00100	TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION
00200	
00300	
00400		First some comments on the housewife's position in society.
00500	In terms of the interest of the work, how hard it is necessary to
00600	work, and the amount of freedom, the position of the housewife is
00700	somewhere between the 30th and 70th percentile in the scale of
00800	desirability of occupations.  This is an intuitive judgment and 
00900	depends on how the different aspects are weighted.  One might
01000	attempt to make it more precise by observing the choices that
01100	women make between being a housewife and other occupations.  This
01200	would be difficult, but I don't think it would be a hopeless task.
01300	
01400		Since World War II, the relative desirability of
01500	housewifery has declined relative to other middle class
01600	occupations.  This is because working conditions in many other 
01700	occupations have improved with the increasing wealth of the country
01800	while the present set of gadgets that improve the working conditions
01900	of the middle class housewife has remained stable.  Of course, the
02000	percentage of housewives who have the middle class home and set of
02100	gadgets has increased, and those housewives whose position has
02200	improved are not complaining as much as the others.  The position
02300	of the housewife in economic categories that have been able to afford
02400	domestic help may even declined.  
02500	
02600		All this has reduced the relative desirability of housewifery
02700	and led to an increased demand for a better position for women.  It
02800	seems to me that there are substantial prospects for improvement
02900	both through reorganization of institutions and through technology
03000	but that this improvement will be slow.
03100	
03200		To see this we must consider the options available to men 
03300	and women and also consider their relative bargaining positions.
03400	Consider the following:
03500	
03600		1. The institution of dating has an important effect on the
03700	psychologies of men and women.  A girl can wait and if she is
03800	attractive good things may happen to her.  It is not inevitable, but
03900	there is grounds for hope.  A boy motivated by sex, on the other
04000	hand, knows that nothing will happen if he doesn't act.  Learning
04100	social initiative is hard for him, but there is no alternative.
04200	It seems to me that this can account for much of the difference
04300	in initiative between teenage boys and girls from which the
04400	subsequent differences in occupational capability stem.  (It should
04500	be pointed out that much less than half of men develop
04600	much initiative, but the percentage of women with initiative is
04700	much less).  It would be interesting to see where passive male
04800	homosexuals stand in the scale of occupational initiative; it
04900	might clobber my theory.
05000	
05100		2. It has been my observation that the dropout from
05200	hard science by girls in high school is not primarily the fault
05300	of either parents or school.  It is much more the fault of
05400	the values of traditional teen age girl society.  Both boys and
05500	girls are affected more by the ideas of their peers than by
05600	the official policies of the educational institutions.
05700	A disproportionate number of adults with initiative come from
05800	separatist social groups where the parents prevent children
05900	from taking their values from their peers or from the schools.
06000	
06100		3. Getting more women in higher positions in society
06200	depends on breaking this tradition.  One possibility is batch
06300	processing rather than continuous.  Normally a school is
06400	a continuous institution.  Freshmen come in at the bottom and
06500	seniors go out at the top.  If the tradition is regarded as
06600	bad, we could experiment with a system wherein a particular
06700	school is filled with freshmen and no new ones are admitted
06800	until the first lot graduates.  If a new desirable tradition
06900	is successfully inculcated, then continuous processing can
07000	be resumed.  This idea might also work in prisons.
07100	Another possibility is to teach initiative directly.
07200	
07300		4. Consider the relative bargaining position of men and
07400	women.  A desirable man can get a woman reasonably content to
07500	serve him in the traditional way.  In return she gets a good
07600	income and a social position derived from his.  The conditions
07700	of middle class life today are such that life will be smooth
07800	and gracious, there ought to be someone spending close to
07900	full time managing the affairs of the family, running errands,
08000	chauffering children, cleaning house, getting things fixed, etc.
08100	In principle, if husband and wife both want to work, this labor
08200	should be shared.  However, a desirable man can get better terms
08300	than this, and the academic community is full of cases where a
08400	man first marries an intellectual equal and then replaces her
08500	by a second wife without so many ambitions outside the home.
08600	
08700		5. The women's lib solution to this problem is to combine
08800	propaganda about justice with a kind of women's trade unionism
08900	so that men will no longer be able to get such affable wives.
09000	This will change the situation somewhat, but will not bring about
09100	substantial equality.
09200	
09300		6. Greater equality will be achieved if the amount of work
09400	required to have a nice home with 
09500	well brought up children can be reduced to the point that a man who
09600	shares the work equally with his wife suffers no disadvantage in
09700	his profession, and likewise a woman who keeps a home going does not
09800	lose in her outside work.
09900	
10000		7. This reduction  in  work  can  be  brought  about  by  new
10100	technology.  Specifically,  an  automatic  delivery system can reduce
10200	running errands. A safe transportation system that can be used  by  6
10300	year olds can obviate the need for chauffeuring children, safe houses
10400	and personal telephones can obviate the need for most babysitting,  a
10500	more  interactive  and  educational  form of children's entertainment
10600	than television can further reduce babysitting, any further  aids  to
10700	keeping a house in order in the direction of the household robot can
10800	further reduce the work.
10900	
11000		8. Besides the gadgets, a variety of institutional aids are
11100	necessary, the most essential of which is the much-demanded widespread
11200	availability of day care centers.  The problem with day care centers
11300	is that for young children, there has to be one attendant for every
11400	four children with present standards of care and with present technology.
11500	The problem will be much eased if technology could make it possible for
11600	one person to take care of more children.  I don't know enough about the
11700	problem to suggest definite improvements, but I would bet that ways can
11800	be found to reduce the amount of physical work in dressing, diapering,
11900	bathing, feeding, etc.  Besides this, ways can be found to increase
12000	the number of interesting and educational games that involve interaction
12100	with a computer rather than with humans.  Perhaps it will also be possible
12200	to use the computer to structure situations wherein the children co-operate
12300	with each other in order to interact with the computer.
12400	
12500		9. Whatever improvements are made, there will always be differences
12600	in the extent to which families choose to use them.  There will always be
12700	women who choose to make their families their main activity.  Therefore,
12800	the solutions adopted should not require universal adherence, and
12900	experiments of all kinds should be encouraged and even financed.