were not seen as ideal workers in the field. Markers of Norwegianness-such as ethnicity, language fluency, and some moral boundaries, including attitudes to gender equality-excluded minority ethnic men from biomedical science. This exclusion was evident, for instance, in internship placements: the majority of the women students had jobs in hospitals, but minority ethnic men did not get such relevant jobs (Orupabo, 2018). The study provides an excellent example of how intersectional analysis can nuance our understanding regarding which women and which men are disadvantaged in different technological subjects, and how this happens. Next, I will move on to discuss my own study, which examines students' experiences in dental technology, which is a women-dominated vocational technology education in which minority ethnic groups are also well represented in Finland.

Methodology
This article draws on observations and interviews I conducted in a vocational upper secondary school in Helsinki in 2017. First, I observed how one class of students studied dental technology (10 hours). Observations provided me with a basic understanding of what was going on during the classes, and familiarized me with the students and vice versa. During the observation period, I invited the whole class, altogether 12 students, to participate in interviews. Participation was voluntary; all but one student participated once, and eight students participated twice. The study was conducted according to the ethical guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK, 2017), which require informed consent, confidentiality and integrity. The interview participants received an information paper, which defined the topic of research, explained how empirical material would be used, explained that participation was voluntary, and provided my contact details. I discussed the information paper through with the students in the beginning of the interviews.
After the first interviews, participants completed a survey that captured basic demographic data, including their age, gender (with an empty space to fill in their own gender identification), earlier education, parent's occupations, duration of residence in Finland, previous home country, and the languages that they can speak. To ensure confidentiality, I refer to the interviewees by pseudonyms, link some students with broad geographical areas rather than with specific previous home countries, and do not report all the demographic data that I gathered. At the time of the interviews, most of the dental technology students were under 26 years old; eight of them identified as women and three as men; nine out of the 11 had migrated to Finland (Table 1). According to my further analysis of the demographics, those who had migrated to Finland had done so between three and nine years prior to the interviews, six of them as teenagers. In the context of this study, the concept of ethnicity is connected to the categorization of people as migrants or native Finns. Many students referred to themselves or other students as migrants or native Finns, constructing these categorizations on the basis of national identity, appearance and language use. These are typical markers of social categorization, although they should not be automatically equated with subjective identifications (Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 14). When I quote my own words as interviewer, I use my first name, Inkeri. I was born in Finland, can be considered white, and mostly identify as a woman.
The interviews followed a semi-structured interview guide including open-ended questions on the following topics: students' experiences while choosing their study programme; their plans regarding future jobs and workplaces; their views on (in)equalities in the school and during internships. The first interviews focused more on student's experiences while choosing the study programme and the second interviews on their plans regarding future jobs and workplaces. Also, the second interviews deepened and clarified all the topics discussed in the first interviews. Students could choose whether they preferred to participate in a group interview or to be interviewed individually. For instance, some first participated in a group interview and then deepened their views in an individual interview. Altogether, I organized four group interviews, which lasted 30-80 minutes, and five individual interviews, which lasted 20-60 minutes. The individual interviews were audio recorded, and the group interviews were video recorded to make sure that the speakers could be distinguished in transcribes. All the interviews were manually transcribed for data analysis. The interviews were conducted in Finnish. For this article, I translated all the interview extracts into standard English, trying to sustain the original tone as much as possible but not seeking to reproduce the interviewees' usage of Finnish.
In this article, I focus on analysing discourses that I considered relevant in answering the following research questions: How do the students of a women-dominated technology education programme, dental technology, (re)produce discourses that construct their subject as feminine and/or masculine? What implications does this have for the gendering of technology education? Drawing on Wodak and Fairclough (1997, p. 258), I see discourse as a form of social practice: discourse not only reflects but also constitutes situations, objects of knowledge, social identities and relationships between people. Also, as emphasized in critical discourse studies, I see that discourses can play a role in (re)producing or changing unequal power relations. Drawing on Fairclough (2016, p. 88), I examine the relations between discourse and "other elements of the social", such as exclusion, marginalization or well-being. Here, I also draw on intersectionality (Collins & Bilge, 2016), which sees inequalities as mutually constructed by various social categorizations.My method of conducting critical discourse analysis is based on four steps introduced by Vaara and Tienari (2004), Step 1) Defining/Refining the research question: During the circular process of four steps of analysis, I chose to focus on gendered discourses on technology and defined my research questions to reflect this focus.
Step 2) Overall analysis of the transcripts: I used NVivo software to code data extracts to describe their content, and categorized codes into broad themes. A theme of gendered images of technologies grew gradually during the analysis. It contains pieces of transcripts that show how students construct dental technology as both feminine and masculine. At first, I did not see how this theme and the discourse of dental technology as work with one's hands are connected. However, close reading revealed the connection.
Step 3) Close reading of specific parts of transcripts: I carefully read, reread, and listened or watched again the conversations that I focus on in my analysis. I paid attention to what was said and whether I had missed some points or nuances in my earlier analysis, who was speaking (I created a separate document containing demographic data of the interviewees to keep track on who was who), how things were said, and to which discursive practices and ideologies the discourses could be connected with. This helped me in identifying the discourses students used in gendering technologies as either masculine or feminine. For instance, I realized that when students described dental technology as work that is done with one's hands, they also emphasized that it was detailed work, which can be seen as a practice that highlights its feminine characteristics.
Step 4) Theoretical reflections: I analysed what key discourses imply on power, and what is their relation to exclusion practices, namely educational and occupational gender segregation, and the exclusion of migrants from certain parts of the Finnish labour market.

Discourse of dental technology as detailed work with one's hands
At the beginning of the interviews, I asked the students why they had decided to study dental technology. Many students' first reaction was to reply that they had chosen dental technology because they were interested in doing work with their hands. For instance, Layla said a previous positive experience with handicrafts had inspired her to study dental technology: Layla: It was many years ago when . . . Don't laugh! [Layla addresses her co-students, sounds of laughing together.] This is a long story. I've always been interested in handicrafts. I don't remember the name of them in Finnish, but we produced these animals made of wood [in another country] where I went to primary school. When I came to Finland, I thought about what to study, and came to the conclusion that I am interested in working with teeth.
Layla's story does not specify why the pleasant memory of producing wooden animals in primary school inspired her to study dental technology and not carpentry, for instance. Further discussions clarified that for dental technology students, an interest in working with one's hands meant doing detailed work to produce small artefacts. As an example, Katre explained she was interested in dental technology because she liked "working with her hands and producing small products". Also, Suvi and Heidi emphasized detailedness as an important criterion for work that interested them, and listed a variety of vocations involving detailed work with one's hands: There are so many options if you want to do something small and detailed with your hands. There's a make-up artist, jeweller, laboratory technician and so forth.
Suvi: A micro-mechanic would have been one.
It is notable that the focus on small artefacts excludes men-dominated manual technological vocations such as mechanical engineering. Nor did the women students discuss electricians' jobs or ICT assembly tasks as options, although, in vocational education, these subjects involve detailed work with one's hands, too. However, interviews did not touch the issue. Besides dental technology, women students had considered only few technological subjects, such as the micro-mechanic mentioned in the above discussion. Some of the men students had considered men-dominated technological vocations. During the second round of interviews, I specifically asked whether students had considered the mechanical engineering study programme, which is another vocational technological study programme often associated with manual work, and one of the largest programmes in vocational education. None had even considered it. Some of the women students, such as Hodan, said they had never even heard of the programme. Others referred to masculine qualities of mechanical engineering. For instance, Nahla argued that she was "not interested in that kinds of metal things", and Heidi and Eliise explained that they had not considered mechanical engineering because it "sounds much heavier" than dental technology. The only person providing an explanation that did not build on unfamiliarity or stereotypical images of mechanical engineering was a man, Burhaan, who explained that some health-related issues prevented him studying the subject.
To summarize, the discourse of dental technology as detailed work with one's hands was reproduced in almost all the interviews and, according to the students, these feminine characteristics were an important motivation for them to choose the study programme. The discourse emphasizes feminine qualities of dental technology and thus describes dental technology as a "feminine pouch" among technological subjects. When reproduced by women, the discursive practice of emphasizing feminine qualities of the vocation allows women to present themselves as feminine and "normal" women, who have made a vocational choice that is appropriate according to a gender-essentialist ideology-an ideology that views men and women as innately and fundamentally different in interests and skills, and is sees as one of the mechanisms that reproduces occupational gender segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009). However, the emphasis of feminine qualities of dental technology has, in this case, motivated women to study a technological subject.

Discourse of masculine metalwork-surprising qualities of dental technology
During their studies, many women dental technology students had discovered that the tasks they learned at school did not always match their notion of detailed work with small artefacts. One of the things that had surprised them was the large size of some of the machines and tools they used: Olga: For example, before [I came here], I didn't know what dental laboratory technicians do. When I saw for the first time the big [tools and machines], I thought this can't be true. I had always thought that dental laboratory technicians use small instruments like on YouTube.
In addition to large machines, women students had been surprised of the dirtiness of many work tasks, and the metalwork included in the programme. In the beginning of their studies, they had found metalwork as very demanding: Layla: Metalwork was kind of difficult.
Hodan: But now it is very easy.
Inkeri: Okay. Layla: When we had an internship, we did lots and lots [of metalwork], and so it now feels easy.
Olga: Dentures with a metal frame are difficult to produce because the ovens in the laboratories are big and the temperature is very high. I saw these kinds of different machines for the first time [here]. Metal needs to melt, and it goes in [the oven]. It takes time too. Those were surprises.
Hodan: That's true. And when the metal melts, it's so hot, it's very, it happens . . . You can't look at it because it's so hot.
Olga: And to drill this metal is very . . . Metal can spatter out, and you might get an allergy.
The images of dental technology as dirty work with hard materials and large machines construct dental technology as masculine rather than feminine. It is interesting that the women students had not come across the masculine discourses of dental technology when they had made a choice to study the subject. It seems students had chosen dental technology without much prior knowledge on it, based on rather feminine and somewhat inaccurate images of the subject and vocation. Despite this, the women students had gained confidence in using the large ovens and doing metalwork during their studies. They seemed comfortable and proud of their profession even when they discussed their surprises. Men students did not express any surprise about the masculine characteristics of the work.

Discourse of dental technology as care work
One gendered discourse that is often connected to health-related work is a discourse of care work. Dental laboratory technicians rarely meet people to whom they produce prosthetics and orthodontic corrective devices, and the work thus differs from traditional care work with people. Despite this, some dental technology students (Hodan and Burhaan) expressed that one of their motivations to study dental technology was to help people. However, this discourse of helping people was not reproduced in most conversations. Women students were thus not drawing on the discourse that claims women want to help people and do care work-a discourse that is often used to justify occupational segregation.
Many students had considered the practical nursing programme, the largest women-dominated vocational programme that is often associated with helping people through traditional care work, as their second option. This should not be interpreted as an emphasized interest towards care work though. Some had only considered practical nursing as their least favoured and a last resort (Nahla), some had tried it out but preferred dental technology (Layla, Said), and some explained why the nursing programme did not interest them (Olga). Also, many students said they had worked hard to find a subject that interests them. For example, Eliise and Suvi explained that they had searched for something that interests them from the list of various study programmes and that way found the dental technology programme. It can thus be concluded that many of the women interviewees portrayed themselves as active decision makers who were working hard to realize their dreams instead of choosing the most typical programme for women in vocational education.

Experiences of exclusion: worries about finding work
Many students were worried about their prospects for finding work in dental laboratories. Some had had difficulties already in finding meaningful internship places, although internships are a compulsory part of vocational study programmes. Olga and Ahmad said they got to do nothing else than cleaning work during some of their internships, as Ahmad describes: Ahmad: I had been there twice [doing two internships in the same laboratory] but I just had to sit there or do cleaning work. But she [the teacher] told me I have to go there again because my language skills are not good enough to go somewhere else.
According to the students, language skills were cited as the reason why no appropriate work was available for them. However, some students, such as Said, suspected that many laboratories simply preferred native Finns: Said: I am now experienced, I am skilled, I am hard-working. I wonder why [I am not getting internship places]. Another student [who began her internship at school] got a place quickly, and I was wondering why, but she was a Finnish girl. [. . .] Maybe her Finnish was fluent and . . . She was completely a Finn, that's why.
The survival strategies of minority ethnic students reflected this racism: the students focused not only on improving their proficiency in Finnish, but were also planning to work abroad, or to look for work in sectors that normally hire migrants in Finland. For instance, Said had a rather detailed plan regarding how he would look for work abroad, while Ahmad was planning to work in another sector. A third man on the programme, Burhaan, explained that migrants have to educate themselves in several professions to improve their chances of finding work in Finland.
Among the interviewees, minority ethnic men had experienced even more difficulties in finding meaningful internship places than migrant women. This indicates that the ideal worker in the industry is not a migrant minority ethnic man. However, although minority ethnic women had somewhat more positive experiences during their internships, many of them were also very worried about their prospects for finding work after graduation. Unlike Said and Ahmad, they had not given up their hope of finding work in Finnish dental laboratories, though. Some believed that further studies in dental technology would help them to move forwards. For instance, Hodan and Layla were planning to continue their studies in dental technology at bachelor level if they could not find work after graduation.
One of the students was positive regarding her future in the industry after graduation. Suvi, a native Finn, argued that laboratories in the capital city area did hire many new dental laboratory technicians, albeit mainly through their networks: Suvi: I think reputation matters a lot in this field. If somebody knows you are a good employee, you get the job. Suvi's description of the importance of becoming known in the industry further emphasizes the importance of internship experiences and suggests how such networks contribute to exclusion experienced by migrant students.

Discussion
While technology-related work and education are mostly associated with men and masculinities (Cockburn, 1985;Faulkner, 2000;Mellström, 2002;Vehviläinen, 2005;Wajcman, 2010), in some contexts technological subjects can be perceived as feminine and associated with women or both women and men (Blosser, 2017;Lagesen, 2008;Mellström, 2009;Orupabo, 2018;Ottemo, 2015). This article provides one such example, which is also the first one that considers vocational education. When discussing their motivations to choose to study dental technology, the interviewees defined dental technology as detailed work with one's hands. Detailed production work (Cockburn, 1985) and work with smaller technologies (Faulkner, 2001) are often connected to femininity and women, in contrast to other technological work. Thus, the reproduction of the discourse that emphasizes detailedness of producing small artefacts can be seen as a practice that highlights feminine characteristics of dental technology. Here we can find similarities with, for instance, a Malaysian study (Lagesen, 2008) in which students perceived computer sciences as rather feminine through associating it with certain feminine qualities, such as working inside in the office. This research shows that similar mechanisms can attract women to study technology in vocational education, too.
This emphasis on the feminine characteristics of a women-dominated vocation partly reproduces gender-essentialist ideology by indicating that only certain technological work is suitable for (feminine) women. Although the demand to reproduce a gender-essentialist ideology is one of the mechanisms reproducing gender segregation (Charles & Bradley, 2009;England, 2010), in this case, the emphasis of feminine characteristics creates a space for women in technology, and that is where its transformative power lies. Feminine discourses on technology could inspire women not only to study dental technology but also to consider a wider range of technological subjects if they found out about the similarities between various technology programmes. I argue that it is thus important to discuss the women-dominated vocations as technological and/or technical vocations, and to describe them both with masculine and feminine characteristics that accurately describe them. There is a possibility to mitigate gender segregation even within the gender-essentialist discourses, although this is not completely unproblematic as it might lead to new forms of gender segregation.
Many of the women interviewees expressed that their perceptions of dental technology had changed during their studies; they had been surprised to learn that their subject did not fully match their expectations of feminine work but also included work with big tools, machines, and hard materials such as metals. A Swedish study (Ottemo, 2015) found out similar changes in the perceptions of chemical engineering students and argues that the relative gender balance in chemical engineering may partly result from the misconceptions students have about the programme before they start it. Despite the misconceptions, the chemical engineering students in Ottemo's study did not quit the programme when they discovered its more technical nature. Similarly, the women dental technology students did not quit when they learned about the tasks that could be defined as masculine. It seems that familiarity can reduce the power of masculine images that certain technological tasks are associated with. Also, I argue that it is not technical or technological tasks per se that discourage women from studying technological subjects; in a women-dominated environment, where women can identify with the vocation, even technical tasks they consider masculine do not discourage them.
Previous studies on minority ethnic groups in technology have found out that both minority ethnic women (Blosser, 2020) and men (Cain & Trauth, 2022) can feel isolated and suffer hypervisibility in technology education. Other studies have noted that this is, however, a contextspecific issue; isolation might not happen in an educational environment where minority ethnic groups form a majority in the specific study context (Frederick et al., 2020). In line with this, the dental technology students did not express that they would have felt isolated in their study context. However, some minority ethnic students had experienced problems in finding meaningful internship places and all of them worried about their prospects for finding work in Finnish dental laboratories. Among the interviewees, migrant men had experienced even more difficulties than migrant women. This was also the case in a Norwegian study on biomedical science students (Orupabo, 2018): markers of Norwegianness, such as ethnicity and language efficiency, excluded minority ethnic men in biomedical science. Similarly, it seems that the Finnish industry defines the ideal dental laboratory technician in a gendered and racialized way, and it is difficult for migrant minority ethnic men to fit into this image. This is emphasized in the capital area, where there is a surplus of dental laboratory technicians because the programme is taught there.
Although minority ethnic men studying dental technology faced even more difficulties in finding internship places than women, I see the situation of minority ethnic women as even more worrisome than that of men in some ways. While there are many fairly prestigious mendominated technological programmes in vocational education, dental technology is one of the few technological vocational programmes that is women-dominated and perceived as feminine. In this way, gendered discourses on technology are linked to exclusion of minority ethnic women from technological vocations; the ethnic minority women interviewees had not considered mendominated technological subjects but might not find work in dental technology either. The article complements existing research on the gendering of technology through its intersectional approach, by showing that although feminine images of dental technology can attract many women to study the subject, minority ethnic students might be later excluded from working in related vocations as the minority ethnic interviewees saw their employment opportunities as very limited. This shows that consequences of gendered discourses may vary between groups; while gendered discourses on technology limit the options that many women consider, it seems that minority ethnic groups studying in vocational education are pushed away from technology-related work altogether. Many researchers (Barone, 2011;Breda et al., 2020;Charles & Bradley, 2009;Stoet & Geary, 2018) debate why gender segregation is strong in economically developed and rather gender equal Nordic countries. Some scholars (Stoet & Geary, 2018) argue that stronger gender segregation in economically developed countries is caused by lower life-quality pressures, which provide students more opportunities to follow their individual interests. Others (Breda et al., 2020;Charles & Bradley, 2009) remind that self-expression is valued as an educational goal particularly in economically developed countries and that this reinforces the gender-essentialist ideology, which in turn reinforces gender segregation. This study supports the latter argument by providing an intersectional study of the local Finnish context. Many dental technology students justified their educational choices with their interests. On the surface, this rhetoric hides the role that gender has played in their choices, but gender-essentialist thinking can be found through analysing their arguments more closely. It thus seems that gender-essentialist thinking together with valuing self-expression as an educational goal contributes to educational gender segregation in Finnish vocational education and limits the options of women in particular. This is further strengthened by some structural forces, such as the labour market pressure that pushes women in Nordic welfare societies to work in care sector (Barone, 2011;Charles & Bradley, 2009). Contrary, the argument claiming that stronger gender segregation in the Nordic countries is caused by better opportunities to follow one's individual interests (Stoet & Geary, 2018) is not supported in the context of this study. Although the students emphasized their interests when explaining their motivations to choose the programme, all minority ethnic students were worried about their prospects for finding work and some expressed that they would not have chosen the subject if they knew about the difficulties of entering the labour market. Minority ethnic students' possibilities to pursue their individual interests were thus significantly hindered due to racism that minority they faced in employment.
There are some limitations related to the research design of this study that should be recognized. First, group interviews probably suppress some voices because it is more difficult to express differing opinions in a group. Second, as all interviews were held in Finnish, particularly group interviews gave some advantage for those students, whose Finnish was more fluent. These problems were mitigated by offering students a possibility to be interviewed individually, too. A third limitation of the research design is that I asked about students' choices and study experiences only at one point of their studies. Further research could examine longitudinally how individuals' perceptions of gendered characteristics of educational programmes develop during their studies. Further research might focus in more detail on students' misconceptions at the start of their studies, to find out whether such misconceptions are typical in women-dominated technology study programmes, and how students cope with them. Also, it would be important to further examine the interests and motivations of migrant and minority ethnic students, to uncover the specificities of their perceptions and misconceptions regarding different technology education programmes and occupations. In addition, further research could examine employment outcomes of minority ethnic students in the Nordic countries.

Conclusion and practical implications
This article examined students' experiences of dental technology education, which is a womendominated study programme in which minority ethnic groups are also well represented. When the students discussed their motivations to choose the programme, many described dental technology as detailed work with one's hands thus reproducing a discourse that defines the subject with feminine qualities and distinguishes it from men-dominated technological subjects. For women students, the usage of this discourse is in line with gender-essentialist ideology that is often argued to strengthen educational and occupational gender segregation. However, in this case the feminine discourse had motivated women to study a technological subject. During their studies women students had learned that dental technology involved tasks that could rather be defined as masculine, such as work with metals and large machines, but this had not discouraged them. This indicates that the gendered images of technology education are more powerful when one is not yet familiar with the subject. Based on this study, it seems that gender-essentialist thinking and gendered discourses on technology exclude many women from most vocational technology education, but feminine images can attract them. However, racism faced by minority ethnic students hindered their opportunities of finding work as dental laboratory technicians.
The article makes three contributions to previous research on the gendering of technology education. First, the study strengthens the existing literature on women-dominated technology education through providing the first vocational school-based example of how the feminine qualities associated with certain technologies can create a space for feminine identities in technology while simultaneously limiting the technological study programmes considered by women. Second, the study adds to literature by providing an example of how women's perceptions of technology education might change during their studies to include more masculine perceptions without this affecting their desire to study the subject. Third, the study complements existing research on the gendering of technology through its intersectional approach, by showing that although feminine images of dental technology can attract many women to study the subject, minority ethnic students might be later excluded from working in related vocations. This contribution is linked to the debate on reasons for gender segregation and highlights the importance of analysing the reasons for gender segregation intersectionally, in local contexts.
There have been many intervention projects that focus on mitigating educational and occupational segregation by aiming to motivate women and minority ethnic groups to study technological subjects. My research has some practical implications for the improvement of these projects. First, it is important to include women-dominated and vocational technological environments in these projects, and to discuss them as technological. This will demonstrate that women and minority ethnic groups are not under-represented in all fields of technology, and it might inspire women in particular to consider a wider range of technological subjects. Second, intervention projects could play with the masculine, feminine and gender-neutral images of different vocations, showing that most vocations include both tasks that are associated with femininity and tasks that are associated with masculinity. Third, this study highlights the need to improve conditions of work and study for minority ethnic groups.