(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #243 - Gender and technology: Alice in computing (fr, pt)

[machine translation]

For governments, the digital economy is an important enough for Beno?t Hamon, before his 
departure, announced the introduction of the teaching of the school code issue. 
Nevertheless, it is necessary to bring a feminist perspective on the company's current and 
prospective digital made about him. ---- In different cultures and eras, gender relations 
have lined technological social relations, as pointed out several anthropological works, 
including Paola Tabet. The division between hunters and gatherers brand mastery of 
techniques and tools that enhance the physical domination of the class sex on men than 
women. ---- The gender relations: technocratic reports ---- Some studies, such as Clifford 
D. Conner, emphasized the coincidence of the emergence of medical techno and sexocide 
witches. These represented a traditional herbal knowledge related to knowledge. Modern 
medical science practiced by men, the return side of an irrational obscurantism 
discrediting knowledge from experience.

These anthropological realities continue to mark special education equality and especially 
the education system. You can take the example of professional and technology. Industrial 
training are significantly invested by the boys, unlike girls are more present in those 
facing tertiary trades.

With regard to general programs, the literary section is much more feminized the 
scientific section, especially with science option of the engineer. Now it is possible to 
put this situation in relation to two other sociological facts. On the one hand, we must 
remember that mathematics became the selection tool for the most prestigious groups have 
replaced it the humanities. On the other hand, the girls scores well above the boys in 
verbal tests, but lower than this results in France at least, in those that measure math 
skills.

Thus we come to a paradox: while the girls - whatever the social environment of origin - 
perform better schooling than boys, from the 1st S and then in post-bac orientations, it 
is the boys from the upper middle classes who round up the ante. The introduction of 
computer education in school may probably strengthen this fact. Indeed, since the 1980s, 
the social image of the IT profession has masculinized. Programming as a hobby is an 
activity associated with adolescent boys, better known as the popular Anglo-Saxon names, 
geek or nerd. So Professions computers are very weakly feminized.

The future of women's work in the digital age

In general, it is accepted that men maintain a special relationship with technology and 
this gives them a higher social status. Thus, in cleaning companies with the same 
qualifications, it often happens that we entrust the handling of cleaning machines to men 
and the tasks most socially despised, such as maintenance of health, women. The digital 
sector in terms of sexual division of labor is not left since women are significantly 
underrepresented. In France, despite an increase in the proportion of women in this 
sector, it is around 30%.

Nevertheless, relations between workers and machines since the beginning of 
industrialization are not always positive, especially for the workers. The history of 
industrial capitalism is regularly marked by the destruction of manual jobs. They talk 
about "creative destruction": machines destroy jobs, but create others. Maybe ... but for 
those whose jobs are destroyed this can mean at best the need to convert, at worst a 
definitive unemployment.

You can now note the appearance and development of technologies that replace the functions 
related to service activities, in particular host: the case of automatic boxes, vending 
machines in post offices or SNCF stations for example ... Often the introduction of these 
technologies does not result in massive layoffs, but by the non-renewal of precarious or 
not replacing departures.

Machinery and the devaluation of care

But beyond the purely quantitative and economic replacement by machines task that involved 
host relationship dimensions is not trivial. In general, these jobs are performed by 
women. Indeed, it is to them that our society traditionally entrusted care activities.

Today, the economic calculation does not take into account the value of care in human 
exchanges. Indeed, this value can not be quantified in monetary terms. Liberal economic 
logic does not care about what is destroyed in terms of social relations. The care 
introduces a moral obligation dimension in human exchanges avoiding reduce relations 
between human beings to mere reports instrumentals.

When I stand before a robot, I do not say hello, thank you or goodbye. I use and I pay. 
That's it. The commercial relationship with a cashier is a human relationship that 
requires me to consider it as a person and not just as a tool in my service. Replace care 
relationships with machines, means caring only for economic efficiency, without 
considering the moral and social importance of human relationships. This leads, as shown 
by the economist Daniel Cohen, build us ever more like homo economicus, that is to say, to 
reduce the company to a aggregation of selfish powered by an economic interest.

Destruction of feminised jobs.

Finally, looking at the digital society not only provide for the destruction of a number 
of unskilled jobs but employment qualified middle class including certain activities which 
are now dominated by women, as in education. The projects are to maintain current 
neoliberal indifferent to human mediation in learning and considered more efficient and 
cost effective substitute teaching done by technological interfaces: online courses, 
serious games ...

Ir?ne (girlfriend AL)