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Knowledge Economy & the Gender Gap?

- Ms. Anupama Singh

When the world's first electronic tube computer, the University of Pennsylvania's ENIAC, went on line in 1945, all six of its programmers were women.

An economy characterised by the recognition of knowledge as a source of competitiveness, the increasing importance of science, research, technology and innovation in knowledge creation, and the use of computers and the Internet to generate, share and apply knowledge is a knowledge is a knowledge economy.

But 60 years later, walk the aisles at Comdex and it's clear that IT has evolved into a largely male profession especially at the blue coloured jobs. In this article we look at the gender gaps in the Information Technology sector (IT) where women in this knowledge economy are just the back end tools working at the clerical positions and the cream is taken away by the male folks.

For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognized only two factors of production : labour and capital. This is now changing. Information and knowledge are replacing capital and energy as the primary wealth-creating assets, just as the latter two replaced land and labour 200 years ago. In addition, technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth-creating work from physically-based to "knowledge-based". Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. With increased mobility of information and the global workforce, knowledge and expertise can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight. The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation--combining market and technology workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems--and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an information society in a knowledge economy where knowledge management is essential. The question is who are managers and who are workers? Women and Men distribution is highly skewed.

Through the percentage of women has rising in most formerly male-dominated professions. According to the Census Bureau, women have received more bachelor's degrees than men each year. The fact is "When it comes to today's computer culture, the bottom line is that while more girls are on the train, they aren't the ones driving", What a paradox where knowledge workers are predominantly female but custodian of knowledge who are 'brokers' of the economy are ruled by men folk. Why so? Why women do not seem to be moving forward in most progressive sector of knowledge economy i.e., IT. The companies like Bharti, Hutch, GE and many others have ratio of men folk at the top layer rule the organisation. Women are largely seen in accounts/HR or in call centers. How can we eliminate the gender gap in the field of technology? A bold and conscious step would be appreciated.

Data that speaks while women make up 41% of the total IT workforce, once you factor out data entry, only one quarter of computer professionals are female. What lies behind this trend? A primary barrier to getting more women interested in pursuing an IT career, can that be an alarming question?

What is being done to attract and keep more women in the IT field at top positions? Feminist epistemology is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding how the production of knowledge has affected women, and how to create new frameworks that include both women and men as the central foci of knowledge-production. It is gender neutral yet appears gender biased because custodian of knowledge creation are dominant men intelligention.