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 00002 00002	TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION
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TECHNOLOGY AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION


	First some comments on the housewife's position in society.
In terms of the interest of the work, how hard it is necessary to
work, and the amount of freedom, the position of the housewife is
somewhere between the 30th and 70th percentile in the scale of
desirability of occupations.  This is an intuitive judgment and 
depends on how the different aspects are weighted.  One might
attempt to make it more precise by observing the choices that
women make between being a housewife and other occupations.  This
would be difficult, but I don't think it would be a hopeless task.

	Since World War II, the relative desirability of
housewifery has declined relative to other middle class
occupations.  This is because working conditions in many other 
occupations have improved with the increasing wealth of the country
while the present set of gadgets that improve the working conditions
of the middle class housewife has remained stable.  Of course, the
percentage of housewives who have the middle class home and set of
gadgets has increased, and those housewives whose position has
improved are not complaining as much as the others.  The position
of the housewife in economic categories that have been able to afford
domestic help may even declined.  

	All this has reduced the relative desirability of housewifery
and led to an increased demand for a better position for women.  It
seems to me that there are substantial prospects for improvement
both through reorganization of institutions and through technology
but that this improvement will be slow.

	To see this we must consider the options available to men 
and women and also consider their relative bargaining positions.
Consider the following:

	1. The institution of dating has an important effect on the
psychologies of men and women.  A girl can wait and if she is
attractive good things may happen to her.  It is not inevitable, but
there is grounds for hope.  A boy motivated by sex, on the other
hand, knows that nothing will happen if he doesn't act.  Learning
social initiative is hard for him, but there is no alternative.
It seems to me that this can account for much of the difference
in initiative between teenage boys and girls from which the
subsequent differences in occupational capability stem.  (It should
be pointed out that much less than half of men develop
much initiative, but the percentage of women with initiative is
much less).  It would be interesting to see where passive male
homosexuals stand in the scale of occupational initiative; it
might clobber my theory.

	2. It has been my observation that the dropout from
hard science by girls in high school is not primarily the fault
of either parents or school.  It is much more the fault of
the values of traditional teen age girl society.  Both boys and
girls are affected more by the ideas of their peers than by
the official policies of the educational institutions.
A disproportionate number of adults with initiative come from
separatist social groups where the parents prevent children
from taking their values from their peers or from the schools.

	3. Getting more women in higher positions in society
depends on breaking this tradition.  One possibility is batch
processing rather than continuous.  Normally a school is
a continuous institution.  Freshmen come in at the bottom and
seniors go out at the top.  If the tradition is regarded as
bad, we could experiment with a system wherein a particular
school is filled with freshmen and no new ones are admitted
until the first lot graduates.  If a new desirable tradition
is successfully inculcated, then continuous processing can
be resumed.  This idea might also work in prisons.
Another possibility is to teach initiative directly.

	4. Consider the relative bargaining position of men and
women.  A desirable man can get a woman reasonably content to
serve him in the traditional way.  In return she gets a good
income and a social position derived from his.  The conditions
of middle class life today are such that if life is to be smooth
and gracious, there ought to be someone spending close to
full time managing the affairs of the family, running errands,
chauffering children, cleaning house, getting things fixed, etc.
In principle, if husband and wife both want to work, this labor
should be shared.  However, a desirable man can get better terms
than this, and the academic community is full of cases where a
man first marries an intellectual equal and then replaces her
by a second wife without so many ambitions outside the home.

	5. The women's lib solution to this problem is to combine
propaganda about justice with a kind of women's trade unionism
so that men will no longer be able to get such affable wives.
This will change the situation somewhat, but will not bring about
substantial equality.

	6. Greater equality will be achieved if the amount of work
required to have a nice home with 
well brought up children can be reduced to the point that a man who
shares the work equally with his wife suffers no disadvantage in
his profession, and likewise a woman who keeps a home going does not
lose in her outside work.

	7. This reduction  in  work  can  be  brought  about  by  new
technology.  Specifically,  an  automatic  delivery system can reduce
running errands. A safe transportation system that can be used  by  6
year olds without help can obviate the need for chauffeuring children, safe houses
and personal telephones can obviate the need for most babysitting,  a
more  interactive  and  educational  form of children's entertainment
than television can further reduce babysitting, any further  aids  to
keeping a house in order in the direction of the household robot can
further reduce the work.

	8. Besides the gadgets, a variety of institutional aids are
necessary, the most essential of which is the much-demanded widespread
availability of day care centers.  The problem with day care centers
is that for young children, there has to be one attendant for every
four children with present standards of care and with present technology.
The problem will be much eased if technology could make it possible for
one person to take care of more children.  I don't know enough about the
problem to suggest definite improvements, but I would bet that ways can
be found to reduce the amount of physical work in dressing, diapering,
bathing, feeding, etc.  Besides this, ways can be found to increase
the number of interesting and educational games that involve interaction
with a computer rather than with humans.  Perhaps it will also be possible
to use the computer to structure situations wherein the children co-operate
with each other in order to interact with the computer.

	9. Whatever improvements are made, there will always be differences
in the extent to which families choose to use them.  There will always be
women who choose to make their families their main activity.  Therefore,
the solutions adopted should not require universal adherence, and
experiments of all kinds should be encouraged and even financed.

	10. All these considerations may rate only contempt from those who
consider social problems mainly in moralistic terms.  Equality is desirable,
and if men would only do the right thing, it would be achieved.  Well
as far as I can see, mankind's ability to respond to purely moral
exhortation isn't improving very fast.  Most moral problems that have gone
away, e.g. chastity, have succumbed to technology not preaching.