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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
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>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