Dead End-Views on Career Development and Life Situation of Women in the Electronics Industry

Abstract

As women have gone into paid labor in all industrialized countries, they have been recruited into jobs separate from those of men. This practice is deep-rooted and has produced a dual labor market. Anttalainen (1980) defines the dual labor market as the establishment of entirely distinct occupational sectors for women and men, even within industrial branches; the 'female sector' is always the low-paid sector. In addition, women are -when working in male-dominated branches-placed in different jobs than men. 'Female jobs' in the public sector are usually jobs that were formerly done at home (Liljestrom and Dahlstrom, 1981). The public sector has, in a way, become an extension of home. In industry, female jobs are clustered into certain branches of production, e.g., textile manufacturing, food processing, electronics, etc., which are characterized by traditional 'female' tasks. Accuracy, dexterity, speed, and endurance the central qualities of female industrial jobs -have been regarded as 'women's skills'. Women constitute 48 percent of the Finnish labor force, one of the highest percentages in the capitalist countries. The percentage of women in the labor force in industry has remained practically unchanged since the early 1960s: it is still 25 percent. This article is a discussion of dead-end jobs and sex-specificity. It is based on data collected mainly while I was participating in production for five months in spring 1981 in an electronics plant in the Helsinki area.