Ines Wagner will present her paper "Who Benefits from Robots? Gender and Technology Choices on the Shop Floor."
Abstract.
Why do men continue to hold the majority of manufacturing jobs, even though robots have reduced the importance of physical strength as a segregating factor? In this paper, we examine how the dynamics between technology, skills, and entrenched gender-based segmentation play out within a specific workplace setting, centered on a qualitative case study of robotization at a manufacturing plant for the auto supply chain in Norway. We ask how workers, their representatives and their managers made sense of the persistence of a strongly gendered division of labor despite technological change, as well as who benefited (in what ways) from investments in robots. Our interviews suggest that this sustained shop floor segmentation along gendered lines can be attributed to the persistence of gender-based valuations of work and skills. Our findings from this study contribute to debates on the relationship between gender and technology. We provide evidence of the process through which gendered assumptions about the tasks, schedules, and status appropriate for men or women can entrench inequality in workplaces, even as technology changes the content and task structure of work. The gender progressive context of our case study allows us to analyze these dynamics in a setting where unions, managers, and workers are most likely to be aware of them; the absence of significant self- reflection on these points suggests a critical reading of corporatism through a gendered lens.
Please contact Ines Alisa Wagner <i.a.wagner@arena.uio.no> if you would like the paper in advance.
Time: 21. may at 14:15 - 16:00, HHH Rom 221 (instituttstyrerommet)
After the seminar you are welcome to join us for a trip to Frederikke for something to eat and drink.
Welcome!
Organized by the seminar POW - Politics, Organization and Work.