Gradual decline of manual labor: Moving from an industrial society to a knowledge-based economy. Will women benefit more than men?

you know Matt, based on your questions, I’m starting to think that you’re on their side.

Women will see increased influence and benefit in the workplace and society overall and the perceived alpha male will still score higher in mating than non alpha males.

My opinion is that any given country will never truly become completely 100% service oriented, thus there will always be places for men and women to operate efficiently. Furthermore, I do not believe that a knowledge oriented economy would cause women to benefit any more than men, because there is a wide variety of subcategories under “knowledge oriented economy” and not all of those are ones where women have an advantage over men.

Your Wiki article considers both America and Canada as being post-industrial societies, and as a women working in a post industrial position in Canada, I feel that my personal experience is valuable to contribute here, especially considering I work for a giant information technology company. Women are not somehow more skilled or adapted to the work that my division does (software development), in fact women have long been known to not be drawn towards computer science in general; this has been studied and programs exist to introduce an interest of computers and programming to young girls. So here is one counterpoint to your thesis: if the service is software development, men may still have an advantage until women develop the desire to want to learn programming. Perhaps it could be that women are ultimately better programmers due to their different way of thinking, perhaps it could be the other way around.

I am a bit confused by your third paragraph, which discusses how it will be expected that women will be able to secure resources for themselves… I’m confused because this occurs already today, I am securing resources for my family, and even if I didn’t work in high-tech I would still be doing one of many other jobs to secure resources.

Similarly, your fourth paragraph describes a time when we “could see that women are just as resilient as men in running corporations”. But this already exists today! Sure it’s not 100% equal, but that’s due to many things, one of which was the previous mentality of women being homemakers and men being moneymakers. And I will add that in all of my working experiences I have always been treated as an equal and my pay has been exactly that of a man in the same position.

The testosterone charged alpha-male will always have sports, which in my mind is one of the biggest “service” products produced nowadays. Due to the ongoing popularity of sports, I must conclude that society most certainly still values the traditional male qualities you list.

So, as a woman who lives in what could be considered a post industrial society, who works in a knowledge based company, I conclude that women do not benefit more than men. If anything, this culture allows women and men to start on equal grounds, thus their success or failure is directly related to their desire and passion.

I hope so.

I agree that women will begin to gain increasing equality in our workplace but because the value of diversity in the workplace is being recognised more and more. Industrialisation does indeed value highly-skilled information-based sectors but currently there’s a social bias against women operating in technical and science fields.

I think there’s a little too much value being placed on specific traits inherent in males and females, i.e. women are better than men being better in stressful situations I don’t think is true (or untrue).

@qualitycontrol – I’m not trying to take sides.

@dynamicduo – Thank you for your very detailed answer. Of course the knowledge economy will keep the manufacturing piece and other industrial sectors in the same way the industrial revolution didn’t make agriculture disappear. It’s more a question of percentages. 10,000 years ago one farmer could maybe feed 2 people, while today the number is around 150. The same trend can be observed in traditional industrial sectors. Interestingly, even computer specialists invent things that makes their own work less time consuming. If you just compare the original Motif-based Unix GUIs with more recent widget toolkits or even HTML code that allows users to create radio buttons or drop-down lists. The only reasons that keep the number of IT jobs stable or even increasing is the fact that our world still has computerization potential and new ideas are created all the time, which lead to new products and services.

The third paragraph better applies to countries where this has just begun. Just take rural India as an example, see this example

http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=15756616

In my opinion this would especially help girls and women. In big Indian cities women have already claimed their right of equal opportunities.

Unfortunately, becoming CEO is still about testosterone and pecking orders and fighting your way to the top. I think a lot of women just don’t like getting involved in this kind of game. What other explanations are there that when looking at Fortune 500 companies?

It may well be that women are less interested in being in leadership positions but right now popular perception essentially trains women in the workplace to be less asssertive so there are definitely external forces at work, from primary school really.

Yes being a CEO requires a very assertive and commanding attitude but also requires excellent long-term strategic planning and excellent EQ skills in working/reading people. Women can excel in areas that men can’t.

My point is that I think there’s a perception that women aren’t interested in leadership or technical positions in the workplace but there’s many social factors at work that discourage them from engaging those jobs.

@artificialard – I would welcome more women being CEO. Same of course for politicians.