The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of
Work and Employment
Gender and Work
Contributors: Harriet Bradley
Edited by: Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried & Edward Granter
Book Title: The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment
Chapter Title: "Gender and Work"
Pub. Date: 2015
Access Date: May 25, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: 55 City Road
Print ISBN: 9781446280669
Online ISBN: 9781473915206
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473915206.n5
Print pages: 73-92
©2015 SAGE Publications Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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Gender and Work
Harriet Bradley
In post-war sociology, work became a major concern, building on the classic accounts of
capitalism and industrialization offered by Marx, Weber and Durkheim. In particular, a rich
tradition of case studies of particular workplaces grew up. Excellent and influential texts such
as Goldthorpe and Lockwood's Affluent Worker studies (Goldthorpe et al. 1968), Robert
Blauner's Alienation and Freedom (1964), Eli Chinoy's Automobile Workers and the American
Dream (1955) or Huw Beynon's Working for Ford (1973) were largely, and in some cases
completely, concerned with male workers. Indeed as this list shows, factory work, and in
particular car assembly, had become paradigmatic of work relations. The work of women was
largely, in Sheila Rowbotham's (1977) memorable phrase, hidden from history!
Now, of course, looking back from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, it is widely
accepted that the typical worker in the deindustrialized nations of the Global North is more
likely to be a women working in retail or a call centre than a male factory worker. In between
then and now, however, gender made its big entry into the curriculum. There had been
previously a few pioneering studies which focused on women's labour, and which would prove
an inspiration to researchers in the 1970s. Some examples are the historical studies by Clark
(1910, reprinted 1982) and Pinchbeck (1930, reprinted 1981) that looked at the labour of
women before and during industrialization in Britain; the exploration of women's ‘double
burden’ of work inside and outside the home by Myrdal and Klein (1956) and Nye and
Hoffman (1963); and studies of housework by Gavron (1966) and Lopata (1971). However, the
real surge of interest in gender and work occurred in the 1980s, as a result of the influence of
second-wave feminism in the academy in America, Britain, Europe and Australia. Exploration
of the many ways in which ‘work', no longer limited to ‘employment’ but extended to include
domestic and reproductive work, is gendered has produced a rich and extensive corpus of
theory and research.
This body of work is the subject of this chapter. It starts by looking at the original rediscovery
of ‘women's work’ by 1980s feminists, then considers the consolidation of studies of gendered
work in the next two decades, speculates on the directions of study taken during sociology's
‘postmodern moment', and continues by looking at the contemporary scene and the position
of women and men within the globalizing economy. For reasons of space, this chapter draws
mainly on studies of women in Europe and America, with statistical data taken chiefly from the
UK. However, to conclude there is a brief section on gendered work in a more global context.
Throughout the chapter it is urged that we need to consider both paid and unpaid work if we
want to understand gender differences and divisions. The other major theme is the
importance of context in shaping both gender relations and also the sociological study of
them. In particular, specific political and economic conjunctures produce changes in gender
relations and in the interests of those who study them.
INVISIBLE NO LONGER: THE EXCAVATION OF WOMEN'S WORK
This is clearly illustrated in the burst of interest in researching women's work in Britain in the
late 1970s and early 1980s. Post-war expansion of higher education, and 1960s affluence and
youth rebellion had produced a batch of young radical female scholars and research funding
was easier to come by, relative to now. There were a number of key influences informing the
exciting case studies of women employees that emerged in these years. As well as the
background of second-wave feminism, there was a strong input from Marxism which was the
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dominant radical perspective in sociology at that time. In addition, the highly influential work of
Braverman (1974) had stimulated an interest in close study of particular ‘labour processes’ as
illustrated by the institution of the International Labour Process Conference. Finally, there
were a number of powerful and engrossing case studies and ethnographies of male factory
workers (for example, Beynon 1973; Burawoy 1982; Dore 1973; Edwards 1979; Goldthorpe et
al. 1968; Haraszti 1978; Kamata 1982; Linhart 1981; Nichols and Beynon 1979), which served
as templates for women scholars wishing to explore women's work.
The case studies by researchers such as Glucksmann (writing as Cavendish, 1982), Pollert
(1981) and Westwood (1984) opened up the world of women's employment, showing both the
negative and positive aspects. Women factory workers were ill-paid compared to men and
were confined to the lower levels of the organizational hierarchies. Their work was socially
defined as less skilled, although it might be described as expert; when Sally Westwood tried
to work as a machinist to carry out ethnographic research in a hosiery factory, she simply
could not achieve the necessary speed and dexterity. The work was often tightly controlled,
either intrinsically by demanding piecework systems or externally by close supervision:
Westwood observed how the women were tied to their machines, while the male knitters were
able to move around the factory floor. Milkman (1985) offered a rather more positive view of
women factory workers, observing their important role in labour movement struggles in
America's major cities.
Of course women's work does not just take place in factories. Studies of clerical work and the
professions began to open up understanding of the role of women in these areas (Crompton
and Jones 1984). Spencer and Podmore (1987) showed how women in professions
dominated by men were faced with a ‘double bind': if they appeared feminine in their
behaviour and appearance they were judged to be out of place ‘in a man's world', but if they
adopted a masculine style at work they were deemed to have spoiled their identities as
women. Pringle's work on secretaries (1989) revealed that the women justified their own
subjection to men by negative views about their own sex as being bitchy and stated their
preference for having a male boss. ‘Pink-collar’ work was seen as acceptable for women,
requiring them to provide low-level service for men in managerial roles and adding a
decorative element to office life.
Despite the restrictions they faced, however, the women factory workers studied by Westwood
had developed rich and supportive shop-floor cultures and valued their jobs for the
companionship and conviviality they offered. Indeed, a theme that runs throughout studies of
women workers is that of escape from home and domesticity into a world of friendship and
gossip. A common motivation women offer for returning to work after a spell at home is
‘wanting to make something of myself': not to be just a wife and mother. The later revealing
study by Hochschild (1997), The Time Bind, argued this point strongly; the women she
studied complained that their work in the home was invisible and undervalued and it was only
in the workplace that they could feel a sense of self-worth, achievement and recognition. So
while men tended to talk of escaping from work, to the home, the bar or the sports ground,
women experienced an escape into work.
This perception was buoyed up by the discussion of housework (Friedan, 1963; Oakley,
1974). Oakley argued that both the invisibility and immeasurability of domestic work led to its
low-status and lack of value; women she studied felt trapped and isolated in the home. There
was limited social support for women struggling with a heavy burden of childcare and
housework (as is still the case today). If the husband was a high-earner the cage of domestic
drudgery might be gilded, but it was still a cage. Friedan referred to the full-time housewives
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who unaccountably appeared bored and disappointed despite their comfortable lifestyles as
suffering from ‘the disease without a name'. Because husbands went out to work, they were
seen to have the right to leisure after work, but, as Deem (1986) found in her study of leisure
and gender in Milton Keynes, since domestic work never seems to end, married women had
virtually no real leisure time.
Men, of course, like Hochschild's respondents, find self-worth and identity at work, as was
demonstrated in Cockburn's (1983, 1985, 1991) studies of the gendering of work. In particular,
her study of printing workers (1983) revealed how the change of the printing process, from hot
metal technology to computerized page setting, left the men feeling ‘emasculated’ with the
loss of skills and their inability to fix their computers when they broke down. Under industrial
capitalism, pride in being the ‘male breadwinner’ became a recompense for long, gruelling
hours of work; and despite the prevalence of dual-earning households in the second half of
the twentieth century, masculinity is still very bound up with breadwinning. Suicide rates
among unemployed men are high.
In terms of theory, many of these 1980s studies employed some form of Marxist analysis
alongside their feminism. Hartmann's (1981) well-known account of the ‘unhappy marriage’ of
feminism and Marxism was one of many attempts to theorize the interrelationship of capitalism
and patriarchal domination; she argued that taking over concepts from Marxist analysis and
trying to apply them to relations between the sexes meant that inevitably class was seen as
more significant than gender, which tended to slide into the background. However, writers like
Cavendish (1982) and Pollert (1981) explored carefully how class and gender came together
to structure working-class women's lives. Capitalism and patriarchy were seen to combine to
construct women as a cheap form of labour; profits for the owners were increased and men
were able to maintain their dominance in the family because of their superior earnings. This
partly explains men's resistance to allowing women to enter ‘their jobs'. Whatever women do
tends to be devalued just because it is done by women. Depressingly, the tobacco workers
studied by Pollert seemed to accept that men ‘deserved’ to earn more. It would take decades
of feminist campaigning to change this attitude in any way at all.
Long before Crenshaw (1989) coined the term ‘intersectionality', these studies were exploring
the interrelation of class, gender, age and ethnicity in the factory workers’ experience. Pollert
(1981) noted the age division among the workers in the tobacco factory. Young women viewed
their jobs as just a temporary stage before getting married and having children, and their
earnings as giving them access to a world of romance and consumer pleasures. The older
women, who knew that a return to the factory to support household needs was the likely
future for them, appeared, nonetheless, to allow the young to retain this illusion of freedom.
The influential work of Glenn (1992) showed how in the United States class and gender
intersected with race, especially in the context of the past history of slavery, to construct a
view of African American women, along with other women of colour, as a suitable source of
caring labour, an association that continues today (see Chapter 24). Another study of the
interplay of ethnicity, class and gender in a specific context was Phizacklea's Unpacking the
Fashion Industry (1990), a study of the garment industry in the Midlands of Britain. Restricted
in their employment options by racism, male immigrants turned to self-employment. Little
capital was needed to set up a small workshop to turn out cheap clothing. The men typically
employed family members and relatives on low wages to operate machines; women had no
option but to take these jobs, because they had come to the UK as dependants on their male
relatives and often had limited language skills.
Minority ethnic women are characteristically pushed the lowest position in occupational
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hierarchies, working in private-sector care homes, as office cleaners or hotel maids. Two
decades later Bridget Anderson's (2000) revealing study of domestic servants in the capital
cities of France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain showed how migration rules and
restrictions still continue to shape immigrant women's lives, trapping them as virtual slaves to
exploitative employers.
GENDERED WORK: SEXUAL DIVISIONS OF LABOUR
These early case studies laid the ground for the study of gender and work for the next three
decades. Since then a massive body of work, firmly grounded in empirical research but
backed up by theoretical analysis, has accumulated, studying the processes of gendering.
The work has been supported, at least during the 1980s and 1990s by what I termed a
‘climate of equality’ (Bradley 1998) symbolized and legitimized by the passing of various key
pieces of legislation under the auspices of the European Union, following on from the passing
of equalities legislation in the United States. Readers critical of the EU during the moment of
eurosceptism that emerged as a result of the euro crisis in the 2000s should be aware of the
crucial role of the EU in compelling member states to fall in line with its equality and diversity
policies. Neoliberal capitalist employers freed from the constraints of the EU would be quick to
shed equality machinery which they regard as blocks to profit accumulation and the free
market.
The key concepts to emerge from this epoch of study were the gender (and racial)
segregation of work, the sex-typing of jobs, and the broader notion of gendering. Joan Acker
(1990) provided a classic analysis of how the labour market, workplace and jobs were
gendered. She argued that gendering was involved in the division of labour, including the
construction of hierarchies, in which men took the top jobs, and the ‘sex-typing’ of jobs,
typified as women's work or men's work. Gendering also was manifest in the symbols and
imagery within organizations, alongside patterns and rituals of interaction. A particularly
significant aspect of gendering lay in the way male and female bodies were differently valued
in the workplace. Men were ‘at home’ in the workplace, women were intruders, often pushed
into separate departments – ‘women's spaces’ like the typing pool or the beauty salon. In all
these ways men and women, masculinities and femininities are marked out as different.
Gendering, therefore, must be seen as an active and continuous process by which jobs as
they are developed are associated with either women or men; this hardens out into the
prevailing structure of the sexual division of labour. Through these processes masculine and
feminine identities are affirmed and consolidated at work. As we spend so much of our time at
work, workplaces are important sites of identity formation, though of course not the only ones.
But they do have a strong effect on our adult selves. As Westwood (1984) stated, girls enter
the factory and come out as women.
The world of paid work into which young women of all classes enter is one marked by gender
segregation, whether of a naked and obvious sort or something more subtle. It is orthodox to
see it as having two dimensions (Hakim 1981). Horizontal segregation is the clustering of
women and men into separate occupational categories (women are nurses and secretaries,
men are bricklayers and drivers of heavy goods vehicles): as these job examples, plucked at
random, show it is usually easier for men to insert themselves into jobs seen as ‘women's
work’ than for women to move into male specialisms.
Table 5.1 shows the concentration of women and men in the UK in broad occupational
categories in 2013. Although there are national variations in the precise jobs which are seen
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as ‘men's’ and ‘women's’ work, roughly similar patterns would be displayed in most countries
of the Global North.
Table 5.1 Percentage share of employment of women and men by occupational
categories in 2013
Percentage
Men
Women
Managers and Senior Officials
66.9
33.1
Professional Occupations
50.3
49.7
Associate Professional and Technical Occupations
57.4
42.6
Administrative and Secretarial Occupations
23.4
76.6
Skilled Trades Occupations
90.0
10.0
Caring, Leisure and Other Service Occupations
18.0
82.0
Sales and Customer Service Occupations
37.3
62.7
Process, Plant and Machine Operatives
88.6
11.4
Elementary Occupations
54.3
45.7
Source: Labour Force Survey.
The table shows the dominance of men in skilled trades (90%) and factory work (89%) while
women are the clear majority in three sectors: caring and leisure services, retail and customer
services, and secretarial and administrative jobs. The former two of these are notoriously
poorly paid, with limited promotion chances. Gottfried (2013) provides figures for the US which
show the concentration of women in a variety of caring occupations in 2010: 91% of registered
nurses, 88% of home health aides, 89% of maids and cleaners, 95% of childcare workers, and
86% of home care aides. Women also make up over 80% of teachers and teacher assistants,
secretaries, receptionists, bookkeepers and clerks.
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Although the proportions of women and men in the professional groupings are shown as
roughly equal in Table 5.1, we know that men tend to dominate in the better-paid professions.
Moreover, if we move to more precise job categories, segregation becomes more marked.
As the table shows, male-dominated sectors show higher degrees of segregation. This is
partly because, as noted earlier, men themselves often jealously protect these areas from
female entrants through exclusionary practices (Walby 1990; Witz 1992). Kanter's classic
study of the corporate world (1977) showed how male bonding, what she termed
‘homosociality', was disrupted by female presences. Male surveyors in Addison's study of
universities (2014) told her how they had to tone down their banter and stop swearing when
women joined their unit. Women who take on ‘men's work’ may often find themselves the
victims of harassment and bullying (Bradley, 1998). Male preference for working with their own
sex is also a factor in the vertical dimension of gender segregation, the clustering of women in
the lower posts in occupational pyramids and male domination of the top posts. Thus, for
example, Eagly and Carli reported in 2007 that in the largest 50 corporations in the EU
women made up only 4% of CEOs and 11% of top executives.
As was argued in Men's Work, Women's Work (Bradley 1989), while the structure of gender
segregation shifts, accompanying both technological and sectoral developments and broader
processes of socio-economic and cultural change, what remains constant is that there is such
a structure. Maria Charles (2003) has explored this in comparative perspective, revealing its
worldwide persistence. In her work with Karen Bradley she studies the link of labour market
segregation with educational choice of disciplines in 44 countries at various levels of
development, noting the dominance of men in STEM subjects (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) in all countries. Charles and Bradley note that the degree of
segregation in these subjects is higher in the more developed countries. They explain these
findings in terms of the greater stress put on individual freedom and self-expression within
Western values, which inform career choice; this is backed by the strength of enduring
cultural beliefs which they describe as ‘gender essentialist ideology’ (2009: 924). It may be
that in other countries economic imperatives and concern for family well-being may lead
women into technical arenas. For example, in Malaysia many women choose to study
engineering. However, there are structural as well as cultural factors at play: thus in Malaysia
women end up within the engineering industry in administrative not technical or on-site roles,
because travel and work on site are not seen as compatible with women's ascribed cultural
roles and responsibility for the home (Rokis 2004).
Horizontal gender segregation tends to be most marked in the lower-levels of the social class
structure, especially in manual and craft skills. All-male and all-female specialties are less
evident in the service sector, where women's employment is anyway prevalent. Women and
men tend to work together in schools, offices and hospitals, though vertical segregation is still
evident. Crompton and Sanderson (1990), however, developed the idea of ‘gendered niches’
to account for the more subtle forms of segregation in the professions. Witz (1992), in her rich
account of the development of the professions, used a Weberian analysis of different forms of
‘social closure'; over time outright exclusionary tactics gave way to job segregation as men
secured the most prized specialisms for themselves. For example, in medicine men tend to be
surgeons and hospital consultants, while women tend to be GPs and paediatricians. In the
legal professions women go for family law, men for corporate law and criminal law. Female
students and recruits in these areas still quickly become aware of subtle processes of
channelling as they come into contact with professionals, many of whom use tactics such as
sexual harassment, sexist jokes and patronizing statements to undermine their selfconfidence and sense of competency.
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Nonetheless, apart from the manual trades which are still highly segregated, the boundaries
between men's and women's work can be seen to have gradually eroded over the decades
since the 1980s, as part of the general worldwide increase in the proportion of women
entering paid employment. This trend has been described as the ‘feminization of (paid) work’
(unaccompanied by quite such an influx of men into unpaid work!). Bradley et al. (2000)
distinguished three aspects to feminization: the proportional increase of women in the labour
force; the growth in post-industrial societies of service jobs seen as more suitable for women,
and the transformation of work tasks with greater demand for ‘soft skills’ and customer-facing
activities, which women were considered to possess to a greater degree than men. In
addition, the current global trend of informalization of labour, with both men and women
increasingly forced into insecure labour, is making the conditions of work for men closer to
those historically experienced by women.
Labour force statistics for the UK illustrate these trends. Over the past decades there has
been a rise in the percentage of women aged 16 to 64 who are in employment and a fall in
the percentage of men. In June 2013 67% of women aged 16 to 64 were in work, an increase
from 53% in 1971. For men the percentage fell to 76% in 2013 from 92% in 1971.
However, it is important to note that nearly half these women worked part-time hours (42% as
opposed to only 12% of men (ONS, 2013)). This is a worldwide trend.
Might feminization be slowly bringing an end to segregation and the sex-typing of jobs?
Segregation is notoriously difficult to measure over time, given that the nature of occupations
and jobs continuously evolves. By and large studies suggest that there has been a degree of
desegregation over the past decades but that it is mainly due to the decline of ‘traditional’
male jobs. A study of segregation in Denmark by Emerek revealed that in both 1997 and 2003
less than 25% of both women and men worked in ‘mixed’ jobs (where women make up 40–
60% of employees), and 30% of each sex held male or female-dominated jobs (where 80% of
the jobs were held respectively by men and by women) (Emerek 2006). When one digs down
into job specificity and content, the degree of segregation will characteristically increase. A
good example is Bergman's analysis of a seemingly ‘integrated’ organization: a Swedish
university. While in terms of formal position in the hierarchy nearly half of women and threequarters of men worked in mixed occupations, at the level of jobs the figures shrunk to around
a third for each sex and at department level only a quarter were working in integrated areas
(Bergman 2006). We may conclude from this that gender segregation, although less stark
than in the past or in many countries of the Global South, is quite persistent and that, by and
large, men and women tend to do different things in their workplaces.
One way that the tasks performed by the sexes differ is that women are more often involved in
jobs characterized by what Arlie Hochschild (1983) termed ‘emotional labour’ in her classic
study of air hostesses. This refers to the requirements of many customer-facing and caring
jobs. As well as performing practical tasks for customers and clients, the worker is expected to
make them feel comfortable and offer appropriate emotional support and reassurance. To do
this employees have to learn to handle and restrain their own emotions, in effect putting on a
false self. In her analysis of this ‘emotion work’ which the employee must learn to carry out
Hochschild distinguished between surface acting and ‘deep’ acting, when the assumed
behaviour becomes a permanent aspect of one's self.
Emotional labour is often closely associated with ‘body work', which has been studied notably
by Wolkowitz (2006; Wolkowitz et al. 2013). The work of beauticians, therapists, masseurs,
nurses, sports coaches and others often involves close and intimate contact with the bodies of
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clients and customers. Such work is often performed by women, as this is deemed to guard
against inappropriate sexual meanings being imputed to the performance of the body task.
Wolkowitz argues that such work is on the increase in contemporary capitalism, partly
because of the importance of branding and also because of the cultural value increasingly put
on beauty and ‘fitness’ by ordinary men and women. It is instructive that in common parlance
among young people ‘fit’ means both healthy and good-looking. Gimlin (2007) notes that
although the various forms of body work are on the increase, they can carry stigma because
of the associations with sexuality (the connection of massage with ‘massage parlours’ and
prostitution is an obvious link) and with the waste products of the body. Thus people who
perform such maintenance work on other people are often low-paid and female.
Here we see how age and class intersect with gender, because, for example, those who
perform beauty therapy for celebrities are well rewarded, while the most stigmatized form of
body work is probably the care of the elderly. Indeed, domiciliary carers and cleaners, for
example, are seen as being at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy because of the jobs’
image of ‘dirty work', and because the skills involved are seen as ‘natural’ to women and thus
as holding less social value than those forms of skill acquired through training, such as
technical (and largely male) skills. Shildrick et al. (2012), in their study of employment in
Teesside, report the manager of a café telling them ‘all the staff are women, obviously … they
are better at cleaning and cooking’ (2012: 72). Yet as work by Hebson (2013), Hayes (2013)
and others has shown, many of the women who look after old people love their work and take
pride in performing it well, often going the extra mile to help out their clients, despite the
terrible pay. Nishikawa and Tanaka (2009), looking at care workers in Japan, posit the idea
that care workers are, in effect, knowledge workers, drawing on a range of tacit and learned
skills. This is a prime example of the continued devaluation of a job, just because it is
performed by women.
SEX AND IDENTITY AT WORK: POSTMODERN EXPLORATIONS?
The rise in body work along with increased consumerism have had important impacts on
employers’ usage of labour. Increasingly recruitment, particularly of young women and men,
is based not just on skills and qualifications but on appearance and sexuality (Adkins 1996).
This is particularly the case in the hospitality and leisure industry, in which, as noted above,
women predominate. The waitresses in the American restaurant chain, Hooters, exemplify this
trend, being required to wear skimpy revealing costumes and flirt with the male customers. To
avoid charges under equality legislation, the young women are obliged to sign a disclaimer in
their contract that they accept these conditions as part of their work. Similarly studies of
female airline attendants by Hochschild and others reported that they were carefully
scrutinized over their appearance, make-up and hairstyles, and even monitored for weight.
Thus, labour becomes aestheticized and sexualized (Witz et al. 2003). This suggests an
interesting shift in the nature of gendered work in recent decades.
Indeed, here was a curious homology between the development of western economies in the
late twentieth century and developments in the study of gender and work. Theorists of
capitalism such as Ray and Sayer (1999) and Du Gay (1996) argued that there was a degree
to which culture had become more embedded in the economy: cultural and creative industries
were becoming more dominant and corporations were more concerned with brand and image.
The mass markets were becoming more individualized and concerned with style and
differentiation. At the same time sociology took a ‘cultural turn’ under the influence of
postmodern and post-structural thinking. This led to new interests in the study of work;
attention turned from material factors to an interest in work cultures, identities of masculinity
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and femininity, embodiment, and sexuality. The studies discussed above were symptomatic of
this shift.
A key text in the study of class and identity was Beverley Skeggs’ Formations of Class and
Gender (1997). Using concepts drawn from Bourdieu, Skeggs showed how young workingclass women training as care workers distinguished themselves from ‘the poor’ or, as she put
it, ‘disidentified’ from their working-classness by affirming their respectability in their dress and
behaviour. A recent study by Addison (2014) also uses a Bourdieusian framework to explore
how people learn to ‘play the game’ if they are to thrive in the workplace; in her study of
workers in universities she again observed how people sought to conform to norms of
respectability in dress, language and demeanour in order to avoid seeming like ‘a fish out of
water'. Others have studied the range of subjectivities and identities available to women.
Another important study dealing with some of these themes was McDowell's research into
women working in the city. McDowell pointed out that female bodies presented themselves as
the ‘other', intruding into a male world. These bodies were seen as ‘leaky’ and dangerous,
bringing sexual temptation into the workplace; women menstruate, women are emotional and
shed tears. Thus the women in her study had to tread a fine line in choosing what to wear for
work each day: there was no standard uniform of suit and tie as there was for men. Wearing
trousers was seen as aping masculinity and discouraged, but on the other hand women had
to be careful about revealing too much flesh and appearing too fluffy and pretty. Women
aspiring to managerial roles were counselled to wear navy or grey suits with pastel blouses
(Kaye 2014). Male bodies are regarded as the norm and in order to be accepted women have
to find acceptable modes of self-presentation and forms of femininity not perceived as too
challenging. It is the same fine line young women students have to walk to avoid being
labelled a slut or ‘dog’ on the one hand or unattractive, boring or a ‘dyke’ on the other. The
point here is that femininity and female embodiment need constant effort, care and
monitoring, while masculinity is an unthinking ‘default’ identity. That this identity work is an
ongoing progress is nicely expressed in this statement from McDowell:
Men and women do not come to work with their gender attributes fixed in place but
rather ‘do’ gender in the workplace, inscribing gendered characteristics on the body
in ways which conform to or transgress accepted patterns of behaviour. (McDowell
1997: 133)
While McDowell's respondents struggled with these issues, a happier spin was put on
sexuality at work by Halford et al. (1997). They argued that the expression of heterosexuality
at work, within appropriate limits, was actually welcomed by managers as improving employee
morale. The managers believed that the stimulation provided by the presence of the other sex
in the workplace encouraged teams to work harder and more creatively. The introduction of
mixed working groups can thus be seen as a form of control of workers, one that humanizes
the workplace and thereby promotes compliance. However, this development of working
environments as sites of heteronormativity brings problems with it. Although, as the quotation
above from McDowell stresses, it is also possible for employees to demonstrate transgressive
forms of behaviour, it is very difficult for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people to ‘out’
themselves at work without experiencing stigma and discrimination; which is widely reported,
for example in a cross-European survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA 2013).
Moreover, Hearn and Parkin (2001) show that high levels of sexual harassment and, in some
environments such as the armed forces, extreme forms of sexual violence such as rape, are
the consequences of the sexualization of work.
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This period of research into gender then drew upon ideas of the ‘culturization of work’ (Du
Gay 1996; Strangleman and Warren 2008), turning away from the more economic aspects of
work to study identities, sexualities and embodiment as key features of the gendering of
employment relations. Workplaces were viewed as active sites of identity construction, where
prevalent discourses of femininity and masculinity shaped patterns of behaviour of female and
male employees, encouraging conformity and emphasizing the difference and separation of
the genders (Whitehead 2002). In such processes, views of appropriate masculine and
feminine attributes may subtly alter, as dominant groups seek to maintain their power
positions in the hierarchy. Thus Wacjman (1988) noted that in the face of the feminization of
jobs, men were taking steps to be seen to acquire and deploy ‘soft skills', while women may
have to adopt masculine attitudes such as workaholism, toughness and ruthlessness if they
are to succeed in a male world. There is a double bind here, though as noted by Arianna
Huffington commenting on the case of Jill Abramson, who was sacked as editor of the New
York Times:
There's no question that the language being used – that she was ‘brash', ‘abrasive’
these are words used almost exclusively about women. Men tend to be ‘driven’ and
‘authoritative'. There's no doubt that there is a double standard for women at the top.
(Interview in the Guardian, 2 June 2014)
Like many other women who gain positions of power and authority, Huffington was frequently
told that she was ‘difficult'. A classic example is that of Hillary Clinton who was perpetually
defamed and criticized in the press because she did not conform to the standard view of how
a president's wife should behave, present herself and be dressed.
GENDER AND RECESSION: ‘LA LUTTE CONTINUE'
One notable element of some of these discussions emerging from the post-structural and
cultural turn in feminist thinking was an assumption – sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit –
that the problems of gender inequality and disadvantage, at least in their more obvious forms,
were diminishing and that patriarchal attitudes were in retreat. As Bea Campbell puts it:
In the twenty-first century the prevailing faith is that the age of patriarchy is over, the
world's institutions have given up on it; women are winning and feminism, therefore,
is passé; and if women aren't there yet then it is only a matter of evolution. (2013: 2–
3)
Certainly in the late 1990s and early 2000s female students often informed me that ‘we're all
equal now'. Linked to this was the notion of post-feminism: the opening up of the labour
market to women, their academic achievement and the outstripping of boys by girls in school
examinations (a European-wide phenomenon), while the rise of dual-earning families and joint
parenting practices was seen to signal the end of economic inequality between the sexes.
Even Sylvia Walby, in general no friend to postmodernism and post-structuralism, seems with
hindsight to have taken an over-optimistic view in documenting the switch away from a
domestic gender regime so that most women were able to work for wages rather having the
obligation to see mothering and housework as their main or only tasks in life (Walby 1997).
In the twenty-first century this optimism seems misplaced. As was argued in Myths at Work
(Bradley et al. 2000), the feminization of the labour force did not mean an end to gender
segregation, either vertical or horizontal. Looking back, the achievement of second-wave
feminism was to help well-qualified middle- and upper-class women fight their way into
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management roles and make some headway into the elite, traditionally male-dominated,
professions, though not to the very top. It did little for working-class women, as manual work
remained highly segregated by gender and jobs in the bottom end of the service sector, such
as retail and private care, remained poorly rewarded with limited promotion chances. Above
all, there has been no re-evaluation of care and reproductive work.
In their book Hard Times, Tom Clark and Anthony Heath (2014) note how inflation over the
period of austerity in the UK (especially the rise in the prices of food, energy and petrol)
affects not only the poor, but people in the middle ranges of society. An example they cite is
Maria, a mother working full-time, who lives in Cricklewood in London. Her earnings give her
£1,400 a month; her rent is £1,385. That leaves her just £15 per month. In the school holidays
childcare costs her £28 a day. Childcare in the UK is the most expensive in Europe. The
National Childcare Trust reckons that a couple with two children will have to pay around
£7,500 per year for childcare. Women like Maria can only survive by means of child tax
credits: even those have recently been cut. In the run-up to the current UK election,
Chancellor George Osborne spoke of freezing tax credits and benefits for more years: a
terrible blow for lone mothers and mothers in poor working households. No wonder many
women yearn for the kind of state involvement in universal childcare provision provided in the
Nordic countries. In Sweden the cost of childcare for each child at a subsidized nursery is
about £113 a month.
At the higher end of the social ladder, even the most privileged and well-qualified middleclass women can find it hard to access and to retain the highest-level jobs – the recent cases
of Jill Abramson, noted above, and of April McMahon – Vice Chancellor of Aberystwyth
University, who was subject to online petitions for her resignation, show the troubles women
face when they reach positions of power. Decisive and authoritarian behaviour, typical of many
male CEOs, is not seen as acceptable in women. Meanwhile many women (including myself)
have been told they are too soft and emotional to take top jobs: the persistent double bind.
Moreover, the long-hours culture which afflicts the corporate world in many countries,
especially the UK and the US, deters women with children from seeking top jobs, as do the
increasing demands of intensive contemporary motherhood: the school runs, the ferrying of
children to after-school activities and the schools’ demands for parental (usually maternal)
involvement (Lareau 2003).
We can state, then, that women remain in the lower echelons of the division of labour and
above all are constrained in their choices by the continuation of the ‘dual burden'. Despite
men as fathers showing greater commitment to engaging with their children and sharing in
parenting, in the majority of households in every country in the world women bear the major
responsibility for domestic labour, both childcare and housework. Oriel Sullivan and Jonathon
Gershuny have been studying domestic work using time use data for many years. Their
studies show that from the 1970s to the 2000s in the UK, the time when women were moving
into paid work, men's contribution to the daily chores of housework – cooking and cleaning –
increased at the rate of about one minute per day per year (Gershuny and Kan 2012; Sullivan
2000), although the gap between women's and men's contribution is decreasing. Table 5.2
highlights the disparities in women's and men's daily input into domestic labour and childcare.
Table 5.2 Daily contributions of men and women to domestic labour at different time
periods
Year
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Women: average minutes daily
Men: average minutes daily
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Housework 1975
197
20
Housework 2004
146
53
Childcare 1970s
26
10
Childcare 2000s
42
17
SAGE Reference
Source: compiled from Campbell (2013), drawing on the work of Gershuny, Sullivan and Kan.
If the housework gap is narrowing, the situation around childcare is stark (the lower overall
times for childcare reflect the fact that not everybody has children). Not only do men do less
than women, but women's daily input has increased since the 1970s, reflecting issues
discussed earlier (the cost of childcare, the rise of intensive mothering). This, of course,
continues to restrict women's labour market participation and progress. Budig and England
(2001) found that the wage penalty for motherhood in the USA was 7%. This has subsequent
effects on both pensions and promotion chances. When women have children they step off
the career ladder while men continue to climb; and women returners may find themselves
setting their feet back on a lower step.
A recent survey in Australia revealed that a third of women reported having experienced
depression after childbirth (Campbell 2014). An interesting study by Paula Nicolson (1998) on
post-natal depression analysed the ‘baby blues’ in terms of loss of identity and potential. The
mothers experienced a shift in selfhood, often compared to an earthquake. While mothers
stop paid work all together or, characteristically, move to part-time jobs, the counter-tendency
is for men to take on more working hours, working overtime to ensure the family has enough
for its increased needs (ONS 2013). It is reported that 70% of fathers employed in the City of
London work 10-hour days, meaning both that women find it hard to take such jobs and that
fathers can have minimal involvement in childcare (Campbell 2013). The earthquake for men
is more like a tremor!
All these trends, which persisted through the 1990s and into the 2000s were intensified by the
world recession of 2008, which can be said to have made gender equality one of its many
casualties, as was the case in earlier recessions (Edgell and Duke 1983) Interestingly, in both
the US and the UK there was initial talk of a ‘he-cession’ as the first casualties were men in
the hard-hit financial and construction sectors (Gottfried 2013). However, while male
employment rallied with the slow economic recovery, in the longer run women suffered more
greatly. The Fawcett Society, which lobbies for women's rights in the UK, described it as a
‘triple whammy'. First, the slashing of jobs in the public sector as part of the austerity regime
meant that many women lost decent well-paid jobs, and were forced into unemployment or
into insecure, badly paid work. Second, welfare benefits were cut, leaving disadvantaged
women struggling to maintain their families (witness the massive spread in food banks in the
UK). Third, many state-run and voluntary-sector services and schemes designed to bridge the
gap between poor families and the world of work were axed, depriving more women of jobs
and cutting off other forms of support. Widespread youth unemployment, even among
graduates, has increased the numbers of young adults remaining in the family home post-
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education, adding to the burden of domestic work for mothers.
Arguably the erosion of equal opportunities can be seen in the longer context of the rise of
neoliberal forms of capitalism (Walby 2011). The ideology of freeing up the market has
unleashed a ruthlessly competitive form of corporate strategizing, involving the shedding of
secure jobs and their replacement with insecure jobs such as the infamous ‘zero-hour
contracts'. The auguries for women are worrying. In the academic sector in the UK,
universities are targeting older workers in non-professorial posts for redundancies and
voluntary severance, replacing them with armies of temporary workers on fixed-term contracts
and hourly pay rates. In the retail sector, a major employer of women, automatic tills are
replacing female cashiers, and the giant supermarket chain Asda (Walmart's UK operation)
announced in 2014 that it was intending to restructure, cutting out numbers of middlemanagement jobs, many of which will be held by women – supervisory and lowermanagement roles in retail have been one area where traditionally women without higher
qualifications can climb up internal career ladders and gain reasonable salaries. In the UK the
privatization of domiciliary care for the elderly deprived numerous women of local authority
jobs with good pay and conditions. Private care companies do not pay for travel costs or
waiting time, pushing the real wages of their employees below the level of the minimum wage,
which stood at £6.31 per hour in 2014 in the UK for those aged over 21. These changes are
legitimated by a liberal ideology of meritocracy which justifies increased pay differentials in
terms of market needs and the ‘war for talent'. The obscenely high bonuses paid to top
bankers are a notable example, but this process also contributes to the continued
undervaluation of work performed by working-class people and women, as noted by
McDowell:
The shift from ‘brawn’ to ‘brain’ jobs, for example, is celebrated in the contemporary
vision of a knowledge-based economy, where the trivial daily tasks of servicing the
economy are ignored. (McDowell 2009)
The outlook for women in the post-recession recovery, then, seems bleak: the loss of decent
jobs and the rise of insecure contracts push many of them into the precariat. This is the
concept developed by Standing (2011) to describe the worldwide phenomenon of people
trapped in episodes of insecure low-paid employment. Shildrick et al. define the precariat as
‘both the working poor and the insecurely employed, but most importantly [those who] lack a
secure work-based identity normally associated with building a “career” and belonging to an
occupational community’ (2012: 25). However, Shildrick et al. dissent from Standing's view
that this leads to psychological deterioration and loss of the work ethic. They note that people
who lose better-paid more skilled work are being ‘bumped down’ into low-paid insecure jobs.
It has been noted in this chapter that attacks on welfare and the public sector and education
mean that many of these are women, who retain their commitment to employment. Moreover it
can be argued that in certain sectors skilled work, too, has been subjected to precarity;
examples are digital media and computing and, notably, academia, which in the UK has the
second-largest proportion of temporary workers after the hospitality industry (Bradley 2014).
The precariat, then, is a rather different proposition to the former related groupings, such as
the ‘lumpenproletariat’ or ‘underclass'. Indeed, Standing has recently argued that new forms
of oppositional politics may spring from the precariat. However, membership of it is stressful
and exhausting and particularly for those also bearing responsibility for caring for children.
GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF GENDER
The precariat as described by Standing is a global phenomenon, and in the poorer countries
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women are strongly over-represented among its ranks of the casualized and temporarily
employed. Indeed, many aspects of gendering of work are fairly universal. However, as has
been emphasized throughout this chapter, contexts – economic, political and ideological – are
extremely important. Globalization provides the context for the next phase of the gendering of
work and is therefore an important topic for the new generation of feminist researchers,
sometimes referred to as the third wave (Gottfried 2013). The study of globalization has in the
past been led by male theorists (for example, Jameson 2000; Robertson 1992) and has not
necessarily been gender sensitive. There is a need, then, for ‘putting gender at the centre of
considerations of globalization’ (Basu et al. 2001: 994).
Acker (2004) argues that the conditions of globalization appear to strengthen male domination
of women in both the spheres of production and reproduction. This can be linked to Connell's
(2007) analysis of how globalizing hegemonic masculinities are developing as a result of the
current global configuration. He points to the emergence of the heroic colonizer as a key
figure in the imperial epoch: marked by a ruthless individualism but also with a view of
paternalistic responsibility for dominated groups, be it colonial subjects, women or children.
By contrast the new hegemonic figure is the transnational business leader: equally
individualistic but with a commitment to apparently rational business practice and economic
imperatives that take no account of the well-being of the dominated, and may even condone
violence as necessary. The snatching of young rural women in South-East Asia to work in
factories or in the sex industry springs to mind.
These are powerful arguments but perhaps may oversimplify the complexities of global
relationships (Williams et al. 2013). There are differences in the sexual division of labour
around the world, resulting from levels of economic development and, particularly, from
religious beliefs and political configurations. This final section will give a necessarily brief
overview of some of those differences.
In almost every country there has been an increase in women's employment over the past
years (Perrons 2004). However, the level of participation is highly variable as Table 5.3 shows.
These figures do need to be treated with some scepticism as the methods of recording work
are likely to vary from country to country. Much of women's work in the Global South is
invisible, carried out as family labour, on the farm or in the home, or in the informal sectors.
Street vendors of produce (craft and agricultural) and of street food, peddlers and market
traders are another category which may not be recorded. Nonetheless, the figures, even if not
totally accurate for each country, reflect a major range of differences in women's involvement
in the public economy. The countries with the lowest participation rates are Arab and Muslim
countries where traditional values prohibit women working alongside men who are not family
members and where women are largely excluded from the public sphere.
Table 5.3Female labour market participation (economic activity) rates in selected
countries, 2012 (female population aged 15+)
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Another country where there is low female participation is South Korea, which is discussed by
Beatrix Campbell (2013) as an example of women's oppression in the global context. Like
other East Asian societies, and some Mediterranean countries, the culture has a very
traditional stance on women, who are seen as fitted for domesticity and care of their families.
Three-quarters of married women do not work and among those that do the gender pay gap
is 38%. Campbell states that 70% of women workers are in precarious work. In this society
women remain highly dependent on men and this is a major problem where women do not
have free access into the labour market. It means that women are highly vulnerable to
violence and abuse. Along with social conservatism, religion (in the Korean case
Confucianism) may possibly be implicated in the denial of paid work to women. In the areas of
Iraq and Syria dominated by Islamic State, young women enticed from the US, UK and
Europe to join in building a new society based on a strict version of Islamic values find
themselves confined to household duties as ‘jihadi brides’ (Khaleeli 2014).
In many countries women's work is primarily either contained within the home o r i n
agriculture. Twice as many women as men work in agriculture in the Global South. Momsen
(2009) describes the typical patterns of the sexual division of labour. Men tend to do the heavy
work such as land preparation, and herding of animals which involves moving distances from
home and driving cattle or goats; while women do repetitive work for example, weeding or
planting, take care of smaller animals and tend market gardens. In Africa women in
subsistence farming are responsible for fetching water and fuel. These patterns reinforce
women's identification with the home (Bradley 1989) and as secondary labour to men as
primary farmers. As farming becomes modernized, men take command of the machinery such
as tractors and harvesters. However, when men leave the farm to look for work in towns, or
travel abroad for better economic opportunities, women may take charge of the farm and carry
out some of the heavier tasks.
In countries such as China where modernization and globalization have been accompanied by
a growth in female participation and a move from agricultural and informal work into industrial
work, the situation is rather different but still highly exploitative. Women are employed on low
wages and in poor, often dangerous conditions, such as in the factories of Foxconn, where
Apple products are produced. In such organizations women from rural backgrounds are often
virtual prisoners, sleeping in cramped dormitories on the factory premises. The treatment of
these typically young women is reminiscent of the way women and children were utilized in
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the transitions to industrialism in the Global North. Lee (2007) explores the way young women
from rural parts of China are drawn to the cities and trained to become effective service
workers in the ‘modern’ sectors of the economy, employed as nannies, waitresses, hostesses,
beauticians, and so on. However, these young migrant women are, Lee shows, only paid
about half a standard urban wage.
Particularly notorious in this respect are the maquiladoras of Mexico where cheap clothes for
the export market are produced by armies of women. These factories were located near the
border with the United States to mop up the flood of illegal migrants from Latin America.
Women are forced into these unpleasant jobs in order to help support their families and pay
for their children's education (Williams et al. 2013). Salzinger's case study of the
maquiladoras (2003) highlights the way that young women are presented as the ideal source
of sweated labour in these factories, mirroring Lee's account of China. As happened also in
the phase of early industrialization, globalization constructs a model of ‘productive femininity'.
Proponents of globalization point to the way that the current phase of economic development
has promoted world tourism, alongside new and increased flows of labour migration. These
trends have consequences for women as workers. In many countries of the Global South
opportunities open up for women in hotels and restaurants and, less pleasantly, young
women are lured into the sex tourism industry, often by initial promises of bar work in the big
city. Meanwhile migration, which in the decades after the Second World War during the era of
industrial reconstruction typically involved male workers later joined by their families, has
increasingly been feminized, with women comprising an estimated 49% of international
migrants. Rather than migrating as part of a process of family reunification, many such
women are moving as independents seeking better forms of employment. One factor
informing this trend is the phenomenon of global care chains, in which, typically, an
impoverished mother in a developing country will hand over care of her own children to a
daughter or relative while she moves to the city to act as a nanny for the children of another
woman, who will go to Europe or the Americas to care for the children of middle- or upperclass women. Money then flows back from the migrant down the care chain (Hochschild 2000;
Perrons 2004).
Of course not all migrants are poor, or indeed from the Global South. Certain features of
globalization, such as the right of EU citizens to work in member states, the development of
global markets in higher education, or the movement of skilled IT workers from India to Silicon
Valley, have encouraged the growth of a migrant labour force of skilled professionals often
described as ‘cosmopolitans’ (Devadason 2010; Favell 2009). This highlights the complexities
surrounding the gendering of jobs on a global scale. In some cases these processes appear
to involve reinforcement of traditional gender roles (especially in terms of domesticity,
reproduction and care), but on other occasions they challenge them by opening up new
horizons for women from differing cultural backgrounds (Williams et al. 2013). It is therefore
necessary to look specifically at the different contexts in which new forms of work are
evolving.
Currently the notion of intersectionality is increasingly being utilized in exploring how
particular patterns of gendering are specific to people of different ages, ethnic backgrounds or
religious groupings. The concept found popularity through the work of Crenshaw which
studied how racial and gender dynamics intertwined in America to produce particular patterns
of disadvantage for women of colour. It has subsequently been taken up by rights
organizations in particular, and informs much current research.
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A major contribution to the notion came from Leslie McCall (2005), who discerned three
different strands, or methodological approaches, within the broad church of intersectional
thinking. The anti-categorical approach was that of post-structuralists who sought to
deconstruct the existing categories of analysis, such as ‘woman’ or ‘Black'. The second, intracategorical, approach was the more conventional modernist stance which saw the categories
of inequality as having a real existence but wanted to explore divisions within them. Finally,
the inter-categorial approach was espoused by McCall herself, who saw it as a halfway
position between the other two: a critical engagement with the relationships between the
groups in such a way as to challenge the categories. This approach is particularly interested
in those who breach the existing categories, such as transgender people.
Intersectionality has not been without its critics. One such is Nash (2008), who argues that the
concept is vague, lacks a clear methodological procedure, is too focused on Black women as
its quintessential subject and lacks evidence that it is a coherent account of women's
experiences as agentic subjects. However, she states her aim is not to dismiss the concept
but to refine it. In my own view, we should not treat it as a theory, but rather a perspective, a
lens through which to view work relations and inequalities. One could argue that the concept
of intersectionality was a way of incorporating the post-structuralist stress on difference into
modernist theorization. Currently a feminist lens on gender and work is likely also to be an
intersectional lens.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Beatrix Campbell has recently produced a manifesto, The End of Equality (2013) arguing that
we are in a new epoch, that of ‘neo-liberal neopatriarchy'. While one might quibble with the
term, I think she is right in her belief that we are seeing a return of patriarchal attitudes
encouraged by the advocates of neoliberal capitalism, their hatred of the state and fetishism
of the market. Perhaps stirred up by right-wing media and the trolls of social media, it seems
that it is now becoming respectable to make derogatory remarks about women, ethnic minority
citizens and LBGT people. Female medical students interviewed for a project, DARE, in
Bristol reported that the kind of ‘everyday sexism’ uncovered by Laura Bates on her website of
the same name (Bates 2014) was common in their hospital experience – persistent jokes,
patronizing remarks, comments on their appearance, touching and so forth, which undermine
women and mark them out as ‘other’ in the workplace. In this way powerful men continue to
normalize the world of work as masculine.
Despite gains made by women in many countries since the rise of second-wave feminism in
the 1970s and 1980s, recent economic and political developments pose a real threat to that
progress. Austerity has not been kind to women. But clearly the impact of austerity has been
mediated by class and ethnicity. The widening gap between rich and poor is evident in many
countries of the Global North (Piketty 2014). Women in the wealthiest social groups and who
hold jobs high up in corporate structures are isolated from the impacts of the recession and
austerity politics. But, given the increasingly demanding time arrangements of both paid
labour and the labour of motherhood, most women today, apart from those rich enough to
purchase full-time childcare, face what Banyard calls ‘the impossible choice of caring for her
children or advancing her career’ (2010: 73). While equality and diversity legislation and
policies are designed to make employment opportunities open to all, such apparent equality
is, as Banyard points out, an illusion: employers are still wary of appointing young married
woman who they suspect may become pregnant (requiring them to pay for maternity leave
plus providing cover), while 300,000 women in the UK lose their jobs each year after
pregnancy and childbirth (2010).
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The mutual relationship between domestic and reproductive labour and paid work in the
labour market continues to lie at the heart of gender inequalities; a useful approach to
exploring this is Glucksmann's notion of the total social organization of labour. Glucksmann
(1995) argues that work is not only carried out in the sphere of production, but in the spheres
of reproduction and consumption, and we need to explore the complex linkages between the
three. Thus, for example, women enter the labour market not as ‘free agents’ like men, but
charged with responsibility for childcare (reproduction) and household maintenance
(consumption). This is why women cannot compete equally with men.
There can be no doubt that neoliberal policies, as Campbell forcefully argues, have not been
favourable to the cause of gender equality, given the attacks on state welfare and the erosion
of employee rights which characterize neoliberal political regimes. The strengthened support
in the 2014 European elections for right-wing parties with anti-immigration policies suggest
that an unfortunate side effect of austerity has been a recrudescence of racism and
xenophobia. It is likely that ethnic minority women, given their clustering in publicly funded
jobs will suffer particularly. While in the US the presidency of Barack Obama has perhaps
meant that equality and diversity policies have not faced such an attack, the recent events in
Ferguson (extensive rioting after the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager) show how
strongly divided by race the nation remains. In addition, increasing competition for good jobs
has been shaped by changes in many countries to retirement and pension rights as a result
of the global phenomenon of ageing populations.
Against this depressing picture, some positives can be gleaned by highlighting the actions of
individuals and groups around the world protesting these trends, sometimes in the name of
third-wave feminism, sometimes under the rubric of pro-democracy movements, with crowds
setting themselves against the economic orthodoxies embraced by most political elites. A new
generation of young feminist researchers is campaigning for women's rights, often using the
intersectionality framework in their work. Within the Global South, NGOs and local women's
groups continue to seek better employment openings for women. The effects of globalization
may be seen as contradictory: the dominance of the transnational corporations, the ‘race to
the bottom’ and the informalization of work push women into poverty and insecure jobs; but at
the same time cultural and informational flows may encourage women to seek the openings
they learn are available in other countries. The gendered nature of contemporary migration
and its impacts both on individual women and their families is a fruitful area for further
research.
As the consequences of these seismic social shifts play themselves out, there will be
continued need both for further detailed research into the gendering of work, informed by a
sensitivity to intersections with class, ethnicity and age and contextualized in terms of
neoliberal globalization, and for a vigorous feminist politics affirming the right of women to
decent, well-paid jobs backed with Scandinavian-style state support for families’ caring needs.
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Adkins, L. (1996) Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market. Milton Keynes:
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Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia
Gender Gap
Contributors: Jessica Looze & Michelle J. Budig
Edited by: Vicki Smith
Book Title: Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia
Chapter Title: "Gender Gap"
Pub. Date: 2013
Access Date: May 25, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781452205069
Online ISBN: 9781452276199
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452276199.n120
Print pages: 314-318
©2013 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
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the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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The concept of the “gender gap” can refer to any systematic difference in women's and men's
participation in, or rewards from, paid work. Gender gaps in human capital such as education
or work experience, gender gaps in employment participation, and gender gaps in earnings
are frequent objects of study. However, the gender gap that researchers and policy makers
typically care about the most is the gender gap in earnings.
This gap is often measured by comparing the median annual or weekly earnings of women
and men who are employed full time, year round. In 2010, the gap in annual earnings was 23
percent (i.e., women earned 77 cents of every man's dollar). The gender gap has narrowed
considerably since the early 20th century, yet disparities in women's and men's earnings
persist. Moreover, this narrowing has not proceeded in a linear fashion, and the gap has
occasionally increased. From the 1900s to the mid-1950s, the gender gap declined from 55 to
36 percent, where it remained until the 1980s.
Between 1980 and 1990, the gap narrowed considerably, to 27 percent. This rapid narrowing
was in part because of women's rising levels of education and labor market attachment, their
movement into historically male-dominated occupations, and the growth of the service
economy. Equally important, however, were wage losses for men, because of declines in
manufacturing and unionized jobs, and a frozen minimum wage. The 1990s and 2000s
brought smaller and uneven progress in reducing the gender gap. Since 2000, the gap has
hovered around 23 percent. The size of the gender gap varies by racial-ethnic group, skill
level, and age of workers. Intraracial gender gaps are smaller among blacks and Hispanics,
compared to whites, partly because of the low earnings of black and Hispanic men. However,
white women earned 78 cents of a white man's dollar in 2010, compared to black women's 62
cents and Latinas’ 54 cents. The gender gap is generally larger among highly educated, highskilled workers compared to less-educated, low-skilled workers. This is partly related to the
“glass ceiling” effect, or the barriers that women face in moving into the highest positions in
organizations. The gender gap is smaller among younger cohorts of workers than older
cohorts.
A young woman studies at the Pyongyang Embroidery Institute in North Korea in 2007.
North Korea has one of the largest gender gaps; its policies and cultural norms support
a male-breadwinner and female-caregiver family model.
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Although this cohort difference partly reflects the increasing human capital of young women
relative to young men, the gender gap grows as cohorts age because of gendered patterns of
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balancing paid work and family. Explanations for the gender pay gap are often divided into
individual and structural arguments. Individual-level explanations emphasize workers’ human
capital, decisions about work and family, and compensating differentials. Structural
explanations focus on organizations and labor markets, as well as the actions of individuals
within these structures. However, individual and structural processes are reciprocal.
Individual-Level Explanations
Researchers estimate that gender differences in human capital account for 10 to 50 percent of
the gender pay gap. Another quarter is attributable to gender differences in the rates of return
to human capital characteristics. Human capital includes education, skills, and experience of
the worker. The power of human capital explanations of the gender gap has declined over
time because of women's increasingly continuous work histories and the recent reversal in
favor of women in college completion. Yet, women still tend to earn different credentials from
men: women's degrees emphasize humanities and arts, while men's emphasize physical
sciences.
Men's degrees often lead to higher-paying jobs. Parenthood and marriage have gendered
consequences for labor-market outcomes. Men enjoy a wage premium for children, while
women incur a wage penalty. Given the unequal division of household labor, mothers
continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of child care and housework, and are more
likely to reduce work hours for family reasons. Fathers rarely make these changes, and in
fact, many men increase their work hours following the birth of a child. Married women whose
husbands work long hours are especially likely to reduce their labor-market participation.
Despite the rise of dual-earner couples, family decisions about spousal careers more often
benefit the husband's career than the wife's. Women's greater family responsibilities may lead
them to accept lower wages in exchange for “family-friendly” jobs. This trade-off, known as
compensating differentials, is commonly invoked to help explain the gender gap, yet little
support for this explanation exists. In fact, female-dominated jobs are often less
accommodating to workers’ caregiving responsibilities, as they provide less autonomy, less
flexibility, and less predictability in scheduling than do male-dominated jobs. In addition, the
ability to work part time is perhaps one of the most family-friendly features of employment, yet
because the gender gap is calculated among only those workers who work full time, yearround, part-time work among women does not explain the gender gap.
Some scholars argue that women's job productivity is lower than men's because women may
conserve energy for demands at home or be more distracted on the job by family
responsibilities. Yet, most studies fail to find evidence of reduced work effort among women;
in fact, studies suggest that women actually allocate more effort. However, even if women
work as hard as men per unit of time, a gender gap in work hours exists such that men more
often work 50 or more weekly hours. This is particularly true in the most highly paid
occupations. Both family and employment shape men's and women's social networks in
different ways, and this may contribute to the gender gap. Social networks are an important
source of job information but are largely segregated by gender. In particular, women's social
networks tend to have more repetitive ties among closely knit family and friends. However,
loose ties across weakly linked networks, such as men tend to have, are more conducive to
learning about employment opportunities. In addition, men's networks include more highstatus contacts than women's, connecting men to more advantageous job information and
opportunities.
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Structural Explanations
Joan Acker developed a widely cited theory about how gendered assumptions are built into
the structure of modern workplaces; these structures perpetuate the gender gap. Jobs
assume and reward autonomous workers, or individuals with few demands outside those of
the job. Men with a full-time homemaker wife most closely adhere to this ideal. For many
women, this ideal is difficult to achieve. For professional and managerial women, long hours
expected by employers, along with steep penalties for time away from the labor market, make
combining paid work and family life difficult. For women in blue-collar jobs, rotating shifts and
mandatory overtime can complicate childcare arrangements. Although accommodations
aimed at easing the challenge of combining paid work with family responsibilities, such as
flexible scheduling, telecommuting, and reduced hours of work, are becoming increasingly
common in workplaces, individual women incur wage penalties for using these policies.
A second way that organizations and their actors may contribute to the gender gap is through
discriminatory practices. Although overt forms of gender discrimination are largely phenomena
of the past, more subtle, often unconscious, forms of discrimination continue to shape
employers’ decisions regarding hiring, job assignments, training opportunities, promotions,
and compensation. Stereotypes surrounding men's and women's competence and
commitment to work influence these decisions and contribute to the gender gap. Cultural
beliefs about what is “appropriate” work for women and men lead to discrimination at the point
of hire, as women are often tracked into lower-paying female jobs. These stereotypes may
influence employers’ evaluations of workers’ performance on the job. If employers view men
as better suited for particularly challenging tasks and assign these tasks accordingly, men are
provided an opportunity to develop new skills, while women's skills stagnate. Over time,
differences in opportunities provided to men and women cumulate into a substantial skill gap
between men and women, widening the pay gap further.
Discrimination appears particularly salient with regard to parenthood status. Cultural
understandings of “good mothers” (who prioritize children over employment) are at odds with
workplace demands, while cultural understandings of “good fathers” (who emphasize
breadwinning over all else) align with workplace expectations. Audit studies find that childless
women applicants are significantly more likely than equally qualified mothers to be called
back for job interviews, are rated as more competent and committed to paid work, and are
offered higher starting salaries. However, employers view fathers as the most dedicated and
stable employees, most able to handle more challenging assignments, and more deserving of
higher wages. Since most adult workers eventually become parents, these forms of
discrimination may contribute to the enduring gender pay gap. Resulting from some
combination of gender differences in educational fields, gendered social networks, and
employer practices, job segregation by gender remains a persistent feature of the U.S. labor
market.
Gender segregation contributes to the gender gap because jobs with higher proportions of
female workers provide lower wages, on average, than jobs with higher proportions of males,
even when these jobs require equivalent skills. This disparity is believed to result in large part
from a cultural devaluation of the kinds of work that women have traditionally done. Further,
scholars have identified a “care penalty,” meaning that above and beyond the proportion of
women in a given occupation, jobs that require caring for others pay less than jobs of similar
skill levels that do not involve care. The care penalty is in large part because of the
association of care with women and mothering, so that providing care is seen as something
“natural,” rather than something deserving of compensation. The overrepresentation of
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women among care workers may also contribute to the gender pay gap.
The underrepresentation of women in management, particularly upper-level management,
(the authority gap), is reflective of the “glass ceiling,” whereby even though it appears as
though women today have equal opportunities as men to be successful in the workplace,
largely invisible processes keep women from reaching the uppermost echelons of workplace
authority and privilege. Women's underrepresentation in management matters because
managers, especially upper-level managers, are often the key decision makers within firms.
Women managers may be less likely to rely on stereotypes, and therefore make more
favorable evaluations of other women than male managers. Women managers may also offer
other women more access to networking and mentoring opportunities. Greater representation
of women in management, particularly high-status management positions, has been linked to
smaller gender pay gaps in organizations. Social closure theories argue that privileged groups
create social and legal barriers that restrict access to the most desired resources and
opportunities in order to preserve these for members of the group. Exclusionary practices
within organizations, such as licensing, credentialing, certification, unionization, and
association membership, work to raise the wages of particular jobs and ensure that these jobs
are reserved for workers in the most privileged groups.
These privileged groups may be employers, but oftentimes they are workers’ unions.
Historically, unions represented the interests of white male workers and sought to exclude
women and minority men from unionized occupations in an attempt to restrict the supply of
workers and thereby drive up wages. Unions generally provide higher wages than nonunion
jobs, and white men are both overrepresented in unionized jobs and hold more positions of
authority in unions. Although women workers are increasingly unionizing, much to their
benefit (e.g., unionized childcare workers are paid much higher wages than their
nonunionized peers), the legacy of social closure practices by unions controlled by white
males continues to contribute to the gender gap.
Although female employment rates have risen and gender gaps have narrowed in most
industrialized nations, a gender gap in favor of men is found in virtually all countries. Among
industrialized nations, the gender gap is largest in Korea, Japan, Germany, and Austria, all of
which have strong cultural norms and social policies supporting a male-breadwinner and
female-caregiver family model. The pay gap is the smallest in the Nordic countries and
several post-socialist countries, including Hungary, Slovenia, and Poland. These countries all
have more compressed wage structures (less overall income inequality) and current or former
strong policies supporting women's employment and socializing the care of children.
Comparative studies of work-family reconciliation polices and wage disparities find that
policies encouraging women to take extended parental care leaves or offer family allowances
for caregiving tend to increase pay gaps, whereas policies supporting public subsidization of
child care and shorter, highly paid maternity leaves are associated with smaller gaps. In
addition to wage structures and social policies, researchers also find that the extent of
collective bargaining in a country is significantly related to the size of its gender pay gap.
Closing the Gender Gap
Legislative efforts aimed at closing the U.S. gender gap were first implemented with the Equal
Pay Act of 1963, which required men and women employed in the same workplace to be paid
equally for equal work, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made race and sex
discrimination illegal in employment, including recruitment, hiring, pay and compensation,
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assignment, training, and promotion. Title VII also established the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce the law. The EEOC expanded the definition of
sex discrimination to include pregnancy.
This ultimately resulted in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and paved the way for
federally mandated maternity leave policies. Litigation under Title VII has provided
compensation to individuals who experienced discrimination and has worked to change
workplace policies and practices to create a less discriminatory work environment. Efforts to
lessen and prevent discrimination in the workplace, referred to as affirmative action, include
changes such as formalizing recruitment strategies, job evaluations, and training
opportunities. Though it is difficult to disentangle the effects of affirmative action from those of
antidiscrimination legislation and women's human capital gains made since the passage of
Title VII, affirmative action has played a role in reducing occupational gender segregation and
increasing women's representation in management, thus helping narrow the gender gap.
Whereas affirmative action programs, now highly contested, aimed to reduce gender and
racial segregation in male- and white-dominated jobs and industries, an alternative policy
approach attempted to elevate the pay of jobs largely dominated by women. The Civil Rights
Act prohibits sex discrimination in pay only when men and women are performing the same
job. Given the high degree of sex segregation in the U.S. labor market, men and women are
often not performing the same jobs but nevertheless are performing jobs that require similar
skills and effort. In light of the devaluation of “feminine” skills, jobs primarily held by women
are paid less than jobs primarily held by men, even when what is required of the worker is
comparable. Efforts such as comparable worth, or pay equity, have advocated for the use of
gender-neutral job evaluations in order to eliminate this gender bias inherent in wage setting.
These efforts have been largely unsuccessful, however, because U.S. courts have
predominantly been persuaded by business owners’ arguments that wages must be
determined by the market.
Recent efforts at closing the gender gap have made little progress. In January 2009,
President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, lengthening the
statute of limitations for filing an equal pay lawsuit. This fueled optimism that legislative
attempts to further reduce the gender gap might gain traction. Yet, efforts such as the
Paycheck Fairness Act, which would enable workers to disclo...
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