ABSTRACT
The extraordinary technical progress in microelectronics, coupled with the convergence of a diverse set of technologies, has favoured the pervasive diffusion of information technologies (ITs). As the neo-Schumpeterians have pointed out, such a process involves extensive structural changes, threatens previous economic, social and organizational paradigms with ‘creative destruction’, and heralds new ones. But this revolutionary process seems, so far, to have left women behind. The broad ‘conventional’ pattern of feminine employment has not been significantly altered. Women tend to be found clustered in low-skilled and low-paid jobs, and to be systematically excluded from the techno-scientific occupations. This picture may change in the future, at least in some areas of IT such as the production of software.
