Thank you, Julyan, and welcome to Ottawa; or should I say welcome back, for the many of you who were here just over a year ago to address the issue of women's rights under the new Canadian Constitution. Today we're gathered to confront an equally important issue, the effects of a new technology which is propelling us into a second industrial revolution: the technology of computers.

What's happening really is a second industrial revolution. We're moving from the mechanical age into the computer age. In the tiny, accessible, and above all, cheap form of the microchip, computers are automating the production of lumber in sawmills, the assembly of cars in factories, and the assembly of reports in offices of all sizes, shapes and descriptions. The revolution is changing, not only what we do, but how we do it. In a nutshell, employment is shifting from passively filling fixed-formula, mechanistic-type jobs to something more interactive, dynamic and evolving. This requires a new approach to working, and toward job training and education as well: an approach embodied : in the notion of continuing education. Just as "a job to last a lifetime" is becoming obsolete, at least for a great many people, so is the notion of "completing one's education."

So, there's a lot to be done in adapting to this transformative new technology, right? So why is so little being done? When I discuss the issues with government and other decision makers, they reply blandly that the employment question is still in debate. Oh, I say, thinking of the women who are already missing out on jobs because of the automation which has already taken place. Or, when I've had occasion to talk to industry leaders, I find that they're only willing to acknowledge one problem in making the transition into the computer age; this is the skills-shortage problem. They can't see, or else refuse to take responsibility for, the larger picture in which many people, especially women, are being left behind in the transition - being left behind with skills made redundant by automation, yet also surplus to the quota industry needs to solve its skills-shortage problem.

This blinkered, exclusionary thinking makes me so angry. But it also reminds me of a joke, the only one in my repertoire. I heard it at another conference on the employment implications of computer technology. It was told by a management consultant to illustrate his point that being optimistic or pessimistic about the employment outcome of automation simply depended on your point of view.

The joke is set within the context of an Elizabethan drama, during which, one of the characters has to plunge into hell. Well, to effect this little development, they put a trapdoor into the stage floor and at the appropriate moment, zip, away he'd go. Everything went fine until the night when the actor playing this part fell ill and his understudy had to take over. The only difference between them was that the understudy was somewhat corpulent. . . . And, you guessed it, when the big moment arrived and the trapdoor was released, he got stuck.

Quick as a flash a voice called from the back of the theatre, "Halleluja, hell's full."

What I found very interesting was that a number of the women in the audience didn't find the joke quite so funny as did the men, perhaps because they were identifying with those whose plight had resulted in hell being full. Women tend to be "pessimistic" about the employment effects of automation, because they're identifying with women's experience of it. That which is universally, if unspokenly, considered "women's work" in our economy, is being automated, while that work which is being created or enhanced by computer technology is largely considered "men's work."

By women's work, I refer to support work. In the office setting, this takes in administrative support and clerical work - an occupation which accounts for over a third of all women's employment in Canada. Looking more broadly throughout the service sector, into banks, telephone companies, supermarkets, etc., another third of the female labour force is employed in essentially support work, delivering sales and services, and much of this is being automated as well.

On the other side of the computerization coin, the work being created by computer technology is generally work with an initiative or control element, which also characterizes it as men's work and generally off limits to women. As one brief illustration, a U.S. study found that the percentage of working women in managerial positions was only 6 per cent in 1978, compared to 5 per cent in 1947. The office of the future is a place for professional/ managerial "knowledge" workers, not for support workers, because the support services are being automated.

It helps to grasp the profoundness of the changes taking place if you concentrate on the essence of an office. It is an information system. Traditionally, that system has been paper-based and paper-anchored. Now it is becoming electronically based, and therefore, free from steel, concrete and metal filing cabinets.

You no longer need to go to an office, but can "enter" its information system wherever you have a computer terminal and a handy telephone to hook into. This could be in a hotel halfway across the continent, or at home - hence the term, "electronic cottage", and the reviving of "home-work" as a new option in working life-styles. I hope to return to this a bit later, for I have deep concerns at the potential for exploitation, particularly of women, if this becomes the only work option available. Mean- while, we're entering the office of the future.