Age, Gender, and Work: Small Information Technology Firms in the New Economy ed. by Julie Ann McMullin (review)

A welcome contribution to the literature on employment equity in the trans-national, globalized “new” economy, Julie Ann McMullin’s slim volume is packed with scope for further study. Historians of working-class Canada and labour relations will want to take the time to read this sociological analysis, for it offers glimpses of the lived experiences of individuals employed in the contemporary it industry, and raises questions about the evolution of gendered constructions and generational consciousness in these firms. Indeed, as the authors argue, the phenomenon of ageism, in particular, cries out for more academic attention, particularly in terms of the historical context of these stereotypes. In fact, although this book is focused on research carried out in small it firms, the larger implications of how individuals are selected for retention and employment based on definitions of “adaptability” and “flexibility,” often informed by stereotypical assumptions related to the use of technology, have application across time and space to the larger economy.

This study is multi-authored, and is the product of a sshrc-funded research project called Workforce Aging in the New Economy (wane), based in the Sociology Department at the University of Western Ontario (www.wane.ca). The book is the analysis component of the research carried out by seven sociologists in 47 selected it firms based in England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The authors demonstrate how gender and age (re-)construct the relationships underpinning paid and unpaid labour in the contemporary field of information technology. It is argued that these relationships combine to create four main gender “regimes” that are recognizable with some variations across the geographical space examined; these are identified as masculinist, benignly paternalistic, benignly maternalistic, and balanced. These structural limitations then define the workplace cultures in which individuals negotiate the division of labour and their relationships with others. The wane results suggest that small to mid-sized it firms appear to be staffed primarily by men under the age of 35, and despite “the best intentions of individual employers to create welcoming work-places,” the economic climate makes this difficult. (56)

Perhaps surprisingly for an archivist who spends her day classifying documents, I am uncomfortable with sociological categories applied to groups, and so read the methodological analysis of the classification of gender regimes with some skepticism. However, I found the descriptions of how women and men actually experienced these constructions, and negotiated their family lives and leisure activities, more thought provoking. Particularly engaging is the emphasis on life course and linked lives perspectives. The authors were interested in exploring how individuals made work-related choices in relation to other events and people in their lives, and this is demonstrated in the text using extracts from oral interviews. From a theoretical perspective, this approach allows the study to capture the negotiated aspect of individual choices based on self-identified constraints, but as the authors suggest, the limitations may be more structural and systemic than their interviewees realize.

wane found there to be a widely held view in the industry that by age 40, it workers in small to mid-sized firms are “stale-dated,” and that this age stereotype appears to be a moving target, as technological innovation speeds up. As the authors suggest, “determining which workers are the most productive is not an exact science, and employers sometimes make such decisions based on information about average characteristics of the group or groups to which an individual belongs.” (137) This kind of statistical discrimination, which could also be directed against young women seen to be more liable to request parental leave, effectively places a large group of otherwise employable economic contributors in a disadvantaged position. It occurs to me that such stereotypical assumptions may be a poor investment for the it industry itself. Real innovators are not dissuaded from creative thinking by their own age or gender; the industry may be depriving itself of the leaders it...