gender and technology from a sociologist's point of view

I'm back from delicious French food and finally the curse of the failed New Years in Paris has been broken -this year's was great. Except for the news of the catastrophe.


Been reading a book called "Doing it the hard way: Investigations of Gender and Technology", a compilation of sorts of the work of Sally Hacker, a sociologist who studied gender and technology, from AT&T's affirmative action mandate to agribusiness to MIT's classrooms to math as a selection criteria for engineering. Very interesting. A few passages...

Data to counter backlash myths around affirmative action: at AT&T 16,300 men gained formerly women's work, only 9,400 gained formerly men's work during these three years of affirmative action. Parallels Carol Jusenius's (1976) work showing that where decreasing sex segregation in employment occurs, it is primarily due to men performing traditionally women's work and not to women performing traditionally men's work.

"women and minorities functioned as a reserve labor army, particularly useful when a company moves rapidly to capture a new market or to change its technological base"

"With such stress on the rational and technical and on competition for grades rather than on comprehensive understanding, the most creative and sensitive students opt out; those who recognize and accept the game continue (Snyder, 1971).".

Engineers often hold the most conservative beliefs about social and cultural change (Ferguson, 1981).

Explicitly place women in work to be automated because 'women resist displacement less than men'.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the data suggest that women are just as competent as men in mathematics. The 1911 US. Bureau of Education report noted that women were outperforming men for instance. "Women can surmount the barriers to male-dominated professions, in this case, perhaps, by "overcoming math anxiety", as Sheila Tobias titled her excellent work on the subject. But if a primary functon of mathematics courses is limiting the number and kind of applicants to a field, then large numbers of women (and men disadvantaged by race or class) mastering mathematical test taking would simply cause the criteria to shift. So, at the same time as we learn "how-to" -- today's fashin in literature, courses and programs -- we also need to understand how and why the professions selecte the standards of excellence they do. Otherwise, most women will remain at least a step behind".

"women need a larger view of how the world of work is changing so as not to fight merely for a place in things "as they are"".

3/4 of women workers in the US either have no husbands or their husbands earn less than $10,000/year (1980ish).