Gendering Work Flashcards
Clerical work statistics:
1880 less than 5%, by mid 20th century roughly equal, 1980s 80% were women.
mainly done by men, transformed to be seen as ‘women’s work’.
How can you explain the change in the sphere of clerical work?
was relatively high status work, used clerking as entry level to learn a business, was secure and could be a job for life.
late 19th/20th C modern industrial capitalism, rise of corporations, operations larger and more complex, correspondence increased, needed evermore complicated records, hired more.
not enough men for demand. turned to educated women to fill the gap.
bonus of not having to pay women the same wage.
What do Anne Phillips and Barbara Taylor highlight in ‘Sex and Skill’?
“it was not that men’s jobs were deskilled, and women drawn into them, but that a new category of work was created which was classified as ‘inferior’ status of the women who came to perform it”.
mutually reinforcing.
Statistics and notes on the typing industry:
1880 US: 154 employed
1910 US: 113,000 employed, 77% women.
women found it easy to get into this work as it was new, did not have a gendered history, new field, no argument to be made that women were stealing men’s jobs.
What is interesting about film cutting/editing?
started off as women’s work, women found a way to be creative, rose to prominence & prestige, work became appealing to men interested in making a name for themselves, men replaced them becoming dominant in the field.
What did the 1924 La Times note on film editing?
“one of the most important positions is held almost entirely by women”
Anne Coates on the film editing industry:
“in the old days, it was quite funny, people thought what we were doing was editing out the censor material - if it was too violent or sexy or whatever. they didnt realise that were really part of telling the story of the film, which is very important. We continue where the scriptwriter and director leave off”.
Findings of film in the current world:
Martha Lauren: only 16% of editors of top 250 films of 2017 were edited by women
Why was the British computing industry initially for women?
1940s, men at war, work was feminised, manually operated, simple, largely repetitive, physical precedence similar to other work women had been doing.
How did the UK gender computers further?
Under harold Wilson, drove ways computers were marketed and sold to be highly gendered, computers themselves gendered - computers designed given female acronyms such as ‘susie’ - using sex to sell.
AD - ‘this typist can control your invoicing, stock records, and sales statistics all at once… but not without help from SUSIE her computer”
every woman could do this work, technological, but can be used.
appealing for businesses, intimidation factor removed. reassured they’d not need highly specialised staff, women were also cheaper to employ.
appeal of feminine workforce persisted for the countries technological advancement.
What changed in the 1960s in regard to computers?
dynamics were shifting, where computers were seen as tool for administration, computers became seen as management tools, needed skilled people and not uneducated women working these computers - became reliant on computers.
language of reliability and expertise became code for educate men with qualifications, who weren’t going to leave to have families.
What problem did the attempt of de-feminisation of computers have for the industry?
getting men to do this work was a struggle in the late 60s&70s.
written off as deskilled and feminine.
decreased pay for them to do this work - demeaned and simplistic
20th century became more reliant on them - found themselves unable to recruit people with the right skillset to manage the systems.
What does Hicks write about the complication in the computing industry?
“technological change alone could not modernise Britain because technology is constituted from economic and social patters. the deeply conservative, class-bound, and gender-stratified nature of the British economy meant that its technological institutions follow and strengthened particular forms of hierarchy. in the end, this made computer technology a highly conservative, rather than revolutionary force.”
How was women in labour mutually reinforcing?
women were seen as better suited to low-skill work; work seen as low skilled because women did it.
even technical work could be seen as unskilled it were done by a women, shapes how people thought about work.
