Computer Chips and Paper Clips Technology and Women's Employment, Volume I (1986) / Chapter Skim
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2. Historical Patterns of Technological Change
2. Historical Patterns of Technological Change
Pages 24-61
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From page 24... ...
This chapter uses history as a guide for understanding the complex relationship of technological change and women's employment. The chapter discusses both the historical characteristics of the relationship and the manner in which technological change, both in the more distant and the recent past, has been linked to changing levels of women's employment and to the quality of their work.
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From page 25... ...
The third case looks at two sets of information-processing clerical occupations word processors such as secretaries, and data processors such as accountants, bookkeepers, insurance clerks, and bank tellers over the long period from the introduction of the first mechanized devices in the nineteenth century to the more recent introduction of electronic word and numeric data processing. For purposes of comparison with regard to the strength or weakness of the ability of women workers to shape change affecting them, the fourth example concerns retailing and its clerks, and the fifth, nursing, one of the quintessential women's professions.
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From page 26... ...
Bell had his historic conversation with Watson on March 10,1876. By March 1878, Bell had envisioned a national switched network of business and residential telephones for interpersonal communication, through which one telephone subscriber could talk to any other in the country, even though this vision was technologically infeasible at the time (de Sola Pool, 1977b: 1561.
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From page 27... ...
The employment effects of the telephone have not always proceeded as predicted or, indeed, as intended. The first commercial telephone operators were boys, following the pattern of the older telegraph industry.
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From page 28... ...
. COMPUTER CHIPS AND PAPER CLIPS issal of permanent operators: the company planned the changeover several years in advance and took advantage of the turnover rate (40 percent per year)
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From page 29... ...
and the resulting increased competition with other telephone equipment and service suppliers. Competing companies enjoyed job growth with increased market share.
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From page 30... ...
Nevertheless, male compositors prevailed, partly because most newspaper composing jobs continued to require highly skilled workers; less trained women or boys could substitute for only a small proportion of them (Baron, 1981:321. The linotype and other automatic typesetting machines were rapidly adopted when better models were introduced in the 1880s.
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From page 31... ...
For many years, printing and publishing was an exceptional case: an industry that, despite employer reorganization and the introduction of technology, remained at core the province of male skilled workers; this outcome must be credited at least in part to the International Typographical Union. However, in the post-World War II period, change in the sex ratio of printing workers accelerated: the percentage of females more than doubled from 13.2 to 28 between 1950 and 1960.
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From page 32... ...
Historically, the competition between men and women for jobs in printing went on for the better part of a century, during which time innovation did not displace male compositors. Finally, great labor saving came with new electronic processes, employment growth slowed, and a shift in the sex ratio of workers in favor of women occurred.
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From page 33... ...
Differentiation and specialization occurred in both of the branches of clerical work: handling words and manipulating data. The occupation of secretary provides a closer look at the clerical occupations that deal primarily with words.
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From page 34... ...
These technologies, and the first introduction of electronic word processing, apparently had little effect on the number of secretaries through 1980. Up to that date, the number of persons whose occupation was secretary increased more rapidly than did the labor force as a whole.
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From page 35... ...
It is also possible that the slow adoption of automation is linked to the fact that some of the new office equipment's capabilities challenge fundamental work hierarchies. The "new office," where similar equipment is used by workers at different levels who share access to integrated information systems, suggests some blurring of the customary lines between managers and support staff; a consequence may be slow or incomplete transformation (Salmans, 1982; Iacono and Kling, 1986; also see section below, "Bank Tellers," regarding an urban bank's introduction of dataprocessing equipment to its customer service department with the express intention of contributing to the democratization of the office)
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From page 36... ...
The popularity of word processing no doubt has to do with its relatively low cost, its technical capabilities, and its obvious usefulness as a way to avoid repetitive typing tasks, which constitute a large proportion of office work. Although word processing, like the other automated office functions, has been available on a range of equipment from mainframe computers through minicomputers to stand-alone units, its growth has increased since the advent of the stand-alone.
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From page 37... ...
In addition, the planning/implementation team became a long-term mechanism for considering new applications, the expansion of the original system, and the upgrading of the system in terms of newer hardware. In summary, during the recent period of widespread adoption of electronic word processing the number of secretaries has not decreased.
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From page 38... ...
Whether such a flattening of hierarchies is likely depends on the extent to which established organizational relationships are maintained or transformed. ACCOUNTANTS AND BOOKKEEPERS Mechanical devices have a long history in the data-processing clerical occupations; electronic devices were introduced earlier in these occupations than in word processing.
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From page 39... ...
By the mid-19SOs, however, electronic computers with greatly increased capacity for data storage and rapid calculation were being installed by banks and insurance companies that handled large amounts of numeric data (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1956:42~. The possible adverse employment effect of electronic technology was discussed in the 1960s (Baker, 1964:2201: "Observers seem to agree that the displacement of workers will go farthest in the office, and that since office automation aims principally to replace routine, repetitive jobs, women clerical workers may be the largest affected group." Other contemporary observers differed; they saw a greater effect on employment in manufacturing.
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From page 40... ...
During the early introductions of computers, there were varying patterns of effect on numbers of workers. One large company with 4,500 clerical workers in 1960 eliminated 757 traditional clerical positions and added 154 new keypunchers by 1964; managerial and technical staff increased, but since the new
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From page 41... ...
Inflation, high but unstable interest rates, deregulation accompanied by increasing competition from other parts of the financial industry, and systematic applications of computer and information technologies created both the demand for and the possibility of reorganizing the insurance industry. This reorganizing was done in two ways: by installation of electronic data processing in horizontally integrated systems and by feminization.
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From page 42... ...
The gap between these types of jobs has widened at the same time that the gap between entry-level clerical jobs and skilled ones has become formidable. In the aggregate, skill requirements for clerical workers have increased because computers are doing the most routine tasks.
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However, although small numbers are involved, black women are overrepresented, compared with other administrative support occupations, as insurance adjusters and investigators. Overall these changes in the products and the production process of the insurance industry have brought about changes in employment and occupational patterns.
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From page 44... ...
Some lower-level professional positions have also disappeared again through automation and the redesign of jobs while those remaining often require high-level professional credentials and managerial ability. The question of mobility between occupations in the insurance industry has been acutely posed by the reorganization of the work process and redefinition of jobs that have accompanied the adoption of new equipment (Appelbaum, 19841.
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From page 45... ...
The banking industry has undergone changes under the impetus of forces similar to those that have affected the insurance industry: inflation, high but unstable interest rates, deregulation, and competition from other financial intermediaries. The most striking consequence is the wide range of new products and services offered by banks and the seemingly inexhaustible demand for financial services of all kinds.
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From page 46... ...
The need for back-off~ce clerical workers has been reduced, while demand for highly trained sales personnel has increased. Technically sophisticated sales workers will continue to be increasingly important because of increased competition among financial institutions, continuing introduction of new products and services, and the growth in larger, more sophisticated institutional customers.
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From page 47... ...
There was redesigning of both the physical setting of the department that enhanced the working environment and of jobs that promoted professionalization or skill upgrading of the clerical workers involved. Some clerical workers experienced upward mobility.
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From page 48... ...
Chain and discount stores now handle 89 percent of the department store trade; department stores in general have about 80 percent of the general merchandise market. Concentration in this industry continued to increase even after the period of rapid expansion of the chains: between 1967 and 1977 the top 32 firms increased their market share from 75 to 87.5 percent of all sales, and within this group the top five increased their share from 49.8 percent to more than 60 percent (Bluestone et al., 1981:481.
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From page 49... ...
Interestingly, both the super store and the warehouse store in the grocery trade employ fewer workers per dollar unit of sales than the standard supermarket, and the standard supermarket is losing market share to the newer forms (Burns, 1982~. A recent study of changes in the department store part of the retail market suggests that computer-based technological change has been essential to the growth of multiple-store chains (Bluestone et al., 1981~.
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From page 50... ...
Between 1950 and 1970, the labor force in retail trade grew from 2.5 million to 2.9 million, representing an annual growth rate of less than 1 percent; between 1970 and 1980, the growth rate for the entire decade was just over 1 percent (Bureau of the Census, 1964:Table 201, and 1984b:Table 221~. Overall, employment in retail trade grew more slowly than total employment.
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From page 51... ...
The proportion of department store workers in New England who were under 25 years old increased from 30 percent in 1958 to more than 50 percent by 1970. The percentage of the department store labor force in New England that had at least three years' tenure fell from more than 42 percent in the 1950s to less than 32 percent in the 1970s, while the percentage who had worked less than one year increased from less than 20 percent to more than 30 percent (Bluestone et al., 1981:84~.
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The numbers of both registered nurses and licensed practical nurses
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From page 53... ...
The growth rate in hospital employment is expected to slow and to be accompanied by changes in types of positions and by requirements for more education or experience (Sekscenski, 1984; American Nurses Association, 19854. Although their education and training is shorter and less professionally oriented than that of registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses (LPNs or LVNs)
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From page 54... ...
of the supervisory and administrative positions in nursing (Jacobson, 1983:501. More LPNs and LVNs than registered nurses are ethnic or racial minorities, reflecting less access to higher-level education by minorities, but whites dominate both occupations, constituting more than 90 percent of registered nurses in 1980 and close to 80 percent of LPNs and LVNs in 1983 (American Nurses Association, 1985; National League for Nursing, 19851.
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From page 55... ...
Doctors, for example, persisted in giving direct orders or handwritten notes to clerks, while nurses often continued to write most of their notes by hand (Lievrouw, 19841. In spite of or perhaps partly because of- computerization, administrative work in hospitals and in the health sector in general increased considerably, and with it the number of clerical workers.
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From page 56... ...
to local hospital needs not necessarily envisaged by the designers: participants in the implementation process at individual hospitals are nurses and other health care personnel as well as computer specialists (Light, 1983~. In addition to improvements in hospital administration systems, laboratory systems, and patient monitoring systems as seen from the viewpoint of nurses, one now finds special computer applications for nursing practice and administration in hospitals and community health settings, for basic and continuing nursing education, and for nursing research.
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From page 57... ...
Recently, the American Nurses' Association constituted a Council on Computer Applications in Nursing. In the spring of 1985 the National League of Nursing formed its National Forum on Computers
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From page 58... ...
Nurses have organized, through collective bargaining and other means, to participate in the development and implementation of new technologies. Employment effects for nurses so far have been small, because of nurses' knowledge and types of jobs, coupled with generally strong growth in health sector employment.
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From page 59... ...
, however, the variety of the tasks and the social relations on the job have led to little labor displacement, and little is likely in the future; the personal relationships that are part of these jobs are not amenable to automation, although many of the tasks are. While the uses of technology are social choices, those choices are often constrained by such factors as competition and labor force availability.
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From page 60... ...
Examples here include data entry and mass mailing of standard life insurance policies. Fifth, the recent rapid increase of women in the labor force has been a correlate of recent change in the service sector, just as an earlier transfer of women from household production to wage work outside the home accompanied changes in manufacturing (textiles, garment making)
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From page 61... ...
The possible consequences are not clear. Women workers today have more opportunities generally, higher and more continuous labor force participation, and greater expectations.
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