"Miss Remington" goes to work: gender, space, and technology at the dawn of the Information Age
"Miss Remington" goes to work: gender, space, and technology at the dawn of the Information Age
At the end of the 19th century, the financial services sector underwent a technological “revolution” with the invention of the typewriter, dictaphone, and hollerith machine. At the same time, the gender of labor within this sector was also changing, such that by the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, most of the work taking place in white-collar offices was performed by women. After introducing the broader research project on which this is based, I consider how technology and social relations shaped one another at the level of the body, the workplace, and with broader networks of branch banking, focusing on early 20th-century Montreal, Canada. I argue that the financial services sector worked to create a system in which men flowed through and women functioned as fixed points. I further argue that this pattern was echoed at different scales within the financial services industry, from the level of the body and the workplace up through spatially dispersed national-level networks.
gender, information technology, workplace culture, clerical work
201-212
Boyer, Kate
58353460-e5b0-47f3-a7a3-27df98b2318b
May 2004
Boyer, Kate
58353460-e5b0-47f3-a7a3-27df98b2318b
Boyer, Kate
(2004)
"Miss Remington" goes to work: gender, space, and technology at the dawn of the Information Age.
The Professional Geographer, 56 (2), .
Abstract
At the end of the 19th century, the financial services sector underwent a technological “revolution” with the invention of the typewriter, dictaphone, and hollerith machine. At the same time, the gender of labor within this sector was also changing, such that by the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, most of the work taking place in white-collar offices was performed by women. After introducing the broader research project on which this is based, I consider how technology and social relations shaped one another at the level of the body, the workplace, and with broader networks of branch banking, focusing on early 20th-century Montreal, Canada. I argue that the financial services sector worked to create a system in which men flowed through and women functioned as fixed points. I further argue that this pattern was echoed at different scales within the financial services industry, from the level of the body and the workplace up through spatially dispersed national-level networks.
Text
missremington.pdf
- Version of Record
Restricted to Repository staff only
Request a copy
More information
Published date: May 2004
Keywords:
gender, information technology, workplace culture, clerical work
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 46468
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/46468
ISSN: 0033-0124
PURE UUID: 6cb64be7-4d19-4748-8725-ab3c38a2f43b
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 02 Jul 2007
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 09:23
Export record
Contributors
Author:
Kate Boyer
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics