Showing papers on "Women's work published in 1999"

Work Orientations and Women's Work: A Critique of Hakim's Theory of the Heterogeneity of Women

Abstract: This paper is a critique of Hakim's theory of the gendered character of work with its key idea of the ‘heterogeneity of women’ centring on the distinction between those who are ‘family oriented’ and those who are ‘career oriented’. Such patterns of work commitment are claimed to be developed by early adulthood and to steer women in one direction or the other. Our critique is based on interviews with two groups of young adult women generating rich data on their attitudes to employment, families and the relationship between the two. The first group (‘single workers’) when first interviewed were single, childless and employed full-time. The second (‘early mothers’) were partnered mothers with at most part-time employment. The substance of the critique is threefold: 1.The single workers could not be clearly separated by ‘career’ or ‘family’ orientation. They wanted both, which then left them in Hakim's residual category as ‘drifters’, a wholly inappropriate characterization. 2.The early mothers were certainly homemakers but our data doubted that this was by choice and suggested that many were becoming more career oriented. 3.Longitudinal data from the single workers show the importance of analysing ‘orientation’ or other aspects of agency in the context of social structure rather than as a prime mover in itself.

The Rhythm of Work: Health Effects of Women's Work Dynamics

Abstract: Theories on the health benefits of employment, health selection, and the stress of changes in work all suggest that work patterns should be important for women's health. Using a national longitudinal sample of women in their fifties and sixties, we examine how employment duration and transitio-ns inform these theories of physical and emotional health. Women leave the labor force because of poor health, but longer employment also provides health benefits, and some work transitions have long-term negative effects on physical health. Our findings are consistent between physical and emotional health, but employment appears to be more strongly associated with physical limitations during this life stage. These results point to the value of work-life dynamics for understanding the work-'health relationship. One of the dramatic changes during the twentieth century has been the transformation of women's paid employment. Increases in women's labor-force participation tell only part of the story; patterns of women's labor-force participation across their life course have also changed in important ways. For

Measuring Women's Work in Developing Countries

Abstract: While an extensive literature documents the need for better measures of women's work, few attempts have been made to construct suitable work typologies that could be applied throughout the developing world. The author argues that in addition to the descriptive utility of more-comprehensive measures of women's work, important analytical gains are to be made by applying better measures of work to a variety of research questions. Conventional labor force participation measures ignore an often substantial proportion of women's total productive activity, resulting in a limited understanding of the many processes that affect and are affected by women's work. The proposition is supported by examining an issue drawn from social demography—the relationship between women's work and decisionmaking relative to fertility in contemporary Egypt.

Women's Work? The Distribution and Prestige of Portfolios in the Canadian Provinces

Abstract: Historically not only have women cabinet ministers in Western democracies been few in number, but they have generally been limited to “women's ministries” such as education, health, social services, and culture. This article systematically investigates the responsibilities and prestige of portfolios that women cabinet ministers in the ten Canadian provinces have held over a 21-year period, 1976–1997, an era in which their share of cabinet positions rose from less than 4% to almost 25%. Although still concentrated in traditional women's ministries, they have diversified the portfolios they hold. Using a tri-fold classification of portfolios into (1) important, (2) middle range, and (3) junior positions, we find that women increasingly have achieved more prestigious portfolios, perhaps a reflection of the reduced number of cabinet positions in the 1990s and more concerted attempts to promote women. But the law of increasing disproportion still exists, at least in overall terms of the relative prestige of cabinet positions.

Women's Wages in Women's Work: A U.S./Canada Comparison of the Roles of Unions and "Public Goods" Sector Jobs

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the mechanism by which the femaleness of occupations has a negative effect on women's wages. We relate US/Canada differences in labor market institutions, the returns to skills and other dimensions of the wage structure, such as occupational rents, to corresponding differences in the rewards to female jobs. Our analysis, which uses US data from the CPS-ORG for 1988 and Canadian data from the 1988 LMAS, uncovers intriguing US/Canada differences in the effect of occupational gender composition on women's wages. The estimated effect for Canadian women is generally small and not statistically significant, while estimates for American women are relatively large and comparable to the evidence in previous studies. Relating these differences to cross-country variation in other wage determinants reveals that higher rates of unionization, and the higher occupation wage effects for certain public good sector jobs such as educational services, work to the advantage of Canadian women. We also find that the relatively higher pay of integrated jobs in the United States helps account for the larger negative effect of gender composition on women's wages in this country. Dans cet article, nous etudions le mecanisme par lequel le taux de feminite des occupations peut avoir un effect negatif sur les salaires des femmes. Nous utilisons une comparaison internationale Etats-Unis/Canada pour relier les differences institutionnelles du marche du travail, les differences dans les rendements des qualifications et dans d'autres dimensions de la structure salariale, comme les rentes occupationnelles, a des differences dans la remuneration des emplois a predominance feminine. Notre analyse, qui utilise les donnees americaines provenant des CPS-ORG pour 1988 et les donnees canadiennes provenant de l'enquete sur l'activite aussi pour 1988, demontre l'existence de differences interessantes entre les Etats-Unis et le Canada quant a l'effet du taux de feminite des occupa(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Household Childcare Choices and Women's Work Behavior in Russia

Abstract: Replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies in Russia might have a strong positive effect on women's participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty. Lokshin models mothers' participation in the labor force, their working hours, and household demand for childcare in Russia. The model estimates the effects of the price of childcare, mothers' wages, and household income on household behavior and well-being. The theoretical model yields several predictions. To test these, reduced-form equations of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of semi-parametric full information maximum likelihood. This method controls for the correlation of error terms across outcomes, and the correlation of error terms that can result when panel data are used. The results of this analysis indicate that the extent to which mothers participate in the labor force, and for how many hours, depends on the costs of childcare and on what level of hourly wage is available to them and to other members of the household. Lokshin's simulations show that family allowances - intended to reduce poverty - do not significantly affect the household choice of childcare arrangements. Replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies might have a strong positive effect on women's participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the role of gender in the context of the household, institutions, and society. The author may be contacted at mlokshin@worldbank.org.

The Price of Feminised Jobs: New Evidence on the Gender Pay Gap in Australia

Abstract: The relative contribution of different factors to the continuing pay gap in Australia has been much debated. The persistence of the pay gap, the continuing—if subdued—policy interest in efforts to narrow it, and the change in bargaining arrangements in Australia, demand a clearer understanding of its relative components. This paper analyses data from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and finds that some significant differences explain variations in wages amongst women and amongst men. Our analysis—in accord with much existing literature—finds that a large part of the gender pay gap is unexplained, even when a wide range of variables (including job and workplace characteristics) are included. Our closer examination of the effects of feminised jobs, in particular, suggests that the sex- segregation of work by industry, occupation, and workplace carries a significant penalty for women—and the men who work alongside them. We argue that the undervaluation of women s work remain...

Disability and women's work experiences : An exploratory study

Abstract: Presents the findings of a questionnaire sent to nine occupational groups where women predominate such as healthcare, teaching and childcare, together with other forms placed in day‐care and women’s centres in Ontario. Looks at disability, personal demographics, the work situation, workplace stress, physical demands, psychosomatic symptoms, job satisfaction, insecurity, harassment and family pressures. Discusses findings suggesting that disabled women tend to have more negative work experiences, possibly due to previous education problems, discrimination and the nature of roles offered which lead to lower income levels in lower status roles.

Influence of women's work status on the well-being of Indian couples.

Abstract: Background. In urban India, working women are expected to continue to discharge their traditional domestic duties; the likely result is compromised well-being due to role strain. Husbands of workin...

Globalization, technological changes and the search for a new paradigm for women's work.

Abstract: This paper comments on a conceptual paradigm that illustrates the context of the opportunities and challenges that the current technology-led globalization has brought to womens employment in Asia. The UN University Institute for New Technologies project provides the basis for this framework/paradigm. This paradigm helps in analyzing the consequences of an emerging techno-economic order that is imported and does not take into account the specific needs of women. It also acknowledged the liberating aspects of new technologies and modernization. At the same time it emphasizes the role of the state the family and women workers organizations in counteracting the negative consequences of current globalization. Finally the paradigm was predicated on the belief that technologies indigenous or foreign are appropriate so long as women concerned are given a voice in their countries policy dialogue.

Women's 'Work' and the Construction of Witchcraft Accusation in Coastal Kenya

Abstract: This article examines women’s use of divination consultation and their speculation about illness caused by witchcraft that influence the construction of witchcraft accusation in rural Mijikenda communities on the Kenya coast. I have decided to call all of these activities women’s “work” because Mijikenda women often referred to them as “work” in their discussions with me. I explain why these activities are included in women’s general responsibilities toward relatives and show how women use them to transform local relations of power. I conclude that these aspects of Mijikenda women’s “work” must be understood as both instrumental action that alters the political and economic relationships between women and the men who they accuse, and moral action that develops women’s sense of their human potential and personal capacity.

The NSW Pay Equity Inquiry: A New Approach For the New Century

Abstract: This article sets out the main findings of the 1998 NSW Pay Equity Inquiry. The Inquiry found undervaluation of women s work in case studies of hairdressers, librarians, childcare workers, clothing workers and seafood processors. The Inquiry analysed the dynamics of how gender bias in industrial relations institutions and processes has affected valuing and remunerating women's work. These findings apply to all techniques for valuing work (including job evaluation, skills and competency assessments, qualifications-based classifications, and work value assessments as carried out by industrial tribunals) and operate under any form of employment contract and industrial regulation (including awards, agreements and overaward payments). The Inquiry provided a unique and valuable examination of the industrial history of assessment of value of work and setting remuneration, illuminated by insights from the now-substantial work on these issues from equal employment opportunity and discrimination and human ...

Clean, White Girls: Assimilation and Women's Work

Abstract: Clean, White Girls: Assimilation and Women's Work Nothing is inherently dirty; dirt expresses a relation to social value and social disorder. Dirt is that which transgresses social boundary.(1) The cult of domesticity became indispensable to the consolidation of British national identity, and at the centre of the domestic cult stood the simple bar of soap.(2) Because it belongs to `the female realm of domesticity, soap is figured as beyond history and beyond politics proper,' and `has no social history,' as Anne McClintock points out. To `begin a social history of soap...is to refuse, in part, to accept the erasure of women's domestic value under imperial capitalism'(3) Narratives about the assimilation of indigenous Australian girls this century positioned them as the foremost targets of a social engineering project, enacted and legitimated by domestic training. Under assimilation it was essential to learn the cultural rituals of white society in order to approximate whiteness -- whiteness, while certainly premised on skin colour at the time, was also defined by a conformity to its social rules. These social rules were principally taught as a set of domestic rituals based on specific narratives about the character and duties of white women and their domestic work. In their Australian manifestations, narratives about `cleanliness' were pervasive throughout the assimilationist period and by the 1950s, white women were encouraged as a form of national duty to take on the mantle of role model and educator to a group who had been designated as `in-transition' people. This narrative line as reproduced by policy makers, missions and others, in film and print, will be my main focus. My analysis of the history of white women's involvement in national and state based policies of social engineering, through their role as domestic educators and as symbols of `acceptable' femininity, acknowledges their importance in creating dominant narratives of constructed racial difference. The Police Wife in Alexis Wright's novel, Plains of Promise, who endeavours to `keep the town clean'(4)by delivering a list of the social crimes of a young Aboriginal girl, or the missionaries' attempts to keep the dormitory clean by shaving heads of Aboriginal inmates in Wayne King's autobiography, Black Hours, are indicators of how Australia imagined racial difference and the civilising mission. While white women were also constrained by narratives of domesticity, as `incorporated' objects of a male colonial endeavour(5) throughout the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds, they were usually `in the men's room' when it came to the spaces allocated to indigenous people.(6) As Jackie Huggins observes, in relation to indigenous people, white women were often positioned as honorary men, called `Sir' or `boss.'(7) Use of the first names of white women by indigenous people was (in most instances) strictly forbidden; Aboriginal domestics and workers, as Marnie Kennedy observes in her autobiography Born a Half-Caste,(8) were called by their first names or generic titles such as `Jackie,' `Gin' or `Black Velvet.' These conventions instituted the racial superiority of all white people and maintained a stable hierarchy of power in work and other interactions. However, as Ann McGrath points out in Born in the Cattle, sexual politics had nonetheless a large bearing upon how racial stereotypes were formed and enforced. A letter to the Northern Territory Times in 1921, written by a woman calling herself `The Romany Lass,' demanded that white men who `seduced and abducted' Aboriginal women `by villainy' should pay for their offence `against the White Australia policy.'(9) An hierarchy of race divined through degrees of `caste' was supported, if not implemented and defined, by these `domestic' and `feminine' values throughout the assimilationist period in Australia. This is clearly exemplified by the `exemption certificate' form which marked candidates (so-called `half caste' Aboriginal wards of the state) on caste, cleanliness of person and home, and other indicators of public and private status such as occupation and number of children. …

Gender Issues in Preparing a Professional Workforce: New Views of Women's Work in Early Care and Education

Abstract: The increased number of early care and education (ECE) programs worldwide is a response to parents' workforce decisions, to economic policies, and to new knowledge about early learning. Ninety percent of the ECE workforce is women. While most ECE theorists have been men, women have been the invisible program implementers, teachers, and teacher educators. The combination of numbers of ECE programs, the characteristics of “traditional” work in a female-dominated field, and society's attitudes toward employed women, especially mothers, has created a dilemma. Possible solutions include re-structuring society's thinking about women connected with ECE and re-defining the processes in expressing the changed view. This article proposes that ECE is not traditional women's work. ECE is similar to non-traditional jobs.

Household childcare choices and women's work behavior in Russia

Abstract: The author models mothers'participation in the labor force, their working hours, and household demand for childcare in Russia. The model estimates the effects of the price of childcare, mothers'wages, and household income on household behavior and well-being. The theoretical model yields several predictions. To test these, reduced-form equations of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of semi-parametric full information maximum likelihood. This method controls for the correlation of error terms across outcomes, and the correlation of error terms that can result when panel data are used. The results of this analysis indicate that the extent to which mothers participate in the labor force, and for how many hours, depends on the costs of childcare and on what level of hourly wage is available to them and to other members of the household. The author's simulations show that family allowances - intended to reduce poverty - do not significantly affect the household choice of childcare arrangements. Replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies might have a strong positive effect on women's participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty.

Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, and the Value of Women's Work

Abstract: Media representations of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa following their deaths extolled their good works and selfless devotion to others. This essay explores these representations using Luce Irigaray's analysis of women's unpaid domestic labor and charity. It argues that there is a connection between the unpaid status of so much of women's work and the current imagery surrounding Princess Diana and Mother Teresa celebrating the capacity of women to perform acts of charity and work for free

Tracking the Invisible: Scientific Indicators of the Health Hazards in Women’s Work

Abstract: The critique of bias in occupational epidemiology continues with this chapter, which demonstrates that most research and practice in the field of occupational health and safety has been insensitive to specifically female concerns. This bias needs to be challenged by the reorientation of research priorities and by the development of new methods that take both biological and social differences between men and women into account. Drawing mainly on examples from studies carried out in collaboration with trades unions in Quebec, this chapter outlines the changes needed to develop gendersensitive practice in occupational health research. It demonstrates the need for the use of more appropriate indicators for monitoring work-related damage, for the elimination of methodological techniques such as ‘adjusting for sex’ and for changes in government policies on issues such as compensation. Above all, it stresses the importance of placing women’s occupational health concerns within the broader framework of their daily lives.