THE IMPACT OF "IT" AND GLOBALIZATION
ON WOMEN'S WORK

While globalization has significantly impacted women's IT work in developing countries, in general it has not changed gender divisions of labor. In the first phase of industrialization in Asia and Latin America, women found many IT-related jobs in the assembly of electronics. During the last fifteen years, as manufacturing has become more automated, greater technical and cognitive skills are required than in the first phase, and the number of women employed in IT manufacturing has dropped.

While advances in IT are making many women's manufacturing jobs redundant, technology is creating other jobs largely taken by women in the service industries, including information processing, banking, insurance, printing, and publishing, where the skill requirements are higher than in manufacturing. The major employment for women in the service sector is in information processing, particularly data entry. The West Indies and the Philippines were the early leaders in this area, followed by China, India, Singapore, Vietnam, and extending most recently to Ghana and Uganda. Other new jobs are in call centers, in Geographical Informa-tion Systems (GIS), and in software development, all of which require higher skill levels than data entry. India and Malaysia have captured the bulk of these jobs, but the job market is expanding to other countries as well, notably Togo and Tanzania.

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Although IT is a new field, a "gendered" division of labor is already emerging. In general, women tend to be concentrated in end-user, lower skilled IT jobs related to word processing or data entry, comprising only small percentages of managerial, maintenance, and design personnel in networks, operating systems, or software development.

Within the service sector, for example, the major employment for women is in information processing jobs, the high-tech equivalent of the secretarial positions that women have traditionally held. Globally, these jobs are done almost entirely by women, perhaps because of the association of women with typing. (8) In many cases, the jobs were relocated from developed countries because the comparative wages of women in developing countries were one-sixth to one-twentieth of those for women in developed countries. The going rate for data entry in the Philippines is $4-$6/ hour while rates are as low as $1.00/hour are found in Jamaica. Medical transcribers in India earn an average of $1200/annum in comparison to $25,000 or more in the US. (9) Nevertheless, the rates are attractive locally and comparable to those of local white collar workers and professionals. (10)

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At the same time, some women are making inroads into higher levels of the IT workforce, especially in Latin America, East and Central Europe, South and South East Asia, and South Africa. In South Africa, for example, women hold 19 percent of data communica-tions and networking jobs, 18 percent in information systems and information technology management, 39 percent in education, training and development, 36 percent in end user computing, and 36 percent in sales and marketing. In India, women occupy nearly 20 percent of the professional jobs in the software industry, (11) and in Malaysia, women are 30 percent of IT professionals. (12) Women reportedly make up 20 percent of the software industry in Brazil. (13)

While there has been much discussion about "teleworking" or "telecommuting" in developing countries, most of these jobs are actually outsourced and located in commercial areas, not in homes. Interestingly, women have expressed a preference for work near but not in their homes, where work traditionally is low-paying and without benefits and where domestic responsibilities might interfere with work.

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