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Women and Working Lives: Divisions and Change PDF

223 Pages·1992·22.01 MB·English
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WOMEN AND WORKING LIVES Women and Working Lives Divisions and Change Edited by Sara Arber Senior Lecturer in Sociology University of Surrey and Nigel Gilbert Professor and Head of Department of Sociology University of Surrey Palgrave Macmillan © British Sociological Association, 1992 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1992 All rights reserved. For information, write: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1992 ISBN 978-1-349-21695-6 ISBN 978-1-349-21693-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21693-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women and working lives: divisions and change/edited by Sara Arher and Nigel Gilbert. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-06866-0 l. Women-Employment-Congresses. I. Arher, Sara, 1949- II. Gilbert, G. Nigel. HD6052.W563 1992 33l.4-dc20 91-24428 CIP Contents List of Tables and Figures vii Preface ix Notes on the Contributors x 1 Re-assessing Women's Working Lives: An Introductory Essay 1 Sara Arber and Nigel Gilbert Part I Women's Labour Market Position: Ideology and Social Policies 2 World War, Women's Work and the Gender Division of Paid Labour 17 Richard Brown 3 Gender-role Attitudes in Britain and the USA 36 Jacqueline Scott and Jean Duncombe 4 Money, Marriage and Motherhood: Dual Earner Households after Maternity Leave 54 Julia Brannen 5 Employment and Domestic Work: A Comparison of Samples of British and French Women 7l Ian Procter and Peter Ratcliffe 6 Feminisation of the Labour Force in Britain and France 89 Patricia Walters and Shirley Dex 7 Demographic Change and 'New Opportunities' for Women: The Case of Employers' Career Break Schemes 104 Carole Truman 8 Women under Glasnost: An Analysis of 'Women's Place' in Contemporary Soviet Society 118 Kay Richards Broschart v VI Contents Part II Breaking Male Definitions of Work 9 Wives' and Husbands' Labour Market Participation and Household Resource Distribution in the Context of Middle-class Male Unemployment 131 Gillian Leighton 10 The Modern Cinderellas: Women and the Contract Cleaning Industry in Belfast 148 Madeleine Leonard 11 Women, Business and Self-employment: A Conceptual Minefield 162 Sheila Allen and Carole Truman 12 Trading Relationships: Home Selling and Petty Enterprise in Women's Lives 175 Fiona Poland Bibliography 190 Author Index 204 Subject Index 208 List of Tables and Figures Tables 1.1 Percentage of women working full-time and part-time by age and age of youngest child, 1985-6 4 1.2 Women and social class. (a) Proportion of women workers in each class, (b) proportion of part-time workers in each class, (c) median weekly full-time earnings for men and women. Britain, 1985--6 5 1.3 Weekly earnings of women by social class (£). (a) For full-time and part-time workers, (b) by age of youngest child for full-time workers. Britain, 1985-6 7 3.1 Percentage endorsing egalitarian positions in Britain and the United States 44 3.2 Consistency of responses to two items assessing whether women's employment is detrimental or beneficial to family life 45 3.3 Differences in gender-role attitudes between Britain and the United States 46 3.4 Attitudes towards the different circumstances in which a woman should work 47 3.5 Differences in gender-role attitudes among men and women in Britain and the United States 48 3.6 Differences in British and American women's gender- role attitudes by employment status 50 5.1 Demographic and economic circumstances of the Coventry and Rouen female samples 76 5.2 Percentage of 'peak child-rearing period' spent economically active by country 77 5.3 Recollections of labour market participation intentions in last year of school 82 5.4 Percentage of 'peak child-rearing period' spent economically active by level of qualification and country 83 6.1 Employment indicators of British and French mothers 93 6.2 Percentage of mothers continuously employed by (a) age, and (b) number of children 93 vii Vlll List of Tables and Figures 6.3 Percentage of mothers continuously employed in each occupational group 94 6.4 Summary of women's employment patterns 94 6.5 The occupational status of British and French mothers working at the date of survey 96 6.6 Job and employer history from last job before first break from employment to first job after 98 8.1 Percentage of women in the labour force in the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union by age group, 1985 122 8.2 Women workers and average monthly wages in Soviet economic sectors with highest proportions of employed women, 1986-7 123 9.1 Wives' employment status by length of husbands' unemployment 136 9.2 Allocative system prior to husbands' unemployment 140 9.3 Allocative system during husbands' unemployment 141 Figure 5.1 Employment participation rates, women aged 20-64, by five-year age groups, Britain and France 72 Preface The chapters in this book are based on presentations at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference held at the University of Surrey in April 1990 on the theme of Social Divisions and Social Change. The conference was organised by Sara Arber, Nigel Gilbert, Roger Burrows and Catherine Marsh. Two of the chapters in the book were from a conference panel session organised by Julia Brannen. Three other volumes of conference papers are published simultan- eously: Consumption and Class: Divisions and Change (edited by Roger Burrows and Catherine Marsh), Fordism and Flexibility: Divisions and Change (edited by Nigel Gilbert, Roger Burrows and Anna Pollert), and Families and Households: Divisions and Change (edited by Catherine Marsh and Sara Arber). We should like to thank all those who gave papers, the organisers of the panel sessions and those others who contributed to the success of the conference. In particular, we would like to thank the contributors to this volume, and Anne Dix and Sheila Tremlett of the British Sociological Association for all their encouragement and support. The Department of Employment is gratefully acknowledged for permission to reproduce Figure 5.1, and for permitting the publication of Chapter 6 which is based on research which it funded. SARA ARBER NIGEL GILBERT ix Notes on the Contributors Sheila Allen is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bradford. She has researched and written extensively in areas of work, employ- ment, gender and race and ethnic relations. Her recent books include: Homeworking: Myths and Realities, 1987 (with C. Wolkowitz); Gender Divisions Re-visited, 1990 (ed. with D. Leonard); Race and Social Policy, 1988 (with M. Macey). She is a past President of the BSA. Sara Arber is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. She is co-author of Doing Secondary Analysis, 1988, and Gender and Later Life, 1992. She has published widely on inequalities in women's health, social stratification, informal care and gender issues in later life. Julia Brannen is Senior Research Lecturer at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, and has done extensive work on families and households. She is co-editor of Give and Take in Families, 1987, and co-author of Marriages in Trouble, 1982, New Mothers at Work, 1988, and Managing Mothers, 1991. Kay Richards Broschart is Professor of Sociology at Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia, USA. Her current research focuses on the history of women in the social sciences. She is author of articles on women in the professions, the family and adult development. Richard Brown is Professor of Sociology at the University of Durham. He was President of the BSA, 1983-5, and the first editor of the BSA journal, Work, Employment and Society, 1986-9. Co-author of The Sociology of Industry, 4th edition, 1981, and editor of u.K. Society: Work, Urbanism and Inequality, 1984. He has also written many papers on work and employment. Shirley Dex is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Keele. She has published a number of books on women's employment: The Sexual Division of Work, 1985, British and American Women at Work, 1986 (with L. B. Shaw), Women's Occupational Mohility, 1987, and Women's Attitudes towards Work, 1988. x

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