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Information processing as gendered knowledge work: A historical case study
Author(s) -
Huebner Daniel R.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
gender, work and organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.159
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0432
pISSN - 0968-6673
DOI - 10.1111/gwao.12289
Subject(s) - newspaper , commodification , embodied cognition , scholarship , work (physics) , sociology , ideology , scale (ratio) , knowledge management , computer science , media studies , political science , engineering , artificial intelligence , politics , mechanical engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , economics , law , market economy
Recent scholarship on gender and organizations has developed an analytical conception of knowledge work attentive to embodied knowledge, tasks stratified by gender and ideological definitions of skill. This article applies such an approach to a historical case study in which women were quite literally information processors. In press clipping bureaus young women manually read and sorted thousands of newspaper articles into parcels of keyword‐indexed information for the use of paid subscribers. Using newspaper accounts of this work in the United States from 1884 to 1940, the article shows how gendered definitions of working tasks and bodily abilities were crucial to the organization of this early form of industrial‐scale, commodified information processing. Separating the concept of knowledge work from dependence on contemporary technologies and labour conditions suggests new possibilities for reappraising other forms of labour as gendered knowledge work.