Technical change and the gender division of employment: the new information technology industries in Britain

Abstract

This paper discusses recent changes in the gender division of employment in the new information technology (IT) industries in Britain, in the light of an examination of past relations between technical change and the gender division of employment. The paper has two main sections: first, the historical section and, second, a section in which employment data from 1970–1984 on the IT industries in Britain are analysed. The historical section argues that in situations of technical change women were recruited as workers in circumstances where they were cheaper to employ than men and were more willing than men to adopt new methods of working. However, the recruitment of women in these situations generally has only been successfully accomplished where it did not significantly affect male domination of better paid or supervisory and managerial jobs, or seriously threaten patriarchal relations in the home. The section on recent changes in the British IT industries shows that the increase in their employment of women during the 1970s has been reversed. The number and proportion of women IT workers is falling in the conurbations and most of the ‘peripheral’ areas of the U.K. To the west of London and in Fife and the Borders, although the number of women employed has increased slightly, their proportion in the workforce has declined. In general, women are becoming more concentrated in clerical occupations within the IT industries and operator jobs held by women are being lost. This paper concludes that the future for women workers in the IT industries does not look promising without significant political and social change.