Changing technologies and women's work lives: A multimethod study of information workers, and feminist and union action research in Canada

This feminist sociology thesis, theorizes changing technologies as social processes in women's work lives. It is based on a study of how women information workers understand changing technologies, and a study of actions taken by and for women workers through feminist and union action research. Theoretical arguments are developed in a critique of Marxist, labour process and feminist literature on technology and work; the purpose is to identify concepts relevant to feminist social theory. Methodological issues are discussed reflexively to reveal the rationale behind a feminist qualitative multimethod study. It includes group interviews with employed and unemployed information workers, individual interviews with action researchers, and documents analysis of feminist and union action research projects in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s. Analysis of group interviews with information workers focuses on the social construction of women's skills, contradictions that participants experience with changing technologies in their work lives, and technology and control issues. Analysis of feminist and union action research projects focuses on contributions to organizing through development of tools for workers and information for the labour movement. The qualitative multimethod study forms the basis for rethinking changing technologies and women's work lives from a feminist perspective.