Abstract
This paper places observational studies of women’s work in historical perspective. We present some of the very early studies (carried out in the period from 1900 to 1930), as well as several examples of fieldwork-based studies of women’s work, undertaken from different perspectives and in varied locations between the 1960s and the mid 1990s. We outline and discuss several areas of thought which have influenced studies of women’s work - the automation debate; the focus on the skills women need in their work; labour market segregation; women’s health; and technology and the redesign of work – and the research methods they used. Our main motivation in this paper is threefold: to demonstrate how fieldwork based studies which have focussed on women’s work have attempted to locate women’s work in a larger context that addresses its visibility and value; to provide a thematic historiography of studies of women’s work, thereby also demonstrating the value of an historical perspective, and a means through which to link it to contemporary themes; and to increase awareness of varied methodological perspectives on how to study work.
Highlights
In 2017, a group of scholars held the 3rd of a series of workshops at the annual CSCW conference, in order to discuss feminist approaches to computer supported cooperative work (Fox et al 2017)
They viewed the workshop as an opportunity to develop feminist research and practice generally, and an intersectional feminist approach - one that goes beyond understanding ‘women’ as a single monolithic category, and offers more than single axis frameworks for understanding oppression, and instead recognizes that the effects of oppression cannot be understood in isolation from one another
Using the categorical scheme that he further developed in his book Die Arbeitssituation erwerbstätiger Frauen (The work situation of gainfully employed women), Lappe (1981) arrived at a detailed assessment of different types of work; e.g. in the case of assembly work in the electronics industry: Untrained workers need about a year to be able to perform this task at the required speed
Summary
In 2017, a group of (women) scholars held the 3rd of a series of workshops at the annual CSCW conference, in order to discuss feminist approaches to computer supported cooperative work (Fox et al 2017) They viewed the workshop as an opportunity to develop feminist research and practice generally, and an intersectional feminist approach - one that goes beyond understanding ‘women’ as a single monolithic category, and offers more than single axis frameworks for understanding oppression, and instead recognizes that the effects of oppression cannot be understood in isolation from one another. Examining varied epistemological traditions which have informed fieldwork-based studies of women’s work serves as a rich backdrop through which we can explore often implicit assumptions about how people act and interact at work This can help us develop useful and meaningful CSCW systems. We are interested in making varied intellectual traditions which have supported observationally based studies of women’s work in the past visible— the work of non-anglophones, as these bodies of work have often remained invisible outside of the regions and language groups which have supported their development, yet they have much to contribute to CSCW practitioners
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