GENDER CHARACTER OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS By Vitalina Kova, Phd, Economics Institute of Labour Problems and Political Sciences Russian Academy Of Sciences Pereulok 9-a Kolpachney Center Moscow 101831 Russia FAX: 010 7 095 433-95-12 (switched manually) or 010 7 095 233-40-70 My paper "Gender Character of Technological innovations" is based on sociological research undertaken in 1991-1992 at the Moscow manufacturing factory.Three years ago new electronic technology was introduced there. The purpose of the research was to retrace the positive and negative aspects of its impact on men and women, to show who gained more - men or women – using new technology, and how this process influences gender relations. The factory itself is a typical representative of the so-called "female" branch of industry (more than 80 % of the labour force are women). The director of the enterprise, two vice-directors and the main engineer are also women. But the personnel who control and rule the new electronic equipment are men appointed by the administration to the posts. One of the main reasons for this is the prejudice in regard to women and their capability to use new techniques. As a rule women are hired to work new technology in second rate or auxiliary roles. Men do most of the jobs. The facts and futures of the sociological research testify about the gender character of using new technology in Russia. INTRODUCTION In modern Russia women make up 78,5 million or 53% of the population and number 48% in the labour force. 90% of able-bodied women are involved in public production or study. They produce 46% of the national product. However, among MPs women make up only 13% and they occupy only 7% of decision making position in the national economy. The attitude of the society towards women is based on the old patriarchal traditions, when the role and place of women were determined by men, who occupied major posts. Until recent times it was considered that all women's problems have been solved in the Soviet society. According to the Soviet Constitution, women officially had equal rights with men in all spheres of life. Many books have been published about achievements of Soviet women in different fields. By the end of the 80s women made up 61% among specialists with higher and special secondary education. The system of maternity leave and pre-school education were created, as were pioneer camps, and houses of rest for mothers and children. But unfortunately these measures could not solve women's issues. Simultaneously there existed many serious problems, which made women's everyday life extremely difficult. To speak boldly and discuss them in the mass-media was prohibited. The facts and statistics about the real hard situation of women were not published. Radical changes came in the period of PERESTROYKA and GLASNOST, when women's issues began to be discussed widely by the mass-media and by the official structures at all levels. In the period of economic reforms, women's problems were recognised to be one of the most serious social problems, requiring special attention from the state and Government. New official structures were set up according to Presidential decree, which have the aim to improve the economic situation of women with children and poor families, and to help them to overcome difficulties in the transition period to the market economy. Several new laws were adopted by the Parliament which have the same aims. In the new economic situation women are attempting to find new forms of economic activities. The sphere of implementation for the female labour force have broadened. Different forms of self-employment have appeared. Women took to business and organized their own private, as a rule, small companies. Until recent times, it was impossible to have a private business, because all enterprises belonged to the state and everyone had to work for the state for the full week (46 hours). This rule applied also to all abled-bodied women, who were obliged to work a full week even if they had many children. To work part-time was prohibited, except for women with children up to 2 years of age. The female labour force was concentrated mainly in the traditional branches of industry such as the textile and food industry, the trade and catering service, the health and education system, physical culture and social security. Working women do mainly auxiliary jobs in the administrative apparatus, public services and trade. Female labour is widely used in the harmful and hazardous. Official figures indicate that 4,8 million women work in conditions which do not conform to labour protection laws and norms, in premises with a high concentration of gas, in enterprises harmful to the health, whenre they have to carry heavy things manually and work in night shifts. Women continue to occupy the lowest positions in the societal pyramid. There exists an unofficial discrimination against women. For example, management always prefers to hire men instead of women, though it is against laws about equality. According to the law, There must be equal pay for equal work, regardless of sex. In fact, it turns out that as a result of the concentration of women at low paid jobs and with lower skills, they are paid 30 per cent less than men. We may retrace discrimination against working women in the process of introduction of new technology. Historically, the Soviet state gave preference to the development of heavy branches of industry, connected with engineering and weapons manufacturing, where the latest technological achievements were used and the best specialists were concentrated. The command - bureaucratic administration was headed by a man made decision makes who decided what kind of technological innovations should be introduced and where. Women practically did not participate in these decisions. Such State policy has resulted in technology lagging behind in light industry, where the female labour force is concentrated, leaving it in a deep crisis. The same situation exists in all fields where female labour prevails. As we may conclude, scientific and technological innovations concern "women's" branches of industry least of all. In the cases when new technology is introduced, it leads to the reduction of the number of working women. One of the main reasons is that technological innovations made earlier skills redundant. The problem of training and retraining gets special attention. The gender character of technological innovation and its implementation may be seen when new machinery is designed exclusively to be used by men without taking into consideration ergonomic factors. As a rule women are hired to work with new technology in second rate or auxiliary roles. Men occupy leading command posts. The introduction of new technology often is used by the administration against the interests of women and leads to a rise of unemployment rate among the female labour force. Many of them have to move to the service sectors of the economy, but at a low job level, which often does not correspond to their professional skill. The use of women at low paid work enables management not to harry to introduce new technology. Remarkable changes in social and economic spheres in the period of new reforms led to the change in the structure of the female labour force. Today when the private sector has appeared, women have obtained new alternative possibilities to choose the sphere of their activities. From one side, the reduction of female labour force in the traditional women's branches of industry is taking place. From the other side, along with the creation of various kinds of private, cooperative, and join venture companies and other commercial structures, the female work force, is in a flux in the non-State sectors of the economy. In the private sector, flexible forms and part-time women's employment have become more widespread. These may help women to solve the serious problem inherent in combining their work outside of their homes with their domestic activities. Women prefer to work in the private sector, because the wages there are two or three times higher in comparison with the State sector. In the process of privatization of the state property many enterprises with old technology are closing. The majority of them are in the light and food industries, where female labour prevailed. The new social problem which Russian women face is unemployment. Among unemployed women made up 63,4% in the mid of 1994. The majority of them are women with high or specialized secondary education from ages 35 to 45 with children. The increase of unemployment in the State sector of the economy will continue in connection with the structural changes and liquidation of non-competitive enterprises. The introduction of new technology and technological processes is urgently needed in order to make these branches to be compatible with foreign companies. Conversion of the military industry and using technological innovations for peaceful purposes may play an important role in this process. In pre-perestroika times, the characteristic feature of the economy (except the military complex) was the shortage of technical equipment, Zerox machines, printers, and computers. To use personal computers was prohibited without special permission from the official authorities. All personal computers, printers and Zerox machines were under the strict control of the security services. The latest technological achievements, including informatic systems, were widely used by the military complex and by the administration of Soviet ministries. Several changes took place since the end of the 80s, when all restrictions were ended and people gained freedom in using personal computers, electronic and microelectronic technic and informatic systems. A computer revolution is occurring now in the country. First of all, new technology is widely used in the private sector of the economy. All offices and banks are supplied with computers and other electronic systems. As a result of this process new professions have appeared, who serve new technics. Among them women make up more then 80%. Nowadays, the society is faced with the problem how to use more rationally the women's qualified labour force, how to eliminate discrimination against women in the labour market. The President and the Government took some steps in the solution of this problem. Special services were created at the Federal and regional levels, which have the aim to help women to find work according to thier professions OR to be trained for new professions. These official structures closely cooperate with different independent women's organizations which also have the purpose to assist in procuring jobs for women. The solution of women's issues in Russia is a part of the solution of economic, social and political problems in the transition period to market economy. As soon as these problems are solved, a well grounded situation will be created to solve women's issues. GENDERED CHOICE, GENDERED EFFECTS In Soviet literature we have not a lack of studies of the impact of new technology on the development of society. From the 1960s onwards the economic, political and social correlates of technological change in the Soviet Union have been an important research theme. Science and technology were understood in our analysis as prime movers of contemporary developments. Entirely lacking from such studies however had been any concern with the impact of technological change on gender relations. How might gender relations influence technological development, and how might technological change bear on gender relations? Such questions had been explored neither at the macro nor the micro level. Nothing had been published – I was thus stepping into unexplored terrain. Even as we approached the subject, however, some fact sprang to view. The ability of women and men as groups to develop or adept new technology to their own interests as a sex were clearly unequal, due to their historically different positions in society and in the labour force. Certain structures of the Russian economy inherited from the Soviet system demonstrated at the very outset of our research a gender structure that was likely to cause new technology to have a different impact on women and men. The process of industrialization beginning in the late 1920s drew women in large numbers into the paid labour force. National economic policy placed priority on the development of heavy branches of industry, including engineering, employing manly male labor. It has been characteristic of the Russian economy that women have predominated in the 'light' branches of industry such as food and textiles, public and social services. It has to be added however that those women who have worked in the 'male' sector of heavy industry have often done the dirtiest, most unhealthy and heavy jobs. Second, whatever the branch they worked in, women did not participate equally in decision-making. Until recent times all enterprises had belonged to the state and the command-bureaucratic authoritative administration, from which women were largely absent, decided autonomously what new technology would be introduced and where. In this system priority had been given to 'male' branches - particularly weapons manufacture, in which all the latest technological achievement and all the most qualified personnel were concentrated. At this macro level therefore it was possible to see at the outset a direct connection between technological development and gender relations. Those industries in which most women work had been starved of technological investment by the state and indeed were by now in deep crisis. Technology was consequently having different overall effects on women and men in the labour force; and military production had long had priority over manufacture of the consumer goods that could have improved everyday life. The context in which the research began, then, was one in which we could talk not just of discrimination against women in technological choice but discrimination against whole 'female' sectors and aspects of the economy. From 60 percent to 90 percent of the labour force of industries such as the food industry, of trading, of culture and of social services such as medicine and education, was women. The immediate replacement of obsolete and worm-out equipment with new technology was urgently needed. More than 40 per cent of work in these sectors was being done manually by women in labour-intensive, monotonous operations. Wages were among the lowest in the country. Yet the legisslature, higher management, members of state planning committees and ministry personnel (almost all male) were in no hurry to press for investment so long as these state-owned enterprises could continue to exploit women's cheap labour. At the macro level of Russian society as a whole, as we saw, women have been largely absent from high-level decision-making positions in the state planning departments that have determined levels of investment in technology, and the kind of technologies, for both industrial production and individual consumption, that society requires. These decision makers for many decades operated in a context of Cold War that dictated high investment in the military and heavy industry, while light industry in which more women work relatively started of status, skills and technology. At a national level, new technology has brought both advantages and disadvantages to women in the work force. Its introduction into "male" branches of industry for instance has seen a doubling of the number of women in engineering, including the electronics industry and the manufacture of automated machinery. In the manufacture of radio and precision instruments, for example, women are now around two-thirds of the work force. However the great majority of them are in routine assembly work seen as calling for "women's qualities" of accuracy and attention. This is work that is unpopular with men. In the economy generally the introduction of computers and other electronic equipment has led to the appearance of new professions such as those of operator, perforator and programmer. Women makeup more than half the total in these occupations, but fill mainly auxiliary positions. Women are impeded in taking advantage of new technology by the fact that their educational qualifications are less frequently based in science and technology than those of men, more frequently in the humanities. Even women with appropriately specialized qualifications, however, are not able to use them to the fullest. Their terms of employment are worse than those of men and their progress into management is slow. This study is not alone in finding that, despite equal educational achievements, the employment gap between women and men has been widening. Turning from production to consumption, housing, so important to women, has never been provided in adequate quantity or quality, and the state bureaucrats (mainly men) have failed to develop industries that could product household labour-saving technologies. Perhaps most damaging of all for women, this system failed to develop effective mechanisms of distribution. The legislature managed to satisfy their own needs, but ordinary families could provision themselves with food, clothing and commodities only by means of punishing effort. It is difficult to avoid concluding that men have created technologies and used them mainly in their own interests. It is not only macro factors that produce gendered effects and influence technological change. In the report that follows I pay attention also to the human dimension. The relations between management and the collective of workers, between the head of a bridge and the rank and file, the relative numbers of male and female workers, their relative satisfaction with labour conditions, the attitude of male workers to female colleagues and managers, such micro factors, create a workplace atmosphere that must also be understood if we are to perceive the gender significance of new technology. 1. New production technology in the hosiery industry For our case study of technological innovation we carried out research in an enterprise producing one of those consumer goods so badly needed by women: panty hose (tights) for themselves and their children, and socks for the family. We were afforded access to the Tushinskaya stocking factory, an old Moscow branch of this sector of light, "female" industry. Panty hose now constituted just over half its output, 70 per cent for children, 30 per cent for women. There were 1750 employees at the time of a study, 80 per cent of them women - it was a characteristic "female" sector. This was still a state enterprise, not yet privatized. As a half-measure, however, the administration was technically now renting the plant and building from the state. The collective of workers controlled such matters as distribution of bonuses and investment in the social fund. The Tushinskaya hosiery plant had been modernized four years previously by the replacement of its old knitting machinery with automatic, computer controlled production equipment - the main focus of our interest in it. The research had three phases. First, a questionnaire (69 questions) was distributed to 250 workers, the entire labour force of one particular shop that was operating the new technology. Two hundred usable replies were received, 180 from women, 20 from men. Questions sought information on the social relations of the factory in general. Second, a selection of 77 employees was made from the original 250. They were 43 were women and 34 men who had been working in the factory before, as well as since, the technological innovation. All answered the second questionnaire which aimed to explore their feelings about the consequence of new technology for their lives and in particular for gender relations. Third, the opinions of decision-makers were felt to be particularly significant, so ten people (five men, five women) in mid-level managerial posts were approached by questionnaire, but were also interviewed in depth. In all cases the information sought included questions about the subject's home life and consumption, from which, together with the information about production, we have attempted to develop a rounded picture of the gender relations of technological change. First, the educational level of the employees at Tushinskaya was found to be high. Among the general sample, no less than 83 per cent had achieved 10 years of secondary education, some with compensatory or additional vocational, specialized or higher education; only 17 per cent had incomplete secondary education without further vocational, specialized or higher education. Among the second sample, those who had experienced technological change, the educational standard was even higher. Of these, who were mainly in the age band 35-50 years and who were trusted, long-serving employees, only 6 per cent of men and 2 per cent of women had failed to complete secondary education. There was, besides, a striking gender difference in educational standard. Forty per cent of women in the general sample, against only 26.5 percent of men, had higher education. In the Tushinskaya factory, women, as well as being the great majority of employees, did also have a substantial presence in supervisory and management posts. The overall director of the factory was a woman, as were two out of three deputy directors. Three of the five shop persons were female, together with a majority of bridge leaders. (An exception was the knitting shops where most of these supervisory posts were filled by men.) It appears however that this presence of women in supervision and management does not, significant as it is, reflect the leadership role women feel their education merits. Only 70 per cent of women, against 88 per cent of men, felt their job matched their educational achievements. As we shall see this feeling arose partly from women's inability to benefit from the new opportunities deriving from technological change. It is a finding that reflects a widespread awareness among women of an undervaluation of women endemic in Russian society, a failure to use and reward their considerable abilities. New technology had, it seemed, been a mixed blessing at Tushinskaya. Drawing on the questionnaire to those who had lived through technological change at the factory, we found that most people's experience was broadly positive (67 per cent rated it so). One important factor in workers' current satisfaction with the enterprise, it should be noted at the outset, may have been that soon after the technological innovation, at the time of reform of the price mechanism, the enterprise social fund increased and the administration began spending more on subsidy of facilities such as canteen, day nursery, rest home, sauna and sports complex. In connection with the introduction of new technology itself, in addition, most reported that labour conditions had improved. Wages for both sexes had risen. It is not surprising if our study at the micro level finds that the experiences of workers and managers in the Tushinskaya hosiery factory confirm trends observable in the country as a whole. We saw the undoubted benefits new production technology had brought to the plant and its people. Despite increased pressure of work and some reported deterioration in health there was general satisfaction with the outcome: fewer harmful manual tasks, more interest and responsibility in the work, new job opportunities, higher wages. Increased revenue had enabled the provision of more amenities by the social fund. These gains were reported by women as well as men. Yet the changes associated with new technology had not narrowed and in some cases had widened the gap between women and men. The gender wage differential remained unchanged. The sexual division of labour, with men in skilled and responsible posts in new technology and women in subordinate, less skilled and routine occupations, had increased with new technology. We found possibilities for career advancement were only feebly and ineffectually used by women. The professional standing of the sexes overall had diverged further. Women, particularly older women who it was felt were unlikely to adept to the computer and electronics, were besides experiencing more technological redundancy - exemplifying a trend observable in Russia as a whole. The effects of Tushinskaya's technological innovation do not stop here of course. We saw that increased labour productivity and an improved product had enabled the factory to become competitive in price and quality with foreign manufacturers of panty hose. Tights, a commodity long desired by women, were now widely available on the market. The Tushinskaya development is in many ways a model of what women might wish for from any industrial capital investment policy. It could be a model for the diversion of production capacity from military to civilian - even domestic - products. However, the full gain will not be experienced by women unless technological change is accompanied by a purposeful policy to end patriarchal attitudes and the disadvantage of women these entail. We summarize the following points for inclusion in a future technology policy in women's interests. 1) Priority should be given to technological investment in industries in which most women work and those which produce commodities most needed for the support of everyday life. 2) Every opportunity offered by new technology should be used to revise production norms and to free women form the unhealthy work so many do today. 3) Technology should be designed on ergonomic principles, taking account not only men's but also women's particular abilities and needs. 4) Social training and retraining provision should be provided to prepare women for new technological job opportunities, both practical and managerial. 5) The opportunity of technological change should be used to restructure jobs in such a way as to make non-standard hours available to who need them, making it more possible for a worker to combine domestic responsibility with paid work without harm to health and without loss of job security. 6) New legal measures should be considered to guarantee an end discrimination against women, for example, in recruitment, redundancy and retraining. 7) Research should be carried out to aid the development of a technology strategy for women, for example, on factors determining women's occupational choice and on the correlation between women's qualifications and career achievements. 8) Women should be equally involved with men in derision-making concerning new technology, in trade unions, enterprise management and state bodies. 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