Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!agate!williams@src.honeywell.com From: williams@src.honeywell.com (Sue Williams) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Electronic sweatshops Message-ID: <11780@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 7 Jul 88 15:16:14 GMT Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 26 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu >By the way, one of the managers of this company, who had managed >a larger data entry operation elsewhere, told me that he had never >seen a man who could do data entry, although he had seen some try, >unsuccessfully. His theory was that women were more 'flexible' >mentally, a concept which he was unable to explain. > This is fairly bunkish, I think. I was a keypunch (key to disk, not cards) operator for several summers in high school/college, and although I didn't think at the beginning that I would be really good/fast at it ever, I became one of the most fast/accurate punchers in the group. I understand the desire to keep the keystroke counters around, the job is so boring that seeing your "statistics" is one of the few exciting/rewarding aspects of the job (you also have other punchers who verify your work to tell you how accurate it is). I am sort of performance-oriented though, other people (or keypunch operators) might not be. Anyway, about men vs. women, keypunching is no different than any other hand-eye coordination thing, all it takes is patience, practice, and a little determination. Plenty of men are good at video games. I don't think there's any mental aspect to this, except that maybe women are more willing to do this sort of work which has little excitement or payoff (unlike a video game). You learn to do it automatically and think of something else, just as you do when you brush your teeth. I must admit that I have never met any male keypunch operators. sue