From Digital Binary to Analog Continuum: Measuring Gendered IT Labor: Notes toward Multidimensional Methodologies

Introduction: Theorizing Technology as Practice and Process

Technology is more than just objects. Technology is, as Ursula Franklin suggests in her germinal work, The Real World of Technology, also a set of social practices and processes that define communities and groups through "ways of doing something."¹ Terms such as "knowledge economy" and "information worker" define a group of immensely diverse occupations and industries by their shared "way of doing something," namely, working with information technologies (IT). Though these terms are used primarily as labels that delineate highly valued groups, they also often conceal, rather than reveal, the nature of such work. Is a data entry worker, for example, an "information worker" in the same way as a software designer, because they both use a computer to process information? The definitions of such occupational groups can also lead to particular assumptions of value about the work. We tend not to ask what is actually "known" in our "knowledge economy," or for that matter, whether "knowing" is better than "understanding." The use of the word "knowledge" is peculiar in this case, as the ultimate goal of many technological systems is to eliminate human error and presumed user stupidity. Other types of occupations not viewed as "knowledge occupations," such as trades occupations, can be comparatively rich in knowledge, expertise, and critical tidbits of data. Given that in the context of scientific rationalism, certain marginalized groups of people, including women, have not been viewed as "knowers" and have been excluded from particular kinds of knowledge communities, such terms can hide the social relations of power and privilege that shape technological processes.

All forms of work have been affected by technology. Technological developments have changed what is seen as normal, possible, and desirable. Although all forms of work have been changed by technology, they tend to retain the structure that was present before the technology was introduced. For example, despite the introduction of a wide variety of household technologies, women still do the bulk of unpaid domestic labor in the home.² While indeed it takes longer to learn to use a cyclotron than to use a vacuum cleaner, the fact remains that while technology has in some way altered all forms of work, it has tended not to change the social relations upon which work is premised.

"Knowledge work" or, more accurately, work within a field that is broadly labeled information technology (IT), has often been portrayed since the advent of the computer network as a fundamentally new form of work. While IT work has now become routine and, indeed, with the downturn of the so-called dotcom industry, something of a symbol of industrial hubris, there is nevertheless a pervasive cultural sense that despite such glitches of banality and imminent economic deflation the inevitable "progress" will nevertheless occur. Industry publications are rife with panting hyperbole about the power of technology to change the world, even as they lament job losses to offshore programmers. Despite the IT industry's claim to novelty, considerable evidence exists that IT highlights ongoing tensions in the general organization of the labor market and evokes concerns around labor that have been familiar since the Industrial Revolution. Despite new language and new tasks, technological work reflects and reproduces fundamental social, economic, and political trends. In terms of the technology itself, social relations largely determine its conception, development, implementation, and process.³

Technological Labor and Gender

Early work on technology and gender tended to homogenize both these elements. Certain assumptions were embedded in discussions of gender and technology. For example, "gender" usually meant "women" (and only a certain imagined group of women who stood for the collective whole of women), and "technology" meant "computers" and not, say, blenders or tampon applicators. Technological theories such as those of Sadie Plant took up the notion of "digital" as a metaphor for emergent...