OVERVIEW

The workshop discussed the displacement of women from paid employment due to the introduction of new technologies. It is often thought that women do not have equal rights to jobs and that they do not need paid employment. But this attitude assumes that women have something else to do, i.e. go back to the home, and that they are willing and able to depend economically on men. It is necessary that we study the effects of the use of new technology systematically to see how the displacement of women can be a voided.

Several papers on the effects of automation in Japan and India were presented and discussed, and t he workshop came up with many recommendations to make women more aware of what was taking place. These were:

i ) To build up an international information on women and technology. 

ii) The need for simple, easy to read publications on the status of women workers worldwide inorder to gain a mutual understanding of our sisters ' working conditions in industrialized and developing countries.

i i i ) Information produced by women for women from different cultures, backgrounds, and educational levels in order to be able to understand each other's situations.

i v ) Women from all educational levels- scientists, technicians, clerical and production workers - should work together.

v) Share funding of feminist research.

v i i ) Find non.-bureaucratic organisations on which to create a network to facilitate our recommendations.

v i i i ) Exchange articles produced by women working on new technology, particularly in developing countries. All articles should be sent to ISIS.

EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN JAPAN Presented by Shiga

Unemployment in Japan has been increasing every year since the oil crisis of 1978. According to a recent survey , the number of people out of work (paid employment) was 1,360,000 in 1982 - an increase of 7.6 percent from the year before. This increase is considered to have partly arise n from the technological " revolution", and women and older workers are being particularly affected . It is feared that this will get worse.

This finding is backed up by a labour ministry survey which found that office automation has replaced many female workers. Employment in big companies has increased by 3.1 percent- a 6.1 percent increase for men, but a it.3 percent decrease for women. The type of work affected was usually clerical work.

A third survey, conducted in 1983, found that "workers using new processes consist mainly of young men in their 20s and 30s and that the number of women or older workers is very small". Younger male workers, who are more adaptable to such new technology are taking the lead in the race for jobs and replacing skilled workers.

What is happening to this excess supply of labour?

i ) Internal adjustments - replacement of old jobs with new ones and reshuffling of personnel;
i i ) Natural wastage and early retirement;
i i i ) Employees (usually male) are loaned to subsidiaries;
i v ) Part-time and temporary contracts are not renewed. This affects many women.

At the same time, entry of new labour is greatly restricted and the number of unemployed school leavers and graduates is on the increase. Women workers are again particularly affected. Banks, for example, a traditional large employer of women, have gone in for the most advanced automation systems and have employed 30-50 percent fewer women in 1982 as compared to 1981.

Electronic equipment has promoted the simplification and standarisation of office work and the number of regular employees can be reduced or substituted by part-timers. In the office of one bank, computers are used for filing and accounts, and half of the workers
are now employed on apart-time basis.

Computerisation of the bigger businesses has also led to difficulties for the smaller firms who did much of their business for them. Unemployment is being Created all round.

WOMEN AHD NEW TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA By Asha

New Techology does not only mean micro electronics and computers. It can be any form of technology which replaces an older technology. This is particularly the case in India where many new technologies are being introduced in all sectors of the economy.

In India, the majority of women (about 80%) are employed in agriculture, with industry and services taking up the remaining 20 percent. The participation of women in industry has been declining since 1961, while there has been as light increase in the number of women employed in the service sector as doctors, nurses and other health personnel, teachers, and office workers.

In agriculture, about 80% of women agricultural workers are in the non- organised sector (which i s unaffected by most labour laws and organisations) . Agricultural labourers are divided in to two categories- cultivators and agricultural labourers. Cultivators can be either absentee land lords, lease holders or tenants, while labourers work on acasual basis wherever they can find work. There has been adrastic decline in the number of women cultivators - a decrease of 50 percent between 1961 and 1981, and a corresponding increase in the number of women agricultural labourers. This gives an idea of the increasing pauperisation of women inagriculture. There are several reasons behind this change, but the introduction of "modern" cultivation methods and new technologies has played a significant role as the following examples illustrate.

i ) Methods of cultivation: the introduction of new cultivation methods in some of the tribal areas, where traditionally there was a lot of participation by women. Even in the matrilineal community of t he Garos (Meghalaya), the development of orchards and terraced cultivation has started the reduction of activities available to women.

i i ) The Green Revolution: a programme to increase food grain production introducted by the Indian government using American technology in the 1960s and 1970s. The technology incorporated a package of inputs-high yielding variety seeds, pesticides, and irrigation. All these inputs had to be purchased and very few farmers could afford the necessary investment. The "revolution" was very profitable for the richer farmers but brought about massive dispossesion of the poorer ones and created much rural unemployment. The programme, too, ignored the important part that women played in the agricultural economy. Later on when a womens' component in the rural development programme was introduced, it was taken from the American Home Science Extension programme and taught the women crafts, sewing, kitchen gardening and jam and jelly making. Its objective was to help them become "good wives, wise mothers, competent housewives, and responsible members of the community".

Thus, the following points about the adverse effects of the Green Revolution and women can be made:

1) Women get little opportunity to learn about improved farm methods, technological skills, and cooperatives.

2) Women are excluded from the operation and control of the new water pumps, diesel pumps, tractors, etc. Therefore the women are left with the obsolet labour intensive technology such as chaff cutters, handpumps, etc.

3) Women are relegated to the less skilled jobs which involve more physical work.

4) Credit facilities are rarely available to women as they are regarded as a poor risk.

5) The technology is anti-participatory.

6) There is a loss of control over decision- making - women are very poorly represented on local councils and cooperatives.

7) Jobs have been lost and money income reduced. Where the Green Revolution has been the most successful, the number of women' s jobs has been miserably reduced.

8) Wage discrimination continues.

9) Women's control over marketing and expenditure is reduced.

10) Women' s involvement in production is viewed as secondary to their reproductive role. All of which result in women's greater dependence on
men.

In non-agricultural traditional occupations, employment has also been decreasing rapidly. Between 1960 and 1981, the number of women' s jobs lost was 3.3 million.

In the handweaving sector modernisation displaces women workers because many of the pre weaving jobs-preparation of warp and weft, etc.-are done by them. The upgrading of the dairy industry has also adversely affected women. A scheme to mechanise and modernise milk food production, known as the "white revolution", has taken dairying out of the women's hands. Women constituted only 10 percent of the membership of 481 new cooperatives, and very few women have acquired mastery over the new technology which now produces the products they were traditionally responsible for. In the organised sector, too, women's participation has been decreasing . In factories,  employment has generally been increasing while the number of women is declining. The same is also true in mining, and on plantations. Three major reasons account for this decline:

i ) the impact of protective labour laws;
i i ) the impact of policies which aim to equalise male and female wages;
i i i ) structural changes in industry through rationalisation and modernisation.

The last factor is the single most important factor contributing to the decline in women's employment. When industrialisation first started in India, production included several manual and semi-manual stages, but the introduction of modern, high speed machinery has significantly reduced the number of such operations, which were mainly done by women

In many industries, women are not given any chance to acquire new training when a new process or machine is introduced. Whereas for men there is generally an agreement between the trade unions and the management that training will be given, such training for women is generally overlooked, and some senior executives have admitted that they have a policy of replacing women with men or machines. Women are also handicapped by a lack of technical training. The majority of displaced women are illiterate or semiliterate

In the service sector, modernisation is more recent and it is difficult to draw any conclusions but computerisation is taking place rapidly and many companies may use this as a reason to get rid of workers.

It is thus clear that processes are always undergoing technological change, but they need not necessarily result in adverse effects for certain groups. In itself technology is neutral- how i t i used and who uses it are the importa t questions. However, the picture so far i s not very hopeful. Women have been extremely adversely affected by the introduction of new processes in India. Some of them are trying to do something about this, but in a country where 94 percent of women work in the non-organised sector, this is not easy. Perhaps the most important task for women in India is to start organising and benefitting from new technology.

The International Labour Office (ILO) sees training for women as a "priority need in Asia". In an article in its information bulletin of May 1983, it points out that " if Asian countries are to avoid a vast army of unemployed female labour, facilities must be made available to train them in appropriate skills". A recent workshop organised by the ILO and the Asian Regional Skill Development Programme in Islamabad, stressed the need to include the education, training, and employment of women in national development plans.

The participants from 12 Asian and Pacific countries made suggestions for the identification of various groups of women and their participation in training programmes. They also recommended that enterprises with low female participation be offered incentives to employ more women.

ILO Information Vol.19 No. 21983 ILO, 1211 Geneva 22 Switzerland

Use talked about Japan as an example of where new technology has been responsible for a decline i n the number of possibilities available to women. Japan's post-war industrial success can be attributed to several factors: good industrial relations between entreprises and workers, the fund of older and women workers without job security who can be made redundent when necessary, centralised planning and coordination between governmental institutions and entreprises, large subsidies for research, a very low expenditure on arms, and the exploitation of SE Asia (for natural resources and cheap female labour).

Development in Japan has been supported by sex segregation in the labour market. Women are primarily considered as wives and mothers and only as they get older as workers. Harried women are used as an auxiliary workforce to be used in times of economic growth. The lack of childcare facilities enforce part-time or home working.

How has the growth of microelectronics influenced this situation? What effects has automation had on the qualifications demanded by employers and on t he gender of employees? Automation has increased labour productivity and reduced employment. In the fight for the existing jobs, qualifications required have escalated and women and older workers are being by-passed b/ young, competitive males. Job losses are expected to get even bigger after 1990 and many more female workers will be out of work. Use poses the question whether work will eventually become less important in Japan, a country she considers to be already in the 21st century, and if so, what will happen to women? She questions the Japanese Marxist economist Tasuko Noguchi's vision of the future. He envisages an economy with three sectors-production, consumption, and software (microelectronic information systems, data processing) - in which the software sector will control the other two. Both production and consumption will become fully automated. Assembly lines would be operated by robots centrally programmed; transport systems would also be run without humans. Consumption would take place through electronic networks, and education and medical care would be given via video and home terminals.

Whether this would lead to a disappearance of housework remains to be seen. An aside in "Technopia 1990", published by the information unit of the Ministry of International Commerce and Industry (Mill), describes the family of the future-Mr. and Mrs. Suzuki and two children. Mr. Suzuki is involved in a permanent meeting to provide information exchange. Mrs.Suzuki is the ever-helpful, supporting wife who does the cooking .. Technopatriarcha 1990?

Thus, argues Use, we must ask questions before it is too late, and we are once more overtaken. We need determination, courage, and above all, technical qualifications to analyse what is going on and to be able to have some influence over it. Women must support each other in order to influence the use to which technology is put.