Bridging Ethics and Institutions: Embedding Care in Gender-Focused Technology and STEM Reform

This paper argues that ethical technology design cannot be meaningfully addressed without transforming the institutional gender regimes that shape the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) ecosystem. Drawing on care ethics and institutional gender theory, it develops an integrated framework for examining both the normative assumptions embedded in technology and the organizational conditions under which it is produced. Through a narrative review of gender-focused technology design and a cross-case synthesis of empirical studies on care ethics in practice, the paper shows how gender stereotypes, role congruity expectations, and ideal-worker norms constrain participation, leadership, and the ethical content of design itself. It critiques dominant ethical paradigms, particularly utilitarian and deontological approaches, for marginalizing the embodied, relational, and contextual dimensions of excluded groups' lived experience. In response, the paper advances care ethics as a generative framework that must be institutionally embedded if it is to challenge technocratic neutrality and support more inclusive design and policy practices. Rather than presenting care ethics as a self-contained solution, the paper positions it as a critical lens for rethinking both technological design and institutional reform, thereby contributing to more just, accountable, and socially responsive technological futures.