In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodie...

HIERARCHIES, JOBS, BODIES: A Theory of Gendered Organizations

Men and Women of the Corporation

This paper builds on the idea that any further development of the concept of 'welfare regime' must incorporate the relationship between unpaid as well as paid work and welfare. Consideration of the privateldomestic is crucial to a gendered understanding of welfare because historically women have typically gained entitlements by virtue of their dependent status within the family as wives and mothers. The paper suggests that the idea of the male-breadwinner family model has served historically to cut across established typologies of welfare regimes, and further that the model has been modified in different ways and to different degrees in particular countries.

Gender and the Development of Welfare Regimes

Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States

In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

Paradoxes of gender

Although work-life ‘balance’ is an EU policy priority, within Europe there are considerable variations in the nature and extent of supports that national governments have offered to dual-earner fam...

Work-Life ‘Balance’ in Europe:

Explanations of the persisting differences in the structure of men's and women's employment have long been debated in the social sciences. Sociological explanations have tended to stress the continuing significance of structural constraints on women's employment opportunities, which persist despite the removal of formal barriers. Neo-classical economists, in contrast, have emphasized the significance of individual choice, an argument which has been recently endorsed by C. Hakim who suggests that patterns of occupational segregation reflect the outcome of the choices made by different 'types' of women. In this paper, a previous debate relating to the explanatory utility of men's 'orientations to work' is used to argue that employment structures are the outcome of both choice and constraint, and that this is the case for women, as well as men. The argument is illustrated with evidence from cross-nationally comparative biographical interviews carried out in five countries

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Explaining women's employment patterns: 'orientations to work' revisited.

1. The Decline of the Male Breadwinner: Explanations and Interpretations 2. Obligations and Autonomy in Social Welfare 3. Dual Breadwinners: Between State and Market 4. The Modernization of Family and Motherhood in Western Europe 5. Women, Men And Non-Standard Employment: Recent Developments in the Sexual Division of Breadwinning and Caregiving in Germany, Italy and the UK 6. Attitudes, Women's Employment and the Changing Domestic Division of Labour: A Cross-National Analysis 7. Employment, Careers and Families: The Significance of Choice and Constraint in Women's Lives 8. Gender, Occupational Feminisation and Reflexivity: A Cross-National Perspective 9. The Restructuring of Gender Relations Within the Medical Professions: Theoretical and Empirical Implications 10. Discussion and Conclusions

Restructuring gender relations and employment : the decline of the male breadwinner

Introduction to the Second Edition. Introduction to the First Edition. Part I: Explaining Inequality: Introduction. Social Order and Theories of Social Differentiation. Stratification and the Debate on Social Class. The Growing Critique of 'Class Analysis'. Concluding Summary. Part II: The Classic Inheritance and its Development: Introduction. Marx. Weber. Class and Sociology after the Second World War. Culture, Class and History. Once Again, the Indivisibility of Structure and Action. Social Class, Urban Sociology and the Turn to 'Realism'. Conclusions. Part III: Measuring the 'Class Structure': Goldthorpe and Wright: Introduction. Occupations. Conclusions. Part IV: Problems of Class Analysis: Introduction. Changes in the Structure of Work and Employment. The Expansion of Women's Employment. Class, Politics, and Action. Gender and Class. Are Social Classes Dying? Converging Approaches. Conclusion. Part V: Farewell to Social Class?: Introduction. Bringing Status Back In. Recent Social Theory. Farewell to Class Societies? Discussion and Conclusions. Part VI: Lifestyle, Consumption Categories and Consciousness Communities: Introduction. Consumption-sector Cleavages. Culture, Class and Occupation. From 'Abstract Labour' to 'Customer Care'. Summary and Conclusions. Part VII: Citizenship, Entitlements and the 'Underclass': Introduction. T H Marshall and the Development of the Concept of Citizenship. Women and Citizenship. Race and Citizenship. Social Citizenship and the 'Underclass'. Conclusion. 8. Retrospect and Prospect. Introduction. Social Mobility. Social Polarization. Conclusions. References. Index.

Class and stratification : an introduction to current debates

This is an exploration of the changing structure of women's paid work in Britain since World War II. Four case-studies, drawing upon original research material, give accounts of developments across the whole range of women's employment; form the"post-feminist" finance profesional to unskilled workers. This work is set within a context of current theoreticl debates concerning gender, occupationalsegretagion, and class and stratification, and is complemented by a review of the structure of women's employment in other Western countries. The book also provides a summary and crtiques of current developments within a series of sociological debates.

Rosemary Crompton

Papers

Work-Life ‘Balance’ in Europe:

Explaining women's employment patterns: 'orientations to work' revisited.

Restructuring gender relations and employment : the decline of the male breadwinner

Class and stratification : an introduction to current debates

Gendered Jobs and Social Change