studies where new information technology has recently been introduced. ... Women have been excluded from many jobs that have been defined as 'men's' work,.
New Technology, Work and Employment 19:3 ISSN 0268-1072
Stories about men implementing and resisting new technologies Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist and David Knights In this article the literature on masculinity, gender and technology or science provides the context for discussing two case studies where new information technology has recently been introduced. The empirical material is counter-intuitive to the general understanding that technology reflects and reinforces men’s masculinity and the article provides a variety of theoretical interpretations for these findings.
Introduction Much research on gender and technology has examined the manner in which, largely through a process of gendered job segregation, women are systematically excluded from jobs and professions that are defined as scientific, technical or technological (see Berner, 2003; Cockburn, 1983; 1985; Grint and Gill, 1995; Hacker, 1990; Henwood, 1993; Vehiviläinen, 2000; Wajcman, 1991). More specifically, these studies show that there is a cultural tendency for technological work to be treated almost exclusively as a masculine domain. This dominance and mobilisation of particular masculinities within the realm of technological practice and discourse continues against a background of comparative gender blindness or claims to gender neutrality. Therefore, it is perhaps something of an imperative to provide a gender analysis of job segregation and, in particular, of the exclusion of women from the technological arena. Women have been excluded from many jobs that have been defined as ‘men’s’ work, amongst which are certain technology-oriented jobs. Partly this is because of selfexclusion where women, for example, avoid computer programming courses and partly this is because of gender realignments when work (e.g. milking) previously carried out by women is transformed into men’s work when it is technologised (Sommestad, 1992). Much of the literature on gender (e.g. Amsden, 1980; Cockburn, ❒ Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist holds a post-doctoral position at the School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Sweden. Earlier studies concerned gender construction in corporations and current research focuses on the organisational effects of implementation of ICT and gender issues. David Knights is Professor of Organisational Analysis at Exeter University but held a guest professorship in Göteborg, 2002–2003. He is the cofounder and editor of Gender, Work and Organisation and his most recent book is Organisation and Innovation: Gurus Schemes and American Dreams, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, Sept. 2003 with D. McCabe. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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1983; 1985; Wajcman, 1991) presumes a social construction of a certain polarity between masculinity and femininity that coincides with a distinction between technology and the social or ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ knowledge and between science and nature or cognitive and bodily or physical being. In each case, the former has a hierarchical superiority over the latter and a relationship of some tension is the inevitable result. Within such epistemological and ontological dualisms, of course, men are seen to reside in the former and women in the latter where often they are at best the marginalised, and more frequently the absent, ‘other’ (Derrida, 1982; Kristeva, 1974, quoted in Moi, 1985). While these dualisms and their marginalising or absenting of women and the ‘feminine’ from discourse are much broader and inclusive of contemporary social life, they could be seen as inconsistent with the changes that are occurring both in technology and the social world more generally. For example, as Kallinikos (1998) points out, new technologies are extending their domain away from the mere control and manipulation of objects and towards a simulation of intelligence where the creative and imaginative features of human activity and inventiveness are embodied within particular technologies. Such developments can buttress broader ranging epistemological, political and ideological objections to modernist dualisms that deny the significance of gender whilst marginalising or absenting women and femininity from mainstream social life in general, and from scientific and technological knowledge, in particular. In Sweden where our case study takes place, the combination of social democratic values and the impact of feminist ideals are also undermining conventional sexual stereotypes. In particular, legislation has recently facilitated (and obligated) men to take time off work in order to participate in childcare. This is the context against which this paper examines the complexities of gender–technology relations through two case studies—one from a highly masculine organisational culture of a high-technology company and another from the more feminine organisational culture of a school. Our argument is that while masculine discourses continue to be extensive especially in high-technology settings, the gender distribution of job tasks varies more than has traditionally been supposed. This, we argue, is because perceptions and understandings of technology are changing at the same time, as are gender relations. The pressure for change is both cultural in terms of new visions of gender and organisational in relation to demands for flexibility. Because masculine discourses render subjects inflexible in the sense of being tied to a fixed and unchanging sense of self, they are subject to some erosion and especially when gender relations are themselves a target of political legislation and feminist power. The paper is structured as follows. In the first section, masculinity as an aspect of the gender problem is discussed before seeking to examine it in the context of the relationships between women and science and technology. The following section turns to an analysis of a limited number of gender studies in relation to new information and communication technology (ICT). The third section introduces two case studies of the implementation of ICT where we found that it was older men rather than women who resisted the new technology. The first case reflects the purchasing work by an implementation of e-commerce into a high-tech company to which we give the pseudonym S-Tech. The second case discusses the implementation of ICT in two schools. In the final part, the results from these cases are discussed before reaching a tentative conclusion about gender and new technology.
Masculinity at work The dominant position of men in commercial organisations in general, and their technological functions in particular, has profound implications for the gendered character of organisational process. Not only are women marginalised or excluded from technological work, such work itself is also profoundly ‘masculinised’ (Murray, 1993), and this results in considerable self-exclusion on the part of women. Of course, gendered job segregation begins well before individuals seek employment. It occurs in © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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the numerous ways in which the processes of child rearing inflict a polarisation of the sexes and continues in other institutions where gendered discourses constitute specific subjectivities. Men learn very quickly how aggressive assertiveness and competitiveness often get rewarded whereas the same behaviour exhibited by a woman does not; indeed, she may be stigmatised as being too masculine (Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2001). We continue to live in a world where idealised images of masculinity as tough, hard, resilient and demanding and of femininity as demure, gentle, passive and undemanding prevail. These stereotypes structure the behaviour of the sexes and generate the kinds of job segregation that result in few women entering the sphere of technological work (Aaltio-Marjasola and Sevón, 1997; Cockburn, 1985; Hacker, 1990; Wajcman, 1991). By contrast, there are deep-seated and symbiotic relations between expressions and articulations of contemporary masculinities and technological or scientific work. However, the very dominance of men in management and technological work has tended to ‘naturalise’ and render invisible gender relations and their conditions and consequences (Collinson and Hearn, 1994: 3). At the same time, organisational politics and processes, particularly where management is concerned, are inextricably linked to the achievement and articulation of contemporary masculinities (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996). While the discourses of femininity and masculinity are difficult, if not impossible, to avoid, they can be repressive in their consequences for both men and women and the relations between the sexes (Knights and Kerfoot, 2003). It is then important simply not to leave unanalysed the connection between feminine discourses and women or masculine discourses and men, for it is pivotal to remember what the concepts tell us about the cultural construction of each category (Aaltio-Marjasola and Sevón, 1997). The bedrock of contemporary masculinity1 is its desire for, and identification with, an overriding rationality that renders social relations and an individual’s position within them both predictable and controllable (Mellström, 1999; Seidler, 1989). This is closely linked with the development of modernity where there has been a concern on the part of masculinity to appropriate exclusive control of rationality in opposition to, and as an essential bulwark against, values attributed to femininity such as intuition, emotional openness, empathy and passivity. In its broadest sense masculinity is the way men behave; it is the way men think and feel about themselves. Far from being a natural or biological trait, masculinity is a socially constructed way of seeing and being. As such it changes over both time and space (Ekenwall, 1966). For example, concepts of manhood in medieval and contemporary times have changed considerably as they also differ between cultures and ethnic groupings. Furthermore, masculinity displays itself in a variety of ways within the same society depending, for example, on class or race, geographical location, form of power and sexual orientation (Bederman, 1990). The gender literature has challenged the singular and unitary conception of gender identity, arguing that there are a multiplicity of masculinities and femininities that are often fragile, fragmented and fluid (Brittan, 1989; Connell, 1995; Linstead and Brewis, 2004). If there are a plurality and multiplicity of masculinities, it follows that a masculine identity is not unambiguously conferred upon men as a function of their biological sex. Rather, it is the product of complex and often contradictory social processes. Moreover, while there are elements of ascription, living up to the image of what it is to be ‘a man’ is a continuous struggle. Individual men feel ‘driven’, for no discernible reason other than as a part of what it means, and how it feels, to subscribe to an ideal of competence, and where the display of vulnerability is to threaten the image of that competence (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993: 672). Masculinity is something that men struggle to achieve and maintain in highly competitive circumstances. Seidler
1 We are aware here of treating something that is multiple as if it were singular and something abstract as if it were human. We subscribe to neither position but see this as mere stylistic license in describing dominant aspects of a discourse that is, of course, diverse and discontinuous.
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(1989: 151) argues that ‘Gender is not something we [as men] can be relaxed and easy about. It is something we have to constantly prove and assert’. Masculinity is a relational concept. It only makes sense, indeed it can only be defined, in relation to femininity. Masculinity and femininity are locked in a dance where their respective positioning constrains the space within which the other can define itself. However, the dance involves more than an uneasy partnership of a single masculine and feminine identity. It is more like a crowded club where different masculinities and femininities jostle and fight amongst and between themselves. The mutual stereotyping and ‘putting down’ cannot be separated from the fear that each represents for the ‘other’ but masculinity is perhaps the most vociferous in its intolerance of that which (e.g. homosexuality, femininity) threatens its precarious solidarity.
Masculinity, women, science and technology One domain that has become particularly connected to the production of masculinity is the practice and culture of science and technology. Historically, technological practices can be seen to have been a major site of the achievement and reproduction of a masculinity that cherishes ‘rationality’, control, certainty, aggressive competition and instrumental action. The dominance of masculinity serves to maintain science and technology as a privileged arena of masculine practice that is seen as highly resistant to the incursion of feminine values and practices. Our case studies, however, suggest some reservations around the starkness of this conclusion that has important implications for processes of organisational and technological change. As a result, the very definition of technology and the predominant discourses and cultures used to explain and mobilise the concept and boundaries of technology are influenced by their identification with masculine practices. Indeed, it might be argued that in much contemporary discourse, science and technology and the masculine define one another. Additionally, technology strongly associated with women is not really seen by men as ‘technology’. Thus, for example, few men in particular would identify people in highly feminised human or machine interactions, such as the use of domestic appliances, sewing or word processing, as technical workers whereas men using machines in metal working or printing are easily identified as engineers and technical workers (Cockburn, 1985). If technology is to be seen as a core domain of a social construction of masculinity, it may also be suggested that it plays an important role as a boundary marker—what is perceived to be technological is frequently perceived to be masculine. In the early 1980s, Easlea (1983) argued that the historical development of scientific discourse was mediated by the deployment of an aggressively masculine imagery of invasion and subjugation. This involved the occupation and dissection of a passive and mysterious female ‘nature’. Here science developed as a distinctively masculine activity, where the ‘deeper the mental penetration into female nature the greater the mental virility the man of science is able to claim’ (Easlea, 1983: 171). This gave rise to a hierarchy of potency and status within the sciences where the most penetrative and dissecting activities such as particle physics stand above the ‘softer’ systemic approaches such as biology and ecology. Seen from this perspective science is articulated as a cold, dry, ‘hard’ and aggressive activity that glories in its own penetrative abilities in the pursuit of complete ‘mastery’ over nature. Science and particular masculinities developed together in the modern era. This involved not only the dissection of a socially constructed female nature but also the self-mutilation of the potentiality of a different kind of masculinity. For men’s subjugation of a feminine nature proceeded apace with a need to ‘subjugate and conquer the feminine within themselves’ which included the need to relate, to enter into dialogue, receptivity (listening/empathy), and the validation of and involvement in ‘simple domestic concerns’ (Easlea, 1983: 146 and 37). In the summary of his writings, Auguste Comte (1844/1979) displays the close association between the ‘virtues’ of masculinity and science when he argues for the new rational science of © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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positivism that will now (the year of 1844) extend to sociology. He expresses it as ‘a more virile thinking’ (p. 14) necessary to develop science about the social conditions, and that the ‘new manliness in reason will replace former dusky causal explanations’ (p. 17). More historically grounded accounts of the development of science and technology have pointed to the incursion of women into this privileged masculine realm. However, Rossiter (1982) concludes that in the period 1880–1910 women’s position within science was constrained in two ways: they were either limited to holding subservient positions as assistants and educators or confined to practice science in ‘women’s’ fields such as home economics or cosmetic chemistry. Harding (1986) also examines the subordination of women in the sciences in the period of 1880–1910 and the post-war period. She argues that the cultural stereotype of science as tough, rigorous, rational, impersonal, competitive and unemotional has continued to be ‘inextricably intertwined with issues of men’s gender identities’ in a mutually reinforcing manner (p. 63). In the 1990s, this led feminists to argue that the domination by men and the masculinity of science and technology could only be averted by a new feminist, or what they termed, ‘standpoint’ epistemology (Haraway, 1990; Harding, 1991). This rejects the masculine orientations to knowledge and attempts to displace them with their feminine counterparts. Science and technology seem to vest masculinity with a particular potency in, and claim on, the world but it is a claim that is vulnerable to feminine ‘dilution’. We should expect that in science more than any other occupation (except, perhaps, making war) it will take the presence of only a very few women to raise in men’s minds the threat of feminization and thus of challenges to their own gender identity (Harding, 1986: 63).
Developments in new technology provide the most recent examples of a long line of fields of work where feminisation has the potential to erode male supremacy. We examine this in the next section.
Gender and new technology The general argument concerning technology and gender suggests that ‘men have a strong relationship with technical devices whereas women have a non-relationship, or techno-fear’ (Lie, 1998: 10). Earlier technology studies analysed mainly design processes or the impact of new technologies on working conditions. When feminist researchers entered the arena, they began to ask different questions compared with those asked in earlier studies, namely questions concerning users, how women work with technology not only as professionals but also in the domestic environment (Berg and Lie, 1995). Wendy Faulkner (2002) develops feminist technology research and points out that it often treated the issue of women in technology with the specific question, why are there so few women engineers? In the growing field surrounding the development of new ICTs, gender-oriented studies show how both women and men have a relationship to the new technology. For example, while women have begun to use the Internet domestically or as consumers to a greater degree than before,2 there is still considerable evidence that they are marginalised in the sphere of technology production. In Sweden, for example, management in the technology companies is still dominated by men (SOU, 1997: 135; 1998: 6; 2003: 16), and men are exclusively in charge of the development and maintenance of websites (SOU, 1995: 110; 2003: 16).3 2
In spite of optimistic forecasts about how the information society would make men and women more equal (Toffler, 1981), it is mostly men that use the Internet (Stanworth, 2000). As late as 1998 only 16 per cent of Internet users in Europe and 39 per cent in the USA were women. But this seems to be changing because 52 per cent of those who began using the Internet worldwide in 1998 were women (Turban et al., 1999). 3 A new study of the gender division among employees and managers in different (Swedish) branches of manufacturing and building construction shows that men dominate these industries. Men in manufacturing represent 72 per cent of the total employees, 89 per cent of those in the management
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In a qualitative study of women taking computer courses in a higher education institution, Henwood (2000) found out that women were at least as competent as men, but that they had less confidence in their skills. Even though women students had higher grades compared with the men students, ‘women tended to underestimate their competence’ (p. 218). Male students on the other hand often overestimated their competence. Henwood sought to understand women’s low confidence by examining the everyday discourse among staff and students. She found this contained a ‘continuing under-recognition and discrediting of women’s skills because of expectations of computing as a male field’. Men were often unable to see or acknowledge the expertise among women. Henwood’s findings show that when women have low levels of confidence, men presume them not to have the expertise. Extended beyond the computer world, neither men nor women expect women to be in charge or to be experts (Henwood, 2000). In a study of people working with the new media (before the recession of the 21st century), Perrons (2003) demonstrated how the ‘gender imbalance remains’ in her research based on 55 interviews with new media owners, managers and some employees. Her results show that while new technology may facilitate the development of work practices that are less gender segregated, the situation where women are mainly responsible for childcare and domestic life remains resilient to change. When focusing on the ways in which technological work is gendered, it is clear that men primarily take the key decisions that affect the generation and development of technologies, and have greater success in claiming technical competence (Henwood, 2000). While men do hold the key positions, women are not and have never been absent from technological work. Sadie Plant (1997: 37) writes at length about women working with computers: When computers were vast systems of transistors and valves needed to be coaxed into action, it was women who turned them on. They have not made some trifling contribution to an otherwise man-made tale: when computers became miniturized circuits of silicon chips, it was women who assembled them. Theirs is not a subsidiary role which needs to be rescued for posterity, a small straight: when computers were real machines, women wrote the software on which they ran. And when computer was a term applied to flesh and blood workers, the bodies which composed them were female. Hardware, software, wetware – before their beginnings and beyond their ends, women have been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers of the digital machines.
In relation to Plant’s argument, women are brought right into the core of the development of new technologies. Despite Plant’s correction to assumptions about women’s absence from technological work, men clearly hold the key positions and masculinity permeates the discourse of (new) technology. However, our case studies suggest that the situation is even more complex for we have found differential responses between the sexes to changes in the technology that would appear at first sight to be counterintuitive. This is because it was men rather than women that were resisting technological change. We now elaborate this in the following two case studies.
Implementing e-business as new technology In the first case reported here, we study what happens when ‘an idea in fashion’, in this case Internet-based e-business, confronts the local practice at Swedish Technology Corporation (S-Tech). S-Tech works with development and production of highly advanced technology, mainly for the Swedish market. The purpose of the study is to follow the consequences e-business has for organising in the company.4 The research is ongoing (from spring 2001 until 2006) and involves the following: shadowing 10 persons who either work with the development of 7Summits at S-Tech group and 91 per cent of the board members. Men in the computer industry, computer consultants, and telecom represent 70 per cent of the total employees and 85 per cent in management. The building construction industry is even more male dominated with men representing 92 per cent of all employees and 96 per cent of the managers. (SOU, 2003: 16) 4 http://www.handels.gu.se/gri/gri_rapp.html GRI report 2002:10 © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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or are purchasers who are going to use the new technology. Direct observations are taking place in the larger committee meetings where 7Summits is introduced to the employees and when different e-tools are tested. In addition, interviews have been conducted with the employees. The field material documents the work with the development and implementation of the e-business system called ‘7Summits’ at S-Tech, the purchase department. ‘7Summits’ (a fictitious name) is an Internet-based e-business solution that was introduced in 1999 by the former CEO of A-Tech, the American holding company of S-Tech. A strategic manager in S-Tech told us how the CEO wanted to take A-Tech into the ‘new economy’ by using this new technology. In order to fulfill this task, the CEO engaged a number of ICT consultants who were contracted to find solutions on how to use the new technology in A-Tech. The story seems to imply a moral imperative— that A-Tech should use ‘the new technology’, regardless of its form and possible relevance. It would appear that the CEO has become enthralled by, or ensnared in the hype surrounding, the ‘new economy’ such that the corporation had little choice but to be reactive.5 The name given to the e-business system—7Summits—metaphorically alludes to the idea of climbing the highest mountain in every continent with the implication that once on the top, you have a vision, if not command, of the whole world. Such a vision, of course, derives from a highly masculine conception of life where challenge, competition, conquest and control are predominant. This story can be seen to represent the stimulus for the introduction of a global webbased purchasing system for A-Tech and its affiliates. It is to cost two billion dollars to develop, which is around 50 billion dollars per annum or 4 per cent of the total purchasing volume of A-Tech. In essence, the new e-system is expected to facilitate the transformation of former Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) into fully Internet-based solutions. As we have already indicated, the idea of bringing A-Tech into the ‘new economy’ is grounded in a great techno hype and optimism (Mörtberg, 1999) that pay virtually no attention to the conditions that make such change possible. The implementation of 7Summits in the purchase department at S-Tech began in the summer of 2001. It is, however, a slow process and while many of the 500 employees had heard about 7Summits by the early spring of 2003, few knew what it would mean in practice and even fewer had actually worked on the system. The information society and new technology, Mörtberg (1999) writes, is often seen as an autonomous force in public debates, but in spite of this, someone or something is constructing it at the same time as it shapes someone or something (p. 55). In the case of 7Summits implementation, the so-called autonomous force of the ‘new economy’ is translated into an imperative idea to buy the web-based purchasing system. The concept of transforming the former EDI system to full Internet usage is, however, shaped by someone developing the hardware and the software. Further, in the process, this development will have implications for the constitution of employee subjectivity at S-tech. All this is taking place in a high-tech company, which, as we have pointed out, is a terrain in which discourses of masculinity are sustained or reproduced as a condition and consequence of the everyday production of goods and services. 7Summits is clearly a reflection and reinforcement of these discourses. The metaphor of climbing the highest mountain on every continent cannot be separated from the dominant masculine discourses of this organisation. This mentality of treating everything as a project of masculine conquest parallels the adventures and trials of the earlier pioneering US frontiersman (Calder, 1974). The e-commerce in this example can be seen as an exquisite example of the articulation of contemporary mas5
We are of course being a little facetious here and do not have access to the original decision making but only accounts from existing managers. Because there was no instruction of how the new technology should be used, we can only guess that a survey of the content of the ‘new technology’ was conducted in order to find something that could be argued as useful for A-Tech. The consultants presented a report with the suggestion to buy the software, to look over the working processes and get everyone to use the e-tools in the same manner.
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culinities where under the façade of political and moral neutrality, gender relations are rendered invisible. We now turn to a discussion of the views of S-Tech employees with regard to the new system and its gender implications.
Gender and new technology at S-Tech In the literature on new technology it is mostly women who seem to suffer disproportionately from any negative effects. They are often the victims of displacement or repetitive work through automation (Plant, 1997: 74). In our case study, also it is mostly men who became the users and beneficiaries of the new technology when it was implemented. Of the 500 people who work at the purchase division of S-Tech, 110 are purchasers and 120 are purchasing engineers working with quality control. The division is dominated by men but in the last ten years more women have been employed. The numbers today are 73 per cent men and 27 per cent women. Purchasers are thus mostly men but the number of women, aged 25–35, is increasing. Their work consists of buying consulting services, building maintenance, being parts for production, and printing paper. Another picture of the gender division of the purchase department can be obtained from the people involved in the internal organisation of the e-business implementation. Our first respondent was a senior male manager who retired a year after our study began. The second was the project manager, a man in his 50s, and the third was a woman with 30 years of experience as an information system worker at S-Tech; at present she is in charge of ‘change management’. The operative project manager is a 28-year-old man. Among his staff of about 25 people, about one quarter are women in their 30s. The rest are men around their 50s. Because the organisation of S-Tech is complex, there is also an e-business group in charge of all e-business projects of the company, which is led by a 35-year-old woman. Thus while there are mostly men who are responsible for the change in technology, women are present both in comparatively high numbers and in senior positions. In order to find how the new technology affects women and men at S-Tech, we sought to elicit their thoughts on gender, although without asking them directly about it. Instead, we simply asked how different groups react to the forthcoming implementation, but sometimes the former discussion led conveniently into the subject of gender. In the interviews with 20 employees (out of which eight were women) the same pattern was found. When asked about who resists the new technology, the answer as well as the examples given were always of older men. In order to validate this, we also interviewed three of the older men that had been mentioned. The accounts given below are examples of regular occurring patterns in the interviews. An example is the interview with Michael, aged 35, who had just returned from five months of parental leave with his one-year-old son. He now works as a ‘strategy theorist’ in the implementation group. After he explained his family situation it became possible to continue talking about his views on gender at S-Tech: Ulla: Do you see any gender related effects in this project? Michael: That is hard to say, I can only talk in more general terms. Elderly employees may have problems to adopt to the new circumstances. Most of the younger employees are probably more positive. I think most people here are positive but working in this kind of big organisation makes people become more careful when these kinds of changes are supposed to be implemented.
Anna, a woman in her 30s, also thinks that it is harder to implement change among the elderly employees. She has examples of both older women and older men who think that change is difficult and she argues that this rather than gender is a constraint on change. Anna: It is because there are more elderly men; there are very few elderly women here. We are many women today, but we are young, we have been employed later. I know one older woman and she does not either think that this thing with computers is very entertaining either. I think it is more related to age than to gender. At S-Tech, the purchaser has normally been a man, the senior © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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purchasers are men, and they are the ones who became employed here 30 years ago. If you look at the younger group I cannot see any differences in the way of thinking among women and men. It is rather about generations.
Also, when asked about what happens to different groups at the company as a result of these changes, Ian, a purchaser in his 40s, talks about the older people in the project: Ian: It can affect different groups. Older men who are not willing to change or enough interested in the new technology are probably a group that will have problems to adapt to the new conditions. That was shown also before this change. Different projects during the latest years have shown that there are already some colleagues who are behind. If you get delayed already from the beginning it is double as hard to join the others.
Because it is rare to see a technological project that is not negative for women, but instead perceived as negative for the older men who are usually seen as a privileged group, Ian is asked to elaborate: Ian: The women we have, and we recruited quite a few women the last years, they will not have any problems with this. Rather they will probably be the ones who adopt this best. U: Why? Ian: Young guys and men will probably also adopt well, they will not have any problems. It is probably the group in the age of 50+ who have worked here 15–20 years, and who know our present system, our present procedure and our unwritten procedures, they will have difficulties, as they have learned very well how to handle the daily life activities in the old way. They know which persons to contact and what shortcuts that are possible to take, but now, suddenly they won’t be able to do that. I think we have to treat them in a certain way, give them more time or more education in order to handle this. At the same time they will be pressured by the daily work since there will be a need for as much work as earlier but with different tools so that will be really tough.
Most studies of new technology and gender focus mainly on women in low-qualified work (Plant, 1997; Stanworth, 2000). An exception is Zauchner et al. (2000) who studied the implementation of new technology in typical clerical jobs; women were found to enjoy certain advantages. This contrasted sharply with their previous study, where women suffered more negative effects as a result of the implementation of new technology. The authors conclude that the negative consequence of new technology for women is inversely related to the level of qualifications, and/or participation in the implementation process. In other words, highly qualified and participating women employees suffer few negative effects from the new technology. The women respondents in this study have played a full role in the implementation process so our data support the conclusions of Zauchner et al. However, the reports of some of our respondents about how the older men are resistant to the new technology need verification. Those older men that we meet in the project implementation group are by definition very familiar with the new technology. Some interviews confirm the opinion, though. Niles, a purchaser in his late 50s tells us about his work tasks. Niles: For many years I have worked close to the construction department and the suppliers. In the process of designing a new technical solution, I am the link between the designer who sees a new way to attach some part and the supplier who has to do this in a cost efficient way. In that way this is a creative work with analytic as well as negotiating aspects, where it is essential to keep good relations to everyone in order to find the best final solution. U: What do you see as the problem with a new purchase system? Niles: It will mean a lot of typing work and since I am not so good at that, I will feel hampered by it. It might become something that deviates me from my main working tasks.
When interpreting gender among the users of the new technology women in this case do not seem to be discriminated. It is rather the older men who are not so familiar with computers who appear to have problems. This questions the idea that new technology reinforces masculinity in the organisation. The case with men being resistant to new technology in the masculine environment, made by the high-technological company, can be understood in different ways. Before seeking to draw conclusions and implications from this case, we complicate the issue a little by turning to a case study of two schools where the culture is more ‘feminine’. 200
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Gender and new technology in schools In this section, we seek to elaborate this observation through our other case study research. It is a study concerning the organisational consequences of ICT implemented in Swedish schools. During the last decade, the Foundation of Knowledge and Competence has spent nearly 150 million euros on its school campaign in order to build a better infrastructure for ICT in Swedish schools (ages 6–18). The main purpose of these investments was to create the conditions for developing ICT as a pedagogical tool in the school. In the interviews with teachers and principals there are findings pointing in the same direction as in the e-business study. Older men indicated their resistance to the use of ICT, while older women have leading roles and tasks in the later stages of ICT implementation. The material from the school builds upon a case study of a municipality in Sweden, known for its successful work with ICT. During the fall of 2002, the field study included 20 interviews with principals (four men, one woman), ICT facilitators (four women and two men), teachers (three men and four women) and managers (one man and one woman) in the municipality. This material was completed with written material as official documents from the period of the ICT implementation project (1996 until 2002), project descriptions and different evaluations made of the project. Interpretation of the material was done through quantitative analysis of gender patterns on the employees in the schools, and through qualitative analysis of the interviews and the written material. Parts of the qualitative analysis, sustained by the numbers from the quantitative analysis, are accounted for below. The gender distribution of personnel in these schools conforms to the norm of the municipality where women represent 75 per cent of the primary and secondary school teachers and 60 per cent of the upper secondary school teachers. In 1997 the ICT project was introduced. It contained 100 different subprojects designed to discover how ICT could be a pedagogical tool. Every teacher was provided with 20 hours of basic education in IT and 26 teachers became ICT facilitators spending 20 per cent of their time training the teachers. Of these ICT facilitators 14 were men and 12 were women. ICT technicians were also involved in the project, of which ten were men and two were women. These numbers show that in spite of this gendered distribution of employment in the schools of the municipality, at the introduction of the ICT project men were disproportionately represented in the activity. However, according to the principal at the upper secondary school, women began to take part in the project in larger numbers after the ICT had been introduced. This development is reflected in the number of women who replaced men as IT trainers and IT technicians as a result of staff turnover. Around 30 per cent of the positions as ICT technicians and ICT facilitators were taken over by women (from men) during the three-year long ICT implementation project. Intriguing in the school case study is the issue of resistance. While we have several examples of older women being in charge of ICT at different schools, staff that we interviewed told us that it was only the older men who resisted the new technology. One of the ICT facilitators, Eddie, provides a story of a man in his 50s who resisted computers: You can say that the last computer resister gave up about a year ago. It was a person who said ‘computers are trash, I have pen and paper, and a brain to think with, I read in books and that is fine for me’.
According to Eddie, this has nothing do to with age. In order to validate his view, he points to two older female colleagues who were keen on using computers even at the introduction of the project. They are still active users, even though they are retired. Despite the fact that he says it is not related to age, we suggest that the use of new technology is agerelated with respect to men. It is the older men rather than women and younger men that are resistant to the new technology. Among those interviewed, we found five men (but no women) who in various ways avoided (and disliked) using the computers. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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An older woman who spoke about one of the first computer courses she attended provided another story relating to older men and computers: I remember taking a course in the basic use of computer. There were many funny episodes in that course. I remember the principal sitting behind me, he is retired today. All of a sudden he called out because the printer was just ‘spitting out’ paper all the time. ‘What have I done, what have I done’, he exclaimed. Today such a thing would surprise no one. By that time it could happen to anyone because all of us were rather ignorant. After a while everyone, especially the older ones, did get over this sort of fear [for the computers].
As we have argued, it was mainly the older men who opposed the new technology. Younger persons were not resistant, but then they were not particularly supportive either. This was largely because of their inexperience in the profession and the necessity for them to concentrate on broad-ranging teaching matters that do not involve technology directly. In this case study, the resistance of older men can be understood from a number of points of view. First, it relates to their ideas about pedagogy. A typical assertion of such respondents was: ‘I know how to teach and should that in any way be better with a machine? My knowledge is placed in my head’. Another reason relates to their objection to diverting financial resources from school materials such as books to ICT. A third reason relates to the teaching discipline itself. It may be expected that teachers in the natural sciences and engineering would appreciate computers because they are already in a field closely related to technology. Yet, it was this group of teachers that were among the ones indicating an indifference to ICT as a pedagogical tool in school. They had the view that computers were largely of interest as a technology to understand rather than to use as a tool. In the humanities and social sciences, the situation was very different. Men working within these disciplines were resistant to technology largely because they had virtually no interest in technology in itself or as a tool.
Discussion In analysing our empirical data we have frequently drawn on concepts of masculinity to develop an understanding of the responses of employees to new technology, but this has not proven satisfactory in all instances. In some cases, it would seem that age intervenes to supersede explanations in terms of gender. Youth lacking experience and relevant skills is sometimes given as an explanation for why they fail to secure employment (Esping-Andersen, 2000). A reverse problem can be said to be the case for older people and computers because older people in general have not had a recent education in using the new technology (Van Dijk and Hacker, 2003). In that sense the new technology becomes discriminating for older people in the labour market because they cannot compete with young employees when it comes to computer-dependent positions. This way the new technology constructs young employees as more suitable for certain positions within the company compared to older employees. Our case studies provide a modified view of this understanding because we have found that some older women appear less reluctant than their male counterparts to engage with the new technology. Some older men clearly suffer both from a form of technophobia, thus lacking interest in the new technology, and skills gaps because of inadequate education or social support to take time off to learn about the new technology (i.e. Van Dijk and Hacker, 2003). In the school case, older women also seem to lack interest, and suffer skill deficits, in the new technology. A combination of age and gender needs to be taken into account, thus modifying the conventional gender gap where, outside of traditional office work, women are specifically seen as reluctant users of new technology. Instead, the gender gap decreases in favour of women of all ages (see also Van Dijk and Hacker, 2003). Technophobia and skills deficit, however, are greater among older men and this could be seen as potentially eroding their status both at work and in society at large (Van Dijk and Hacker, 2003). Older men, as a consequence, risk being left behind in contemporary developments, lacking the ability to search, select, process and apply information through new technology. 202
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We had at first thought that the new information technology might be less appealing to men deeply embedded in masculine discourses because it is seen as at the ‘soft’ end of the science or technology continuum. There may be a hint of this in S-Tech because the production process has been traditionally focused on the ‘hard’ technology of heavy engineering. The ‘softer’ ICT has been less deeply associated with masculinity and this perhaps helps to explain the differential responses of older men and women to new technology in our case studies. In order to be a ‘real man’, you have to resist ICT because that is for hackers, ‘computer nerds’ and women. We think this is part of the explanation but perhaps this can be elaborated by a complementary interpretation that identifies certain rigidities in subjectivity constituted by masculine discourses. It is our view that masculine discourses have the effect of constituting subjects not only in terms of an aggressive instrumental rationality preoccupied with control but also have a tendency to make men, in particular, rigid and inflexible. This, it may be argued, is because the preoccupation with controlling that which is external to the self blinds the subject to other possibilities such as simply following the flow, experimenting with alternatives or simply embracing the uncertainties that follow from change. Older men, more steeped in the masculinity of their biography, are perhaps less able than older women to manage the uncertainties of the new technology and rather than risk not being in control simply resist the changes. We did consider a number of other interpretations such as the simple understanding that masculinity does not affect all men equally or in the same way. As postmodern feminists (e.g. Butler, 1990; Hekman, 1999) have been anxious to point out, individuals are subjected to a multiplicity of (often fragmentary and competing) identities and, as men approach retirement, work may be less of a central life interest for them. It may also be that we can identify a weakening of the virility of masculinity as men grow older, leading to a lesser need for them to be associated with the latest technology. While the first of these interpretations is plausible, we decided to reject the second on the grounds that there is just as much evidence to suggest that men rarely ‘grow up’ and may never climb out of their compulsive desire for competitive challenges, conquests and control. In rejecting the weakening of masculinity with age argument, however, it did make us reflect on the notion that almost every explanation that we advance can be seen in some way to be problematic. And, of course, we are aware that the demand for exhaustive and complete explanations for what we research is itself deeply masculine in its construction (Knights, 1997). As a consequence, while offering serious explanations of our research findings, we remain a little ambivalent about the various understandings offered of the relationships between gender and new technology deriving from our case studies. To summarise, two organisational fields where new information technology was being introduced have been the empirical focus of this paper. First was a heavy engineering company that was dominated by high status, male professionals working within a fairly masculine workplace culture. Second was the rather more feminine professional culture of the school where women tended to be pre-eminent. These are social fields that provide two diverse and distinctive sites to investigate the introduction of new technology from a gendered perspective. It is then intriguing that these different cultures indicate some similar resultsnamely older men resisting ICT. The findings in these studies indicate that the simple relation between technology and gender have to be qualified with respect to age. Despite the differences in gender culture between the two organisations, both displayed a similar reluctance on the part of older men to engage with the new technology. We have suggested a number of interpretations for this situation, none of which is either exhaustive or satisfactory. The dilemmas in accounting for gender differential behaviour is complicated by the age dimension in these two studies but it remains problematic by virtue of the fact that we are always in danger of reproducing rather than disrupting gender stereotypes in our accounts and explanations. The concern of this paper has been principally to report and understand what, in terms of much of the literature in gender and technology, is an anomaly—men’s resis© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004
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tance and women’s acceptance of technological change. By way of a conclusion, we suggest some possible implications of our analysis. Apart from offering some interesting empirical material that is counter-intuitive to the general understanding that technology reflects and reinforces men’s masculinity, the paper provides a variety of theoretical interpretations, none of which we would ultimately accept as exhaustive or conclusive. This may be seen as providing some support for the postmodern feminist caution against treating gender as continuous, homogenous and universal. In our case studies, a conception of fragmentary and multiple identities might better facilitate an understanding of the relationships between men and women, or masculinity and femininity with respect to the introduction of new technology in different workplace settings. At the same time, we have suggested that it might be precisely the masculinity especially of the older men that rendered them inflexible to the changes demanded by the new technology. Clearly, masculine discourses are a condition and consequence of the instrumental drive for results or ‘performativity’ (Lyotard, 1984) that is demanded by corporate enterprise whether public or private. Our research, however, suggests that masculinity may have a ‘downside’ in acting as a constraint on the productive power of organisation. In practitioner’s terms, this may be damaging insofar as masculinity reflects and reinforces rigid employee behaviour at precisely a time when organisations seek more flexibility in their responses to a diverse and fickle market place for their products and services.
Summary and Conclusion In this article we have been concerned to examine the literature on masculinity, gender and technology or science as the context for discussing two case studies where new information technology had recently been introduced. The literature would lead us to expect that men would welcome changes in work practices that involved a greater use of ICT. Partly this derives from the strong association between technology and what it is to be a man. Masculine discourses have traditionally elevated ‘hard’, scientific and technically sophisticated means of achieving particular ends. This sustains the gender stereotype whereby men secure their sense of themselves by subscribing to an instrumental rationality that is reflected in, facilitated by, and reproduced through technological artefacts. Our case studies, however, have provided some limited evidence to contradict this view at least with respect to older men in both types of organisation and some older women in the schools. Older men were largely resistant to using the new technology in both case studies whereas older women in the schools became supportive of the use of computers in teaching over time. The reasons that older men themselves offer for their refusal to accept ICT ranges from their lacking the new technical skills and therefore having problems using the new machines to an opposition to changes in general. That the changes in work practices were driven by new technology may be less important than the mere fact that they disrupted the men’s routines. Acknowledgements We wish to thank the Malmsten Foundation and Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research for the financial support that has facilitated this research. References Aaltio-Marjosola, I. and G. Sevón (1997), ‘Gendering Organisation Topics’, Administrative Studies, Hallinnon Tutkimus 4, 269–271. Amsden, A.H. (1980), The Economics of Women and Work (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Bederman, G. (1990), Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States 1880–1917 (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press). Berg, A.-J. and M. Lie (1995), ‘Feminism and Constructivism: Do Artifacts Have Gender?’, Science, Technology & Human Values 20, 3, 332–351. Berner, B. (ed.) (2003), Vem tillhör tekniken? Kunskap och kön i teknikens värld (Lund: Arkiv förlag).
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