Sex And Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media

6. The Political Economy of Women’s Employment in the Information Sector

Prior to Machlup’s publication of Production and Distribution in 1962, economists traditionally divided the economy into three parts: primary/extractive, secondary/industrial, and tertiary/services. Machlup was the first to conceptually carve out a fourth sector: the knowledge/ information sector. The Industrial Revolution largely shifted the U.S. economy from a primary/extractive economy to a secondary/industrial economy. The industrial economy was characterized by two factors: (1) the majority of the nation’s wealth was produced in manufacturing, and (2) the majority of the civilian labor force was employed in industrial jobs. Today, however, much of the U.S. national wealth derives from the production, distribution, and manipulation of information.1 Similarly, the majority of the civilian labor force work in information jobs, or jobs whose primary output is the production, distribution, and manipulation of information.2 This economy is now known as an information economy, and the largest sector of employment is known as the information sector. This paper analyzes the relationships among gender , information technology, and work in the information sector. There is no consensus in the literature about how women will fare in an information-centered economy. Bell (1973) argued that, since women are heavily employed in services and since demand for services would grow in an information-centered economy, women workers would be more in demand. Webster’s and Robins’s (1986) argument is somewhat less rosy. They assert that women will be particularly vulnerable because they usually hold positions in the workforce that are the least skilled and least likely to be unionized. Hartmann et al. (1986) predict neither job loss nor growth for women but merely shifting in occupational structure as some jobs disappear while others appear. Then primary objective of this paper is to scrutinize the patterns of women’s employment in the information sector and, in the process, explain how these patterns have evolved and what trajectory may lie ahead. The section below looks at the patterns by gender in information employment and gives some theoretical explanations for sex-segregation in information work. The next section looks at the role that information 75 6. The Political Economy of Women’s Employment in the Information Sector Stana Martin technology plays in reshaping women’s occupational structure in the information sector. The last section briefly addresses two oft-cited predictions for employment growth in the next century and relates these to the analysis presented here. Before we arrive there, however, we must first turn to patterns of employment in the information sector by gender. Gender Patterns in the Information Sector Table 1 details employment by gender in the four sectors of the economy from 1970 to 1995.3 First and foremost, both agriculture and industry continue to decline in share of all employment for both genders. Employment in these sectors as a proportion of all employment is waning even as services and information grow. Secondly, the gendered nature of occupational structure is clearly evident. Men have historically dominated in industry while women have dominated in information. Looking at the total numbers of men and women in the information sector, it is clear that women outnumber men for all years. In 1970, 1.06 women worked in information work for each man. By 1990 the ratio of women to men had grown to 1.43 to 1. Clearly, women have been the “preferred” worker in information employment. While the information sector has been dominated by women workers , it has also dominated women’s employment. Unlike men’s employment , the information sector has long been the bastion of women’s work. From 1970 to 1995, the majority of women’s employment was in information. In 1970, 57.96 percent of all women’s work was in information . By 1995 that percentage had risen to 63.84. The largest employing sector for men, on the other hand, was industry in 1970 at 46.27 percent. From 1970 to 1995 employment in industry progressively declined for men (down to 39.58 percent) and employment in information increased (up to 41.18 percent by 1995). It is important to note that this shift occurred in the last five years of the data. Even as late as 1990, men were about equally divided between information work and industrial work. Thus, though men’s employment in information rose dramatically, women have been characteristically the dominant workforce for the information sector, and the information sector has dominated women’s employment. Underlying these trends, however, are more subtle microtrends. From...