Computer Chips and Paper Clips Technology and Women's Employment, Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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1. Technological Change and Women Workers in the Office
1. Technological Change and Women Workers in the Office
Pages 1-23
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From page 1... ...
, although this prediction is controversial. Earlier waves of automation in office work also raised fears of unemployment, yet clerical, professional, technical, and managerial employees have increased their share of the labor force in every decade since at least 1940 (Hunt and Hunt, 1985a)
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From page 2... ...
This report generally uses the 1980 census classification of "administrative support workers" as its definition of clerical workers, but notes significant changes that have occurred in the government classifications. The most typical clerical occupations, those that would be regarded as clerical workers in any classification system— secretaries, stenographers, typists, file clerks, bookkeepers, accounting and financial clerks, and general of flee clerks—account for 8.9 million, or more than half of the 16.8 million workers identified as administrative support workers in the 1980 census.
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From page 3... ...
The 13.0 million women clerical workers represented more than three-fourths of all clerical workers and more than one-third of all employed women workers in 1980. In reviewing data and research on employment trends and on the development and implementation of new information technologies in several clerical occupations and sectors, the report seeks to identify both the positive and negative aspects of this wave of technological change and to reduce the uncertainty surrounding estimates of the likely size, incidence, nature, and timing of the effects.
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From page 4... ...
32,797 68.9 22,588 Communications equipment operators 308,690 89.5 276,148 Telephone operators 292,165 91.0 265,938 Telegraphers 7,604 35.7 2,711 Communications equipment operators, n.e.c.
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From page 5... ...
37,802 74.9 28,308 Adjusters and investigators 515,666 62.3 321,234 Insurance adjusters, examiners, investigators 163,586 60.2 98,407 Noninsurance investigators and examiners 243,616 62.4 151,951 Eligibility clerks, social welfare 24,128 81.8 19,744 Bill and account collectors 84,336 60.6 51,132 Miscellaneous administrative support occupations 3,296,780 83.2 2,741,523 General office clerks 1,648,934 82.1 1,353,251 Bank tellers 494,851 91.2 451,465 Proofreaders 27,321 79.1 21,610 Data-ent~keyers 378,094 92.4 349,477 Statistical clerks 139,174 75.0 104,345 Teachers' aides 206,695 92.7 191,564 Administrative support, n.e.c. 401,711 67.2 269,811 NOTE: n.e.c., not elsewhere classified.
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From page 6... ...
This relatively recent approach has become the dominant mechanism of technological change, although discontinuous invention by imaginative individuals has by no means disappeared: for example, that quintessential twentieth-century invention, the Xerox photocopy method, was developed in 1938 by a creative patent attorney working independently with an unemployed physicist; they could not sell their idea to any large office machine supplier (Washington Post, August 21, 1985:B1-B21. Built on a scientific base in addition to inventors' efforts, applications have become more flexible; contemporary technological change both provides more choice and generates continuing change.
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From page 7... ...
This report confines its attention to technological change that occurs in the workplace and has an impact on paid employment, particularly on women workers in clerical jobs. Other non-workplace-based technological changesfor example, birth control and household technologies have had enormous effects on women's paid employment in this century, but they are not examined here.
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From page 8... ...
Other observers point out hidden costs (such as software development, software maintenance, system maintenance) and remaining technical difficulties (such as establishing local area networks that link personal computers to each other and to a mainframe)
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From page 9... ...
is expanding rapidly, some businesses are currently having trouble connecting personal computers and mainframes within their individual organizations; substantial programming is usually involved, which slows the process. This problem could be at least partially solved by standardization, which is not now occurring.
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Optical fiber cables transmit information in digital form, which is more flexible than analog form, since voice, video, or data can be transmitted in digital form. Telephone switching has undergone enormous technical change.
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Again, an innovation that might be expected to save labor and lead to reductions in employment might actually increase employment. And, as word processors give way to personal computers and workstations, more far-reaching effects may occur: the lines between secretarial and professional/managerial work may blur as secretaries increase their access and ability to manipulate information, allowing them to generate analytic reports; the location of work may become more flexible with stand-alone equipment and telephone access to centralized data bases; and a reduced need for paper record-keeping may alter work organization dramatically.
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From page 12... ...
The context in which new technology is introduced influences its effects on productivity, the quantity of employment, job quality, and the work environment. One consequence of the twentieth-century pattern of science-based technological change has been an increase in choices about alternative paths and applications by decision makers, although the degree of choice is not always apparent.
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From page 13... ...
Although the rate of growth has slowed in some occupations and a few have nearly disappeared, service sector employment has grown overall because demand for its products and services has burgeoned. New microprocessing and telecommunication technology have both reduced costs of old services and permitted the introduction of new products and services in banking, insurance, and other industries (Appelbaum, 1984~; the innovations have thus contributed to increases in demand.
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Output Measures Most measures of technological change are economywide and indirect. The most commonly used indicator of technological change is the increase in output per hour of labor input, or labor productivity.
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In 1900 nearly 12 million workers, or40 percent of the labor force, were employed in agriculture; today, agricultural employment is just over 3 million, or 3 percent of the labor force. In automobile manufacturing, rapid technological change led to substantial reduction of automobile prices and to increased demand and greater employment in the early to mid-twentieth century.
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From page 16... ...
Between 1969 and 1982, unemployment at the troughs increased by 4.8 percentage points, and unemployment at the peaks increased by 3.8 percentage points. One explanation for this long-term increase in unemployment is the rapid growth in the labor force, especially among youth and women; unemployment from this source could be viewed as frictional, associated with the normal difficulties new entrants have in finding work.
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From page 17... ...
Today, concern about changes in employment quality is voiced along with concern about quantity. At a 1982 international conference on office work and the new technology, organized by the Working Women Education Fund, speaker after speaker warned of the dangers to job quality posed by the new office technologies (Marschall and Gregory, 19831.
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From page 18... ...
The increase in women workers accounted for 60 percent of the growth in the labor force in the past decade and is expected to account for 70 percent of the growth in the next decade. The range of occupations in which women worked also grew, as occupations held by both men and women grew faster in the last decade than the traditionally female occupations, and women entered many predominantly male occupations formerly closed to them.
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, and these family responsibilities, which are especially burdensome for minority women, may constrain their educational and labor market opportunities. Hispanic women tend to have larger families, and black women are more likely than white women to be single parents with the total responsibility for raising children and financially supporting them.
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From page 20... ...
Job segregation by sex decreased in the past decade both because female dominated occupations grew less rapidly than in the past and because a substantial number of occupations became more integrated, particularly in the professions and management. The clerical occupations, however, for the most part became more female dominated (Reskin and Hartmann, 19861.
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From page 21... ...
The proportion of women working as clerical workers also increased substantially. Clerical occupations remain the mainstay of women's employment, and it is these occupations that are currently undergoing substantial technological and organizational changes integral to broader structural changes in the service sector.
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From page 22... ...
These stratification patterns may signal potentially negative effects of technological change for women in general; in addition, minority women experience ethnic and racial prejudice as well as sex-based discrimination, which constrains their opportunities further (Malveaux, 1982~. For example, minority women may be placed in back-off~ce jobs in which access to promotion and training opportunities is limited.
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From page 23... ...
But changing technology and reorganization can also be an opportunity for opening up new occupations and increasing mobility for women if the changing characteristics of women workers, in particular their increasing attachment to the labor force, are taken into account. Conclusion The panel expects that differential effects of the new technologies with respect to sex are likely.
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