Episode 2: Technology and Gender-Based Inequality

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It’s not intuitively obvious that the distinction between gender roles and gender discrimination would arise or change as a result of technology, but Dr. Debora Spar makes a compelling case for this in her recent book Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape our Human Destiny. Starting with the invention of the plow she argues “patriarchy has its origins in the Neolithic Revolution” and brings her readers through a journey of the interplay between technological change and broader social structures including gender discrimination.  In this conversation Dr. Spar gives insight on the impacts of technology on gender roles, gender constructs,  the value of “women’s work”, and how changing social responses to technology may actually help us evolve past “constructed norms” and into equality.

HOST

Kadie Ward, Commissioner and CAO, Pay Equity Commission of Ontario.

GUEST
  • Debora Spar, Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean for Business and Global Society
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