Gender Relations and Technological Change in Asia

Abstract

In the post-colonial world of the last 50 years in Asia, one broad conclusion can be stated: overall women have advanced in search of more equal gender relations in most of the continent. The challenges to patriarchy are increasing and patriarchy is weakening. This article examines how advances in information technologies have the potential to change the organization of work in Asia, especially in the areas of gender relations and cultural ceilings. Our major questions are: how are women affecting and have been affected by these wide-ranging technological advances? How do we understand the ongoing contradiction of development policy - being efficient and productive as well as pursuing social and gender equality and sustainable human development? While the new information technologies in manufacturing, services and communications hold great promise for dissolving old bases of discrimination, the potential of these technologies for decentralized and more humane development, with participatory political structures, has yet to be realized because of continuing patriarchal relations and the domination of accumulation over development goals.