Women’s Studies
Book Details

Pink Collar Blues

Work, Gender and Technology

Edited by Belinda Probert and Bruce Wilson

Analyses the connections between gender relations and the new technologies.

About this Title

The wordprocessor has revolutionised the workplace but exactly what changes have computers brought to our working lives—and who benefits? Will it mean that women’s skills are increased—or devalued? What are ‘women’s skills’? And how can the information revolution be turned to women’s advantage? With one-third of women workers in clerical jobs, the links between the women’s movement and the computer revolution are many and subtle. the implications of technological change for women’s work are still to be fully felt.

Pink Collar Blues explores these issues. It analyses the connection between gender relations and the new technologies. With contributors from the USA, Europe and Australia, it gives an international overview of the power relations implicit in the way work is organised and how these relations influence the introduction and outcomes of new technology.

All those concerned with industrial relations and women’s role in the workforce will find this book’s questions provocative and its solutions constructive.

Table of Contents

Note on Contributors; Preface; 1. Gendered work by Belinda Probert and Bruce W. Wilson; 2. The masculine mystique: a feminist analysis of science and technology by Judy Wajcman; 3. Women’s skills and work processors: gender issues in the development of the automated office by Juliet Webster; 4. New technology and work organisation: the role of gender relations by Eileen Appelbaum; 5. Naming women’s workplace skills: linguistics and power by Cate Poynton; 6. Human-centred systems, gender and computer supported co-operative work by Mike Hales; 7. Gender, unions and the new workplace: realising the promise? by Miriam Henry and Suzanne Franzway; Bibliography; Index

About the Author

Dr Belinda Probert, formerly at the Centre of International Research on Communication and Information Technologies, is a Visiting Fellow at La Trobe University and a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University. She is the author of Beyond Orange and Green: The Political Economy of the Northern Ireland Crisis and Working Life: Arguments about Work in Australian Society.

Bruce W. Wilson is the Director of the Union Research Centre on Organisation and Technology. He is the co-author of Confronting School and Work, Shaping Futures and Social Division, Economy and Schooling.

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978-0-522-84520-4