Unit 2: Gender issues in the world of work
Emerging gender issues in the Asia Pacific region
Effects of technological change
Technological developments affecting the comparative advantage between industrialised and industrialising countries have important implications, especially for women in Asia and the Pacific.
The impact of technological progress can be both positive and negative for women. In industry and services, three aspects are of particular relevance:
First, employment opportunities for women can increase where technology makes possible out-sourcing and sub-contracting. This has happened in industries ranging from printing and publishing to clothing and footwear to microelectronic chips, both within and across countries. Telework, electronic homework, offshore data processing, and office administrative services are other new employment opportunities. On the other hand, automation and advances in robotics make the threat of unemployment a very real one for women, particularly in assembly type manufacturing.
Second, skill and job structures change with the introduction of modern technologies in industrial enterprises. There is a trend towards skill polarisation, with an elite of technically-skilled, polyvalent, high-status, specialist workers coupled with a larger mass of technically semi-skilled, flexible or casual workers requiring minor training. Women are much more likely than men to be found in the latter group. Since little training or on-the-job learning or experience are required, employers are able to resort to using temporary workers, to job rotation or to expanding the number of tasks associated with a job. Correspondingly there is growing job insecurity, as well as employment and income insecurity.
Third, technological innovations imply changing skill requirements, and it is here that women are most likely to be displaced in favour of men. Women tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to the quantitative and qualitative impact of technological change because of their concentration in a relatively small number of lower-skilled, labour-intensive jobs. Another important consequence of technological change is "deskilling" of women in the labour force in that their skills will become increasingly irrelevant or ill-adapted to the needs of new production technologies. Thailand set up an official tripartite committee to look into the problems of technological unemployment after some 30,000 factory workers, mainly women, were retrenched in 1994. In agriculture too mechanisation and new technologies tend to displace more women than men labourers. In rural areas in developing countries, the introduction of high-yielding grain and crop varieties has generated employment for women agricultural workers. But the subsequent introduction of fertilisers and pesticides, and of mechanisation, has tended to displace or reduce women’s participation in actual production, especially in post-harvest processing. In Indonesia, it has been estimated that the introduction of new technology for the labour-intensive agricultural tasks normally done by women will reduce labour hours per hectare from 1,460 to 625 per year over the next few years. In addition, new techniques in agriculture, especially when they involve commercialisation, often shift economic control, employment and profit from women to men.
Rapid advances in technology also influence the impact of globalisation on women workers. On one hand, technology has made it possible to relocate data entry, keyboarding and clerical jobs to countries whose comparative advantage lies in a low-wage, well-educated workforce. The setting up of data processing centres and "back offices" in countries such as the Caribbean nations, India, Singapore, the Philippines and China represents a new avenue of employment for women. But these jobs, held almost exclusively by women, offer minimal opportunities for advancement, and little development of skills through formal or informal learning processes.
On the other hand, technological developments can also whittle away the comparative advantages of women’s cheap physical labour. As production for export moves up the technological and skills ladder, women account for falling proportions of the workforce. With comparative advantage increasingly determined by knowledge as the key factor of production, women may lose out more and more. Paragraph 53(g) of the Copenhagen Platform (of the World Summit for Social Development) encourages "co-operation between employers and workers to prepare for the introduction of new technologies and to plan for their employment effects as far in advance as possible, while ensuring adequate protection and adjustment."
Strategies to help women cope with the impact of new technologies can include:
[This note was prepared from Briefing Note 3.2, "Women at work in Asia and the Pacific - Recent trends and future challenges", in the Briefing Kit on Gender Issues in the World of Work, ILO, Geneva, 1995; Module 1, "Women at Work in Asia and the Pacific: Situation, Issues and Concerns" in Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and Treatment for Women Workers: an ILO Manual for Asia and the Pacific, ILO/EASMAT, Bangkok, 1994 and Lin Lean Lim, More and Better Jobs for Women: an action guide, ILO Geneva, 1996.]
Appleton H. 1995. Do it Herself: Women and Technical Innovation. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
ILO Library: 96A1414
LABORDOC: 269535
This publication is based on 22 case studies of technical innovation by women in 16 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Ilkkaracan I. and H. Appleton. 1995. Women’s Roles in Technical Innovation. London: Intermediate Technology Development Group
ENTMAN: 95TE1703
LABORDOC: 263838
Mitter, Swasti. 1997. "Innovations in work organization and technology." In Eugenia Date-Bah, ed., Promoting Gender Equality at Work: Turning Vision into Reality. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd.
The impact of current changes in work organization and technology on women’s employment has not yet received much focus in research. This paper is one of the few efforts undertaken in this area. It focuses first on the just-in-time (JIT) model which stresses quality, lean management, flexibility and "quick response". In terms of JIT, costs are reduced by working with a network of subcontractors, mainly small-scale units in which women tend to be engaged. This trend is occurring not only in the manufacturing sector but also in services within the context on new information technology and telecommunications. Such subcontracting or "production decentralization" to small business units has generally provided employment opportunities for women. However, some conditions of work, such as pay, occupational health and safety and social protection tend to be unfavorable. One of the features of the external side (subcontracting) of JIT is offshore decentralized work, especially of information-intensive jobs, such as offshore data processing, currently found in several relatively poor countries. Mitter points to differences between the working conditions of offshore and onshore data processing workers in terms of status and occupational health and safety. JIT is also associated with changes in the internal organization, such as "streamlining of work". It stresses total quality control and, therefore, a team approach to work and multiskilling. The impact of internal JIT on women has not yet been widely examined. Mitter therefore points to this as a future area of work.
The second half of the paper examines the issue of new technologies, mainly biotechnology and computer technology, and their implications for women’s employment. Women’s employment prospects with biotechnology are observed to depend on the extent to which they are able to acquire the new technical skills required. With computer technologies the impact has been "complex". In some areas it has reduced work opportunities, especially for those with few skills. On the basis of data assembled in the paper, a case can be made that concern for gender equality in employment should also involve assessment of the gender differential impact of changing work organization and the introduction of new technologies.
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