Programmed Inequality

Programmed Inequality

Author: Mar Hicks

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-02-23

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0262535181

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This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.


Gender Stratification in the IT Industry

Gender Stratification in the IT Industry

Author: Kenneth W. Koput

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1849809089

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This illuminating monograph introduces a status-equilibrating, social capital explanation for the persistent gender stratification in the field of information technology. The authors analyze why the workforce has become increasingly male-dominated over time by looking at how pre-employment conditions provide different experiences and opportunities for women and men. Employing a large-scale, longitudinal data set, this book forays further into the field than other contemporary studies, where all too often the debate focuses on broad and potentially too-far-reaching differences between men and women that are difficult to prove, making for spirited conversation but little else. The authors collect, analyze and present data on social interactions, sex-role attitudes and behavior, leadership, demographics, program retention, job placement, and career attitudes for five cohorts of undergraduate students spanning their last two years in a management information science program and through the job search process. By testing novel theory against their data, the authors demonstrate how structural factors interact with individual characteristics to determine not only who enters the field, but also how they enter it and whether they are likely to stay. These and other analyses ultimately lead to concrete suggestions for addressing gender stratification in the IT industry.


Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data

Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data

Author: Ata Can Bertay

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2020-07-03

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 1513546279

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We study whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better allocation of a valuable resource: female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with typically higher female share in their employment relative to other industries. Specifically, we exploit within-country variation across industries to test whether those that typically employ more women grow relatively faster in countries with ex-ante lower gender inequality. The test allows us to identify the causal effect of gender inequality on industry growth in value-added and labor productivity. Our findings show that gender inequality affects real economic outcomes.


Reset

Reset

Author: Ellen Pao

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0399591036

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The “necessary and incisive” (Roxane Gay) account of the discrimination case that “has blown open a conversation about the status of women” in the workplace (The New York Times) SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR | NAMED A BEST FALL BOOK BY ELLE AND BUSTLE In 2015, Ellen K. Pao sued a powerhouse Silicon Valley venture capital firm, calling out workplace discrimination and retaliation against women and other underrepresented groups. Her suit rocked the tech world—and exposed its toxic culture and its homogeneity. Her message overcame negative PR attacks that took aim at her professional conduct and her personal life, and she won widespread public support—Time hailed her as “the face of change.” Though Pao lost her suit, she revolutionized the conversation at tech offices, in the media, and around the world. In Reset, she tells her full story for the first time. The daughter of immigrants, Pao was taught that through hard work she could achieve her dreams. She earned multiple Ivy League degrees, worked at top startups, and in 2005 was recruited by Kleiner Perkins, arguably the world’s leading venture capital firm at the time. In many ways, she did everything right, and yet she and other women and people of color were excluded from success—cut out of decisive meetings and email discussions, uninvited to CEO dinners and lavish networking trips, and had their work undercut or appropriated by male executives. It was time for a system reset. After Kleiner, Pao became CEO of reddit, where she took forceful action to change the status quo for the company and its product. She banned revenge porn and unauthorized nude photos—an action other large media sites later followed—and shut down parts of reddit over online harassment. She and seven other women tech leaders formed Project Include, an award-winning nonprofit for accelerating diversity and inclusion in tech. In her book, Pao shines a light on troubling issues that plague today’s workplace and lays out practical, inspiring, and achievable goals for a better future. Ellen K. Pao’s Reset is a rallying cry—the story of a whistleblower who aims to empower everyone struggling to be heard, in Silicon Valley and beyond. Praise for Reset “Necessary and incisive . . . As Ellen Pao detailed her experiences, while also communicating her passion for the work men often impeded her from doing, I was nothing short of infuriated. It was great to see a highly accomplished woman of color speaking out like this, and hopefully this book will encourage more women to come forward, give voice to their experiences in the workplace, and contribute to meaningful change.”—Roxane Gay


Gender Inequalities in Tech-driven Research and Innovation

Gender Inequalities in Tech-driven Research and Innovation

Author: Griffin, Gabriele

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2022-06-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1529219493

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ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The Nordic countries are regarded as frontrunners in promoting equality, yet women’s experiences on the ground are in many ways at odds with this rhetoric. Putting the spotlight on the lived experiences of women working in tech-driven research and innovation areas in the Nordic countries, this volume explores why, despite numerous programmes, women continue to constitute a minority in these sectors. Contributors flesh out the differences and similarities across different Nordic countries and explore how the shifts in labour market conditions have impacted on women in research and innovation. This is an invaluable contribution to global debates around the mechanisms that maintain gendered structures in research and innovation, from academia to biotechnology and IT.


Gender and Finance

Gender and Finance

Author: Ylva Baeckström

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-02-25

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 100054396X

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This book examines the world of finance and the role of gender within it. It looks at the financial services industry, arguably the most powerful and remunerative sector that exists, and shows how it was created by men for men. The author explains how historically women were excluded, how minimal progress has been made, and outlines how the sector still needs to change to function effectively in a modern, equal opportunities world. Addressing gender inequality in financial services is of utmost urgency and importance because of the extent to which it affects women in all stages of life. Women’s exclusion in financial services is also mirrored by how men have been excluded from parenting through a similar set of societal expectations, government legislation and corporate policies. The author maintains that to succeed, we need to address both financial services and parenting. To do so we need regulatory support. Because of its power and dominance, the financial services industry has the opportunity to lead this change and to champion gender equal practices. These practices are economically beneficial to all participants, not only female employees and consumers. We all need these benefits as we rebuild our economies following the COVID-19 pandemic. The book makes an important contribution to the critical and increasing awareness of gender concerns. It presents insights drawn from original research and data about gender biases. The book is an essential secondary text for a range of university courses, including economics, finance and accounting, business studies and gender related courses, as well as MBAs and Executive Education programmes that focus on gender in business. It is also a must read for policy makers, managers in financial services institutions and any other businesses that seek to attract the growing market of female consumers, employees and business leaders.


Brotopia

Brotopia

Author: Emily Chang

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0525540172

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Instant National Bestseller A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick "Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman. It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all. Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.


Gender Inequalities in the Japanese Workplace and Employment

Gender Inequalities in the Japanese Workplace and Employment

Author: Kazuo Yamaguchi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-15

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9811376816

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The in-depth analyses presented in this book have a dual focus: (1) Social mechanisms through which the gender wage gap, gender inequality in the attainment of managerial positions, and gender segregation of occupations are generated in Japan; and (2) Assessments of the effects of firms’ gender-egalitarian personnel policies and work–life balance promotion policies on the gender wage gap and the firms’ productivity. In addition, this work reviews and discusses various economic and sociological theories of gender inequality and gender discrimination and considers their consistencies and inconsistencies with the results of the analysis of Japanese data. Furthermore, the book critically reviews and discusses the historical development of the Japanese employment system by juxtaposing rational and cultural explanations. This book is an English translation by the author of a book he first published in Japanese in 2017. The original Japanese-language edition received two major book awards in Japan. One was The Nikkei Economic Book Culture Award, which is given every year by the Nikkei Newspaper Company and the Japan Economic Research Center to a few best books on economy and society. The other was The Showa University’s Women’s Culture Research Award, which is bestowed annually on a single book of research that promotes gender equality. Kazuo Yamaguchi is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.


Gender, Age and Inequality in the Professions

Gender, Age and Inequality in the Professions

Author: Marta Choroszewicz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9781351052467

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The literature on gender and professions shows that professional careers continue to be impacted by gender - albeit with important differences among professions and countries. Much less researched is the issue of the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work. Gender, Age and Inequality in the Professions explores men's and women's experiences of professional work and careers through an intersectional lens by focusing on the intersection of gender and age. The chapters explore different professions - including Medicine, Nursing, Law, Academia, Information Technology and Engineering - in different Western countries, in the present and over time. Through original research, and critical re-analysis of existing research, each of the chapters explores the significance of gender and age-cohort or generation to professional work, with particular attention to professionals just entering professional careers, those building professional careers, and comparisons of men and women in professions across generational cohorts. The book contributes to literature on inequalities in the professions by demonstrating the ways in which gender and age converge to confer privilege and produce disadvantage, and the ways in which gender inequality is reproduced, and disrupted, through the activities of professionals on the job. The book constitutes a departure point for future research in terms of theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on how gendered and age-related processes are produced and reproduced in particular organisational, professional and socio-cultural contexts. To enhance generational understanding, relationships and collaboration in educational institutions, organisations and professions, the book ends with a section on policy recommendations for educators, professionals, professional organisations as well as policy- and decision-makers. This book will also appeal to students and researchers in the fields of Sociology, Gender Studies, Organisational and Management Studies, Law, Medicine, Engineering and Information Technology as well as related disciplines.


Gendered Tradeoffs

Gendered Tradeoffs

Author: Becky Pettit

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2009-12-04

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 161044678X

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Gender inequality in the workplace persists, even in nations with some of the most progressive laws and generous family support policies. Yet the dimensions on which inequality is measured—levels of women's employment, number of hours worked, sex segregation by occupations and wages—tell very different stories across industrialized nations. By examining federally guaranteed parental leave, publicly provided child care, and part-time work, and looking across multiple dimensions of inequality, Becky Pettit and Jennifer Hook document the links between specific policies and aggregate outcomes. They disentangle the complex factors, from institutional policies to personal choices, that influence economic inequality. Gendered Tradeoffsdraws on data from twenty-one industrialized nations to compare women's and men's economic outcomes across nations, and over time, in search of a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of gender inequality in different labor markets. Pettit and Hook develop the idea that there are tradeoffs between different aspects of gender inequality in the economy and explain how those tradeoffs are shaped by individuals, markets, and states. They argue that each policy or condition should be considered along two axes—whether it promotes women's inclusion in or exclusion from the labor market and whether it promotes gender equality or inequality among women in the labor market. Some policies advance one objective while undercutting the other. The volume begins by reflecting on gender inequality in labor markets measured by different indicators. It goes on to develop the idea that there may be tradeoffs inherent among different aspects of inequality and in different policy solutions. These ideas are explored in four empirical chapters on employment, work hours, occupational sex segregation, and the gender wage gap. The penultimate chapter examines whether a similar framework is relevant for understanding inequality among women in the United States and Germany. The book concludes with a thorough discussion of the policies and conditions that underpin gender inequality in the workplace. The central thesis of Gendered Tradeoffs is that gender inequality in the workplace is generated and reinforced by national policies and conditions. The contours of inequality across and within countries are shaped by specific aspects of social policy that either relieve or concentrate the demands of care giving within households—usually in the hands of women—and at the same time shape workplace expectations. Pettit and Hook make a strong case that equality for women in the workplace depends not on whether women are included in the labor market but on how they are included.