Is new technology — computers, wordprocessors, electronic calculators, telecommunications and the like — an instrument for the liberation of women or for our oppression? As new technology enters our lives more and more with each passing day, this is a question women are asking. In both developing countries and in highly industrialized ones, we are feeling the effects of new technology on our ways of life and in our work, both waged and unwaged.
In this bulletin we have begun to examine the impact of the microelectronics industry on women: on women workers in third world countries who produce the electronic components for computers, on women in industrialized countries whose jobs are being affected by increasing computerization of the workplace, on women who are trying to break the myths surrounding the complexity of computers and to gain control over them. These are very much interrelated issues. When we look at the impact of new technology on women, one thing stands out clearly. The new technology is not neutral. It is very much a political issue which we must face and grapple with.
Third World
The impact of new technology on men and women is not always the same. It is women who make up the majority of workers on the production line in the electronics factories, whether in California, Mexico or Southeast Asia. Women are the ones bending over microscopes to perform the tedious and eye-straining job of attaching hundreds of minute wires on silicon chips. They are the ones dipping the chips in toxic, hazardous chemicals and thus producing the integrated circuits which are the essential elements of computers for whatever use. The majority of engineers and managers of the electronics companies are men. They are the ones making the decisions about what kinds of machines to produce, for what purposes, about how to make the most profits for their companies. One way of increasing their profits is to exploit the cheap labor of young women in third world countries. They are encouraged in this by many of these countries and by development agencies who are promoting economic growth through export-oriented industry, a kind of "development" which depends in part on the exploitation of women.
Industrialized world
At the same time, new technology is having an enormous impact on jobs in industrialized countries — an impact which will be felt more and more in developing ones too as time passes. The automation of factory jobs is affecting both men and women, but the places where new technology has had the most striking effect so far are the areas which employ great numbers of women: offices, banks, health systems. As the articles in this bulletin point out, women are finding our jobs deskilled, our places of work dehumanized. With the increasing use of machines which can do the job faster and more cheaply than people, we are finding ourselves out of a paid job.
Often this new technology has simply slipped into our lives without our really noticing it. We have become passive accepters and victims of it. Because of this, some people are now crying out about the dehumanization of life through new technology, about the massive unemployment to come, about the need to resist these negative effects.
At the same time, others are predicting a bright new future with new technology liberating us from routine work, freeing us to be creative. They sing the praises of technology which will have a democratizing effect, giving everyone access to information at the touch of a button in our own homes, registering our opinions, communicating our views with another touch of a button.
Yet again others feel that new technology is here to stay and will increasingly enter into all our lives whether in industrialized countries or the third world. Good or bad, we have to accept it, learn to live with it, and, if possible, make it work for us
Many feminist groups in industrialized countries especially, where new technology is very evident in our daily lives, feel that women are being left out once more as we have so many times in the past when new developments are introduced in society. Technology is the province of men in our society. We have so internalized society's attitude to us that we are incapable of understanding and manipulating the complexities of technology and so it is men who are designing the machines and the programs and women who are becoming the unskilled feeders of the machines. Many feminist groups are now trying to smash the myth about the complexity of computers and telecommunications systems, learning how to use them, and how to program them.
As computers become cheaper and cheaper and smaller and smaller, many feminist groups and publications, especially in North America, find themselves able to buy computers. Those who are still typing out articles and mailing lists rather than using wordprocessors and computerized mailing lists feel left behind. In industrialized societies it is becoming a disadvantage to have to make do with manual documentation or library systems when all around us big institutions have access to enormous
data banks which can answer information needs in seconds; or to have still to use slow postal systems, when telecommunications systems are becoming more common.
Myths
While it is necessary to break the myth of the mysteriousness and complexity of computers, it is also necessary to break the myth of the limitless capacity and almost magical powers of the machines which is also sometimes prevalent. While new technology can perform extremely complex operations in split-second time, they have their limitations. Some of these are due to infrastructure and programs. Those of us in industrialized countries who come into daily contact with computers, know that there are still some problems to be ironed out. Which of us has not been frustrated trying to make a train or plane reservation, trying to make an international phone call, trying to get some simple piece of business done at the post office, bank or government office because the "computer isn't working at the moment" or because of some bug in the program that may take months to work out. The marvels of technology will undoubtedly come up with answers to the problems of infrastructure. The problems of programs are a bit more difficult.
Learning to use the machines is not enough, it is the programs which are most important. iVIost of the programs are designed by men, for the purposes they have in mind: many of these are for military purposes, for profits and for control of information and people. Most of the programs available on the market are designed by the manufacturers of the hardware (the computers) themselves. One buys the software (program) package along with the machine. Most of the programs are tied to a particular brand of computer and are not interchangeable - although this too is changing as microcomputers are becoming more powerful and common. There are programs for wordprocessing, for mailing lists, for accounting, for various office procedures, etc. Some small groups and organizations who are trying to make use of computers have found, however, that the available programs are not suitable for their needs. This was one of the conclusions of a meeting of small documentation centers from the third world and Europe, held in Lisbon in early 1982. They found commercial programs for retrieving information simply not adequate for their needs. It was also made very clear at this meeting that new technology is not neutral.
Power and control
This is the crux of the matter. New technology has a great deal to do with questions of power and control over our lives. It is not just a question of control in the sense of being able to use the machines, but a question of who is controlling the decisions about what kind of technology to develop in the first place, what kind of programs to develop, for what purposes, who will have access to the technology, who will profit from it.
The issues of exploited women workers in electronics factories, of women workers displaced by machines in industrialized ones are thus very much a part of the issue of new technology and how it is used. There is also another issue which the articles in this bulletin do not touch on but which must not be ignored: what is the relationship of the appropriate technology movement to new technology? Unfortunately there has been little discussion between those advocating the use of low cost, simple,
low energy technologies and those who feel that the future lies in a microelectronic revolution. Appropriate technology is being advocated for use mainly in third world countries, although some are concerned about using it in industrialized countries as well, especially in the area of energy. Does appropriate technology mean that third world countries are to be tied into simple technologies while the rich industrialized countries dominate and control the use of high technology?
The issue of new technology also raises question about the relationships between women. Will new technology create new gaps between an elite of women who have access to it in a given society and those who do not? Will it create new gaps between women in industrialized countries who succeed in using it for themselves and women in developing countries who have no access to it or who are exploited by the microelectronics industry in the workplace? What about the relationships between feminist groups in industrialized countries who have access to the new technology and those who do not, whether in industrialized countries or developing ones? What does it mean for feminists to use computers which have been made affordable because of the exploitation of other women workers? Will women's groups repeat the patterns of the male world, with data banks and communications systems, situated in and controlled in North America and Europe? What kind of access and control, what kind of decision making patterns will develop? These are questions which are beginning to come up at international meetings of women. How can we solve these issues? How can we develop solidarity around them? The women's movement has only just begun to ask these questions and to discuss them. We need to do a lot more thinking and exchange on these issues. We hope this bulletin will be a contribution to this discussion, a starting point. We invite other women to contribute to this discussion and to exchange our ideas, experiments, experiences and visions.