Shaping Women's Work: Gender, Employment and Information Technology (Longman Sociology Series) - Hardcover

This text offers a broad overview of the debates about technologies and gender relations at work in a range of occupational areas. It deals with gender relations in terms of the ways in which they influence the design and development of technologies, and how gender relations are themselves shaped by technologies. The book draws heavily on the theoretical perspective, looking at the ways in which sexual divisions of labour and gender relations in the workplace profoundly affect the direction and pace of technological change, and tracks the development of certain technologies showing how, through their evolution, they embody these social relations. Additionally, the book examines UK-based training programmes that have been sponsored by various groups, governments, trade unions and other bodies, with the aim of providing access to technology for women. It assess whether these schemes actually do provide greater opportunity for women, or whether they are simply cosmetic solutions to shortages of skills and labour.