MONTHLY WEB UPDATE December 1, 2000 - Women, Technology and Globalization Women's Work The role of women in the workplace varies around the world. In countries with traditional cultures and active religious traditions, women are often excluded from the workplace. When women are permitted to work, they are often restricted to jobs that require less skill than the jobs that men perform. The result is not only lower pay but also lower prestige. In countries with modern cultures and advanced economies, where the right of women to work is accepted, women often strive to increase their rights and focus on issues such as equal pay for equal work. A major factor that limits women in the workforce is that much of the world's population remains unaffected by technology and globalization. In many developing countries, people live on as little as $1 per day. Education, medicine, mass communications, elaborate leisure time pursuits and other goods and services that advanced economies take for granted, are either non-existent or minimal. Men and women have to struggle to maintain the bare necessities of life. In these conditions, purchasing a computer is as remote a possibility as is the ability to obtain enough education to use one. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Mircosoft, recently reflected on what would happen when a computer arrived at an African village: The mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say, My children are dying, what can you do? They're not going to sit there and like, browse eBay or something. What they want is for their children to live. They don't want their children's growth to be stunted. Do you really have to put in computers to figure that out? (New York Times, November 3, 200, p A18). Women and Technology But there are examples of woman's roles changing dramatically as the result of technology. For example, in India a small group of well-educated woman work as managers in software companies. This has altered their relationship with men including their ability to resist arranged marriages, which, without the security and status of their income, they would ordinarily agree to. Women and Globalization Woman's roles are increasingly connected to globalization and technology. Without the diffusion around the world of products created by companies such as Microsoft, along with the creation of technology based jobs that transcend national boundaries, the ability of women to enter the labor force and rise to new levels, would diminish. Globalization coupled with technology creates new opportunities for new types of work by new types of workers. Web Exercise How can the World Wide Web and the Internet help us understand changes that are occurring in the role of women in organizations in various cultures? For example, has the role of women in organizations changed as a result of technology and globalization? How has it changed? What are the implications of any changes for men? What are the implications of the changes for management? What is the future for women in the workplace? How do national and local cultures affect the role of women or does it still? It is also important to understand how the forces of technology and globalization change women's roles in unanticipated ways. The central question is: What are some of the long-term changes that might not be understood in the present? Is it possible that a male backlash could occur designed to reverse women's advances in the workplace and reassert privileges men have had? Is it possible that the increase in women working can erode the traditional family structure and create social problems? Could women eventually seek to limit the role of men in organizations? Interesting Web Sites to begin answering these questions are: The Institute for Women and Technology http://www.iwt.org, provides a number of links to other useful Web Sites. In November 2000 the home page for this site announced a Senior Women's Summit that has an agenda including: ...'Grand Societal Challenges,' where fundamental global problems and needs--hunger, literacy, pollution, homelessness--are the driving force in the development of new technology. Not science for science's sake but science with a broad view on the community outcome and societal impact. UNIFEM, the United Nations organization devoted to women's issues, has a Web Site http://www.unifem.undp.org. The Site proclaims that it is "Working for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality." The International Forum on Globalization is http://www.ifg.org. In February it is sponsoring a teach-in on "Globalization and Technology" in New York City. The November edition of the Globalization Research Center Web Site http://www.cio.com/forums/global/index_content.html. This site contains information on developments in information technology around the world. [ I N T E R N E T   E X E R C I S E S  |  U P D A T E S  |  F E E D B A C K   |  S A L E S  C A T A L O G U E   ] © 2002 Prentice-Hall, Inc. A Pearson Education Company Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458 Legal Statement