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	            Technology and `Women's Work'
	
	The successes of the feminist movement in equalizing the social
roles of men and women have been limited.  Some think that more push will
do it, and others think that role differentiation is biologically
determined.  In this section, I explore what can be done technologically
to make it easier for women or men to combine career and family.  This
does not require taking a position about how people ought to live,
except to say that having more options is better than having fewer.

	As a true technological determinist, I believe that changes in the
status of women are more likely to come about through new technology than
through moral exhortation.  Indeed the past improvements have come mainly
through technology in the sense that political action has succeeded only
when technology has prepared the way.
	
	Some women have successfully combined career and family.  Many
others have tried it with results they found unsatisfactory.  Such success
as has been achieved depends on a combination of personal energy, ability,
favorable job situation, co-operation from the woman's husband and good
fortune.  It seems to me that the first factor may be the most important in
present society.  Only women with more than average energy manage the
combination and advice to others to be more energetic is unlikely to achieve
much.  Technology can make it possible to succeed at both without putting in
extraordinary amounts of effort.
	
	The work that's included under `family' involves two things,
childcare and housework.  I'll look at housework first, because it's easier.


			      HOUSEWORK
	
	Inventions that make household tasks easier and quicker haven't
improved much since World War II, although more people have acquired the
gadgets.  The conditions of middle class life today are such that if life is
to be as smooth and gracious as people wish, there ought to be someone
spending close to two thirds time managing the affairs of the family, running
errands, chauffeuring children, cleaning house, getting things fixed, etc.
Of course, this varies according to the age of the children.  In principle,
if husband and wife both work, this labor should be shared equally.  In
practice, this is seldom the case.
	
	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 his 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 work.

	The necessary reduction in work can be brought about by new
technology.  An automatic delivery system would greatly reduce the need to
shop and run errands.  Computer controlled cars would obviate the need for
chauffeuring both children and adults.  The ultimate goal, which is still
quite far away, is the household robot.  The household robot is the future
equivalent of a staff of servants.  We can guess something about what
having robots would be like by considering upper class cultures with
servants.  However, using robots has the moral advantage over using
servants that no one need be oppressed.

	With household robots we could not only work less, but live more
graciously.  Our standards of housekeeping would go up.  A problem in many
households today is that standards were formed in a family where the
mother stayed home and did housework much of the day, maintaining a higher
standard than can be achieved when both spouses work.  One solution to this
problem is for people to lower their standards.  Another is to find a
different way to meet their standards, as with robot servants.

	Our standards would rise if robot servants were available.  There's
no reason not to keep a robot up all night cleaning every crystal in the
chandelier, ironing the socks, and scrubbing the front steps.  Soon it
would seem slovenly to live any other way.


			     CHILDCARE

	Very few people like to do housework.  Whatever technology comes
up with to reduce the amount of housework that has to be done will
probably be received with enthusiasm.  Eventually, housework can be
conquered so that it takes none or only the most trivial amount of a
person's time.  Childcare improvements will take longer to make.  Most
people will say that a robot nanny would not be a solution to childcare
problems.  In my opinion most people are wrong.
	
	While fully capable household robots are far off,we can start by
thinking of very simple robot devices.  Consider the idea of a baby safe,
comparable to safes now available which guarantee to protect papers from
temperatures of up to 1500 degrees for as long as two hours.  The baby
safe would sit next to the crib.  If the safe's sensors found that the air
was noxious, smoky, very hot, or even very cold, it would grab the baby
and put it into its temperature-controlled interior with oxygen supply.
Then it would call emergency services.  This is not a very difficult thing
to do technologically.

	Devices exist now which detect if a baby stops breathing.  These
are used on babies at high risk from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Electrodes are attached to the infant, and an alarm goes off if it stops
breathing, so that a parent, nurse, or doctor can rush in and start the
child breathing again.  This is a comparatively new invention.  One can
imagine more sophisticated, less cumbersome devices to detect the
temperature, wetness, or happiness of the baby and act accordingly.

	We can go further and imagine a robot babysitter, which could give
a child a bottle and change a diaper.  However, the functions of a parent
are not limited to protecting the safety and comfort of the child.  It
seems clear that you wouldn't want a robot to be the sole or main
caretaker of a child.  Eventually a robot could be programmed to talk to a
child, read it stories, take it to the playground, and cuddle it, but this
would certainly not be accepted in our present culture.  Indeed, if such
robot nannies were available, I imagine laws being passed to prevent
children from being left with them.  Compromises might be imagined where
it was permissible to leave a child with a robot sitter for no longer than a
certain period of time, not to to exceed some other amount of time within a
given day or week.

	There are two factors here, one of public acceptance, and one of
the actual effect on children.  It's known that even very young infants
need love and handling, but it's not known how much they need.  It's not
known whether children who get more than the normal amount of parental
atttention gain, lose, or are unaffected by this.  And since the subjects
of study are children, it's very difficult to do experiments to find these
things out.  I imagine that we'll gradually come to know more about these
questions, but more research would be desirable.

	If we want to move towards greater equality, people will have to
be objective about what the actual effects of mechanization are on safety
and psychology as well as on convenience.  Much of the women's movement
tends to be anti-technological, but if it wants to achieve its objectives,
it will have to overcome this.

	Lurid fears about robot babysitters gone amok are easy to imagine,
but it should be remembered that things do go wrong with human sitters.
A robot babysitter could have advantages outweighing the possible dangers
that people would fear, and would be more reliable than human babysitters.

	What other technological assistance can we imagine to childcare?
In order to allow parents to work regular schedules, childcare must allow
large chunks of time free.  The most essential aid to this 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 present
technology.  The problem will be much eased if technology can make it
possible for one person to take care of more children.  I would bet that
ways can be found to reduce the amount of physical work in dressing,
cleaning, diapering, and so forth.
	
	Older children want and need to play with each other, and they have
to be watched while they do so, to make sure they don't get hurt, hurt each
other, escape, get kidnapped, or inflict psychological tortures on one
another.  Robot playground monitors might do this admirably.  Since they
could be made with better senses than ours, they could do a better job than
human playground monitors.

	All this depends on future developments in artificial intelligence
and will be discussed in the section concerned with AI.
	
	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 a computer to structure
situations wherein the children co-operate with each other in order to
interact with the computer.
	
	The basic idea is to free people from any menial tasks so that they
can spend their time doing more interesting things with the children.


			OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
	
	Another aspect to increasing people's ability to combine work and
family is to alter the nature of the work, as well as that of the family
responsibilities.  The way many jobs are structured will change with
technology.  Some changes are possible now, though they haven't taken place
if more than technological change is needed.  It has long been feasible for
for telephone information operators and some kinds of reservation clerks to
work at home.  However, this is the kind of work that will eventually be
done by computers, rather than with them.  Increased productivity will mean
that less work has to be done.  People will do different kinds of work.
Perhaps many people won't work at all.  The forty hour work week might
become as rare as the once common seventy hour work week is now.  I think
it more likely that we'll see a shorter work year---that people would rather
have more vacation than a shorter work week.  Or a shorter working life may
become common---people may retire younger or begin their careers later.
How to take children places might become a bigger childcare problem for
people with greatly increased leisure.
	
	Automatic cars or personal flying machines can also increase the
distance at which commuting is feasible and reduce the time spent in
commuting present distances.  This increases the possibility that a person
of fixed residence can find a job.  This is currently more important for
women than for men, because they often return to the labor market after an
absence.  It also reduces the possibility that a woman will give up a good
job because of her husband's job.  More reliable airplane service of the
present kind would make inter-city commuting more feasible.  
	
	Housework (and childcare) are areas in which no basic technological
research is being done.  There is not one engineering professor in the
world whose research domain is the reduction of housework.  The
improvements made so far have been mainly on the initiative of individual
inventors.  We ought to have more systematic research.  If a foundation
wants to endow a professorship of housework in an engineering school, a
start can be made.
	
	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 sometimes even financed.
	
	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, society'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.