2008;323-351. doi: 10.1037/11706-012.
The continuing technological revolution: A comparison of three regions' strategies for creating women-inclusive workplaces.
Christina M Vogt
UIID-AD: 2514
DOI: 10.1037/11706-012
Abstract
Historically, women have not always been welcomed into the scientific community, yet they have often been coopted into the science and engineering professions to provide lower cost labor necessary to combat temporary workforce shortages. Economic restructures have entailed the feminization of many job structures in which women earn lower wages than their male counterparts and have less opportunity for advancement. In this chapter, women's employment and educational statistics from the United States, the European Union 15 (EU15; the 15 member countries of the European Union prior to 2004: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), and Japan are mined and then compared to gather an equality profile. These countries are the focus because the majority of all new technologies are patented in these three regions. From this, I trace the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (often abbreviated as "STEM") careers before and after the endorsement of globalization, where there has been a shift in ideology from a human capital to a "knowledge economy." Because most efforts to remedy gendered participation in these fields have been through targeting female educational preparation (the "knowledge-based" approach), I empirically test whether equivalent educational preparation translates into equitable occupational outcomes for males and females across these three geographic regions. I then analyze differences between the levels of gender equity measures across the three regions by comprehensive review of international and national policy and legal initiatives and their corresponding effects on labor force demographics. Finally, I cast this current problem of underutilization of women as a historic one, originating from lingering discriminatory patterns. Despite recent social developments in gender equality, in scientifically advanced nations women lag behind men economically. Although today's woman has many more opportunities than in the past, patriarchal traditions inhibit her full participation in the current technological advancement. My intent is to underscore that the same discriminatory patterns are still pervasive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (create)
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