Liliana Acero (Ph.D. Sussex, UK, 1982), is Director of CIS
(Centro de Investigaciones Sociales) in Argentina. The CIS studies the role of
women and gender in various social spheres. She has edited or written several
articles and books in women's studies. Her current research examines the social
effects of environmental changes in the aluminium industry in Brazil. Her
contribution to this anthology was prepared while serving as an Associate
Professor and Tinker-Lampadia research fellow in the Sociology Departments of
the University of Massachusetts and Brown University, USA.
Fatma Alloo is an activist and journalist who has worked
with a number of newspapers and radio stations in England, Tanzania, and Uganda,
as well as being associated with the Women's Global Network on Reproductive
Rights and coordinating the Aiding Villages in Development programme in
Zanzibar. She was a founder member of the South-South forum in Geneva and has
served on the production teams of several international magazines. She is at
present Chairperson of the Tanzania Media Women's Association, as well as
serving on a number of development bodies.
Nirmala Banerjee is Professor of Economics at the Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Previously, she worked as an urban
planner, and she retains an interest in the urban economy and industrialization.
Her research focuses on the analysis of women's issues, particularly women's
work experience. She is deeply involved in the women's movement in India.
Maja Bucar graduated from the Faculty of Economics in
Ljubljana in 1980. Her Master's dissertation on 'Women's employment in the
restructuring of global industry' was completed in 1985. The following year she
was visiting Research Fellow at Boston University. She is currently Senior
Research Fellow and Director at the Centre for International Cooperation and
Development in Ljubljana. She has published a number of articles on
international economics and new technologies.
Fatima Gaio is a Senior Lecturer in production engineering
and development economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her
recent research interests include: the development of software activities and
export opportunities in newly industrializing economies; the diffusion of
emerging organizational and information technologies, and their social impact;
and the gender structure of employment.
Charlene Gannagé is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Windsor, Ontario,
Canada. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1984. She is
author of Double Day, Double Bind: Women Garment Workers (Women's Press,
1986), and co-editor of Working People and Hard Times: Canadian Perspectives
(Garamond Press, 1987). She teaches in the areas of labour studies and
Sujata Gothoskar is currently attached to the Workers'
Solidarity Centre in Bombay, India. She has also worked with women's campaign
groups on diverse issues, and has been involved in research for unions and
training for non-governmental organizations. She writes regularly for newspapers
and journals in India, the Women's Feature Service, and the Asian Labour
Ursula Huws divides her time between lecturing in the
School of Policy Studies, Politics and Social Research at the University of
North London, freelance writing and lecturing, and managing Analytica, the
economic and social research consultancy of which she is the director. She has
published numerous reports and articles on various aspects of work, technology
and gender relations and has acted as a consultant to the European Commission,
the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization and a
variety of national and local government departments, NGOs, companies and trade
Pavla Jezkova is an economist with a working experience in
developing countries in Africa and Asia. At the time of writing she was a staff
member of UNIDO, working in the area of integrating human resources issues in
general, and gender issues in particular, into industry-related policy analysis
and research. She is presently working as a freelance consultant in Southern
Swasti Mitter was born in West Bengal, India, and educated
at Calcutta University, the London School of Economics and Cambridge University.
She is the Deputy Director of the United Nations University Institute for New
Technologies (UNUINTECH) in Maastricht, the Netherlands. At UNUINTECH she
coordinates the research programme on gender, technology and development. She
simultaneously holds the chair of gender and technology studies at Brighton
University, UK. She has written on the areas of women and industrialization as a
consultant for a wide range of international agencies, including the European
Commission, ESCAP, ILO, UNDP, UNIFEM, and UNIDO. Her books include Common
Fate, Common Bond: Women in the Global Economy (1986), Computer-aided
Manu- facturing and Women's Employment (1992) and, with Sheila Rowbotham,
Dignity and Daily Bread: New Forms of Economic Organisation Among Poor Women in
the Third World and the First (1994, Routledge).
Cecilia Ng Choon Sim teaches Gender and Development Studies
at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia, where she is an Associate Professor. Her
present research and writings focus on technological change and gender relations
in the service and industrial sectors. She is currently seconded as a Research
Fellow to the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies in the
Netherlands. Cecilia is also active in the women's movement in Malaysia.
Mayuri Odedra-Straub completed her Ph.D. at the London
School of Economics on 'The Transfer of IT to Developing Countries' in 1990.
Since then she has worked as a consultant with the Commonwealth Secretariat in
London, as editor of PC World Africa, and as a lecturer in Information
Systems at the National University of Singapore. She is currently working as an
independent consultant in Germany.
Ruth Pearson is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the School
of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. She has
researched and written widely on industrialisation and women's employment,
particularly in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. Her recent work has
focused on new information technology and the internationalization of service
sector employment. She is also director of a graduate teaching programme in
Gender Analysis and Development, and is engaged in research and consultancy on
reproductive technologies, macroeconomic change and household responses.
Sheila Rowbotham has a background in economic and labour
history and is the author of several books, including Women, Resistance and
Revolution (1972), Woman's Consciousness, Man's World (1973) and
Women in Movement: Feminism and Social Action (1993, Routledge). She has
been active in labour organizing and the women's movement for many years. Her
interest in economic development and global labour links grew out of her work at
the Economic Policy Unit of the Greater London Council, 1983-6. She has worked
as a consultant research adviser to the Women's Programme at the World Institute
for Development Economics Research (WIDER UNU), and has held research
fellowships at Birkbeck College, London University, and Manchester University,
UK. She is Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology of the University of
Carol Yong is a freelance researcher, and has worked
on a range of issues concerning women and rural indigenous communities. She now
works in Sarawak with the Institute for Community