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Bringing technology home: Gender and technology in changing Europe
Focus on Books
Reviews of current books discussing subjects on the horizon of business activities, particularly those on controversial issues being encountered by both practitioners and teachers, will be considered for publication. Manuscript guidelines are available upon request.
Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe Edited by Cynthia Cockburn Fiirst-Dilic
and Ruza
i%e reviewer, Alfred Diamant, is a professor ofpolitical science and West European studies at Indiana Universit?/.Bloomington. The essays making up this volume are devoted to exploring the relationship of gender and technology in the manufacturing process in Europe. One chapter is devoted to the same issues in banking in Greece, another examines certain technology products in the United States. The authors and editors are a group of European sociologists who began their work in 1988 and completed it in 1993. This book provides some fascinating insights into the impact that massive political-economic change in the former Soviet Union (Chapter 6) and the former Yugoslavia (Chapter 8) had on the researchers and their work. The introductory chapter by the editors strikes some strident feminist notes and highlights the most obvious and blatant instances of male macho patterns of behavior. But the individual chapters written by the various investigators follow the standards of empirical social inquiry (nonmathematical branch) and let the outcomes speak for themselves. And without exception, these outcomes demonstrate that technology, engineering, and manufacturing are male domains and that the perspectives of the designers and engineers are male per-
spectives-even when creating an artifact that will almost surely be used solely, or mostly, by women. Female home economists are sometimes employed by a manufacturer to advise on the use of a product. But they are clearly inferior in status to the engineers and their advice is not always taken seriously. What women “might want” comes to the engineers only through the surveys of the marketing department; occasionally female consumers get in a word when designers and engineers take prototypes home for their wives to try. There seems to be no end to the ways in which male designers have produced artifacts fitting male characteristics, such as the size and shape of control knobs. Such gender-driven technology seems to be spread quite uniformly throughout Europe, characterizing both capitalist and (former) communist or socialist countries. The pattern revealed in all the eight case studies came as no surprise to me, drawing in good part on my own sojourn in manufacturing enterprises in both Europe and America. I would guess that LJS. market research, design, and engineering have learned to be considerably more sensitive to the demands of the market, though they are not likely to have sloughed off the sort of gender stereotyping reported in this volume. From Greece to Norway and from banking to pantyhose manufacturing, the eight case studies present a faxnating array of countries and workplace settings. Chapter 1 discusses the installation of central vacuuming systems for the private home in Finland; Chapter 2 traces the development of the microwave oven in England; the introduction of computerized banking in Greece and the gender-related consequences-mostly negative-for fe-
77
male banking employees are presented in Chapter 3; Chapter 4 discusses the design and development of a food processor in France and its subsequent use in the household; Chapter 5 deals with the introduction of the French-invented “minitel” (a home-based video text system with modem) in Norway, which seems not to have developed strong gender contrasts in use. New washing machine models in Barcelona (Chapter 7) were developed mostly by the Spanish branch of an MNC, which seems to have proceeded in the well-established pattern of a male-dominated engineering department that “imagined” what female consumers might want but did not bother to ask them directly. In Chapter 9, a Norwegian researcher examines three models of U.S.-designed and built “smart homes”-an innovative “house of the future” that, housewives were assured, would do “anything you want done“ (p. 173). It turns out, however, that virtually none of these innovations have anything directly to do with housework. Rather, they deal with such matters as climate control, security, and entertainment. In all three models, the Norwegian investigator comments drily, housework is “out of sight, out of mind” (p. 171). The pantyhose factory in Russia (Chapter 6) has not yet been privatized and thus continues to function much as before. Because women’s wear is part of the “light industry” set tor. women have risen to the kind of managerial positions from which they continue to be excluded in the “heavy industry” sector. The male-female wage gap has not shrunk. and gender segregation by type of job continues. Men create new knowledge for the sector they dominate, while the female-dominated sector nlmt COntinLle to make do with an outmoded laborintensive technology. The other chapter dealing with a country and economy in transition. Chapter 8, only adds to the evidence of a male-dominated technology even where official Marxist ideology not only ITact decreed gender equality but had enabled women to gain full access to education and training, including higher education. Thus, in both of these case studies (Russia and Yugo-
slavia), about 90 percent of the women are in the work force yet still fully responsible for operating and maintaining a household. At the same time, men enjoy the fruits of mechanization, as in agriculture, while women’s work on the farm continues in its age-old, labor-intensive form. In the robotics/ computer industry in the former Yugoslavia, women occupy the “theoretical options” while men do the “applications.” It is the latter jobs that lead men directly into managerial positions not generally offered to the “theorist female.” Reflecting on the evidence of these case studies, one does not have to be any sort of “feminist” to support the strategy advocated by the editors of this volume: (1) women’s right to healthy, sustainable, paid work; (2) more women in technological design; (3) supportive domestic technologies to make housework pleasant; and (4) making technology better serve the domestic and private sphere and the whole range of gender relations. We are nearing the end of a millennium, but the millennium-however conceived-is still far off. A greater awareness of the issues raised in these case studies would be in order right now.
Leading With Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit By Lee G. Bolman Deal
and Terrence
L%e retjieuler, William Howe, assistant professor ojleadership at the lJniver.@y @Richmond mend, Virginia. Had enough
E.
is an studies in Kich-
of the traditional social science and business management accounts of leadership? Tired of the
rational/logical/industrial/structural/ functional, here’s-how-you-become-asuccessful/effective/productive-leader books? Or the journal-oriented leadership articles that seem inextricably wedded to, and embedded in, a few “legitimate” disciplines-psychology, business management, and perhaps sociology? Feeling as though something is missing in leadership studies and practice? Something that has little to do with the usual litany of leadership theories and concepts, the often invoked “new paradigms” of leadership, or “bottom lines,” cyberspace, restructuring, reengineering, and “the right stuff”? Leading With Soul, a radical departure from the mainstream leadership literature, may be just what you’ve been waiting for. At the very least, it may prod you to rethink the way leadership should be conceived, practiced, and taught, even as it may also compel you to examine who you are as a person, leader, and/or teacher. Here is a book-actually a story or fable composed of parables, questions. koans, reflections, and dialogues-that seems to take narrative through the looking glass and into unexplored territory far from the madding crowd of institutionalized social science. Here is “an uncommon journey of spirit” that, despite its unusual and different approach to leadership, encourages all of iis to follow its strange narrative path on the journey undertaken by its main character, Steven Camden-himself an allegorical Everyman who, like Bunyan’s Christian in Pilgrim 3 Progress, represents the spiritual quester in all men. Here is a marvelous fiction that may reveal more truth about us and about leadership than a stack of the most carefully designed empirical studies.
And here is a literary creation that we, its readers, help to create as we identify with Steven and reflect upon its paral~les, paradoxes, and questions. Altogether. this is a courageous venture into a realm that leadership scholars. practitioners, and teachers have neglected and even rejected. To some it may seetn ethereal fluff; to others it may seem nonscientific perspective-taking; still others may deem it useless, opinion. much
nonpragmatic wisps of But such nonbelievers-
like the spiritually
empty
Steven
Reviews of current books discussing subjects on the horizon of business activities, particularly those on controversial issues being encountered by both practitioners and teachers, will be considered for publication. Manuscript guidelines are available upon request.
Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe Edited by Cynthia Cockburn Fiirst-Dilic
and Ruza
i%e reviewer, Alfred Diamant, is a professor ofpolitical science and West European studies at Indiana Universit?/.Bloomington. The essays making up this volume are devoted to exploring the relationship of gender and technology in the manufacturing process in Europe. One chapter is devoted to the same issues in banking in Greece, another examines certain technology products in the United States. The authors and editors are a group of European sociologists who began their work in 1988 and completed it in 1993. This book provides some fascinating insights into the impact that massive political-economic change in the former Soviet Union (Chapter 6) and the former Yugoslavia (Chapter 8) had on the researchers and their work. The introductory chapter by the editors strikes some strident feminist notes and highlights the most obvious and blatant instances of male macho patterns of behavior. But the individual chapters written by the various investigators follow the standards of empirical social inquiry (nonmathematical branch) and let the outcomes speak for themselves. And without exception, these outcomes demonstrate that technology, engineering, and manufacturing are male domains and that the perspectives of the designers and engineers are male per-
spectives-even when creating an artifact that will almost surely be used solely, or mostly, by women. Female home economists are sometimes employed by a manufacturer to advise on the use of a product. But they are clearly inferior in status to the engineers and their advice is not always taken seriously. What women “might want” comes to the engineers only through the surveys of the marketing department; occasionally female consumers get in a word when designers and engineers take prototypes home for their wives to try. There seems to be no end to the ways in which male designers have produced artifacts fitting male characteristics, such as the size and shape of control knobs. Such gender-driven technology seems to be spread quite uniformly throughout Europe, characterizing both capitalist and (former) communist or socialist countries. The pattern revealed in all the eight case studies came as no surprise to me, drawing in good part on my own sojourn in manufacturing enterprises in both Europe and America. I would guess that LJS. market research, design, and engineering have learned to be considerably more sensitive to the demands of the market, though they are not likely to have sloughed off the sort of gender stereotyping reported in this volume. From Greece to Norway and from banking to pantyhose manufacturing, the eight case studies present a faxnating array of countries and workplace settings. Chapter 1 discusses the installation of central vacuuming systems for the private home in Finland; Chapter 2 traces the development of the microwave oven in England; the introduction of computerized banking in Greece and the gender-related consequences-mostly negative-for fe-
77
male banking employees are presented in Chapter 3; Chapter 4 discusses the design and development of a food processor in France and its subsequent use in the household; Chapter 5 deals with the introduction of the French-invented “minitel” (a home-based video text system with modem) in Norway, which seems not to have developed strong gender contrasts in use. New washing machine models in Barcelona (Chapter 7) were developed mostly by the Spanish branch of an MNC, which seems to have proceeded in the well-established pattern of a male-dominated engineering department that “imagined” what female consumers might want but did not bother to ask them directly. In Chapter 9, a Norwegian researcher examines three models of U.S.-designed and built “smart homes”-an innovative “house of the future” that, housewives were assured, would do “anything you want done“ (p. 173). It turns out, however, that virtually none of these innovations have anything directly to do with housework. Rather, they deal with such matters as climate control, security, and entertainment. In all three models, the Norwegian investigator comments drily, housework is “out of sight, out of mind” (p. 171). The pantyhose factory in Russia (Chapter 6) has not yet been privatized and thus continues to function much as before. Because women’s wear is part of the “light industry” set tor. women have risen to the kind of managerial positions from which they continue to be excluded in the “heavy industry” sector. The male-female wage gap has not shrunk. and gender segregation by type of job continues. Men create new knowledge for the sector they dominate, while the female-dominated sector nlmt COntinLle to make do with an outmoded laborintensive technology. The other chapter dealing with a country and economy in transition. Chapter 8, only adds to the evidence of a male-dominated technology even where official Marxist ideology not only ITact decreed gender equality but had enabled women to gain full access to education and training, including higher education. Thus, in both of these case studies (Russia and Yugo-
slavia), about 90 percent of the women are in the work force yet still fully responsible for operating and maintaining a household. At the same time, men enjoy the fruits of mechanization, as in agriculture, while women’s work on the farm continues in its age-old, labor-intensive form. In the robotics/ computer industry in the former Yugoslavia, women occupy the “theoretical options” while men do the “applications.” It is the latter jobs that lead men directly into managerial positions not generally offered to the “theorist female.” Reflecting on the evidence of these case studies, one does not have to be any sort of “feminist” to support the strategy advocated by the editors of this volume: (1) women’s right to healthy, sustainable, paid work; (2) more women in technological design; (3) supportive domestic technologies to make housework pleasant; and (4) making technology better serve the domestic and private sphere and the whole range of gender relations. We are nearing the end of a millennium, but the millennium-however conceived-is still far off. A greater awareness of the issues raised in these case studies would be in order right now.
Leading With Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit By Lee G. Bolman Deal
and Terrence
L%e retjieuler, William Howe, assistant professor ojleadership at the lJniver.@y @Richmond mend, Virginia. Had enough
E.
is an studies in Kich-
of the traditional social science and business management accounts of leadership? Tired of the
rational/logical/industrial/structural/ functional, here’s-how-you-become-asuccessful/effective/productive-leader books? Or the journal-oriented leadership articles that seem inextricably wedded to, and embedded in, a few “legitimate” disciplines-psychology, business management, and perhaps sociology? Feeling as though something is missing in leadership studies and practice? Something that has little to do with the usual litany of leadership theories and concepts, the often invoked “new paradigms” of leadership, or “bottom lines,” cyberspace, restructuring, reengineering, and “the right stuff”? Leading With Soul, a radical departure from the mainstream leadership literature, may be just what you’ve been waiting for. At the very least, it may prod you to rethink the way leadership should be conceived, practiced, and taught, even as it may also compel you to examine who you are as a person, leader, and/or teacher. Here is a book-actually a story or fable composed of parables, questions. koans, reflections, and dialogues-that seems to take narrative through the looking glass and into unexplored territory far from the madding crowd of institutionalized social science. Here is “an uncommon journey of spirit” that, despite its unusual and different approach to leadership, encourages all of iis to follow its strange narrative path on the journey undertaken by its main character, Steven Camden-himself an allegorical Everyman who, like Bunyan’s Christian in Pilgrim 3 Progress, represents the spiritual quester in all men. Here is a marvelous fiction that may reveal more truth about us and about leadership than a stack of the most carefully designed empirical studies.
And here is a literary creation that we, its readers, help to create as we identify with Steven and reflect upon its paral~les, paradoxes, and questions. Altogether. this is a courageous venture into a realm that leadership scholars. practitioners, and teachers have neglected and even rejected. To some it may seetn ethereal fluff; to others it may seem nonscientific perspective-taking; still others may deem it useless, opinion. much
nonpragmatic wisps of But such nonbelievers-
like the spiritually
empty
Steven