Showing papers on "Women's work published in 2002"

Men Doing “Women’s Work”: Masculinity and Gender Relations Among Street Vendors in Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract: Since Boserup (1970) first set the agenda for research on gender and work in developing settings several studies of sub-Saharan Africa have described how women can successfully compete with men in both rural and urban labor markets (e.g., Osirim 1996; Spring 2000) and how women’s increased participation in labor forces affect gender relations and family decisions (e.g., Adepoju and Oppong 1994). Most of this literature has been concerned with sub-Saharan women’s catching up to men in rates of labor force participation and entry into traditionally male occupations but has typically overlooked the opposite phenomenon— men’s work in traditionally female jobs. Yet studies in developed settings suggest that this phenomenon may have profound implication for gender identity and inequality. Thus Williams (1989, 1992, 1995) showed that men and women reproduce and maintain gender differences while participating in nontraditional occupations and that, reflecting the dominant gender hierarchy, this process is asymmetrical: while women entering traditionally male occupations are relegated to their margins, men involved in traditionally female occupations are, on the contrary, often channeled to the most prestigious and materially rewarding specialties that are also seen as more “masculine.” At the same time, men in traditionally female occupations, such as nursing, librarianship, elementary school teaching and social work, do become objects of negative “feminine” stereotypes on the part of clients and outsiders. The gender stigma attached to these occupations (in addition to lower material returns) may deter men from entering

The Moderating Effect of Spouse Support on the Relationship between Work Variables and Women's Work-Family Conflict

Abstract: The present study examines certain work variables (long work hours, autonomy, tedium and overload) in relation to women’s work-family conflict, and the extent to which spouse support acts as a moderating variable in this relationship. In a sample of 310 Malaysian women combining work and family, results of the regression analyses showed that long working hours and overload were positively related to work-family conflict after taking into account of race and occupational group. In addition, there was some support for the moderating effect of spouse support on the relationship between work variables and conflict. Significant interactions were observed between work hours and spouse support, and between autonomy and spouse support. Implications of these findings to married employed women are discussed.

Globalisation, women's work and teacher education: A cross-national analysis

Abstract: This article examines how broader international transitions and changes in teacher education are manifested locally, as lived experience, in female teacher educators' working lives .Using cross-national data from Britain and Canada, it illustrates how broad international changes are redefining - particularly through the social regulation of gender conflicts in the workplace - the terms and conditions upon which women are expected to function as 'workers' in the changing contexts of teacher education. Particular attention is paid to intensified research cultures, assessments of professionalism and fiscal restraints. Teacher education is seen as a key example where tensions surrounding female workers are often complex and contradictory, and where reforms have been implemented cross-nationally in a profession which maintains very specific historical and local patterns of work .Key theoretical questions include: how might women's accounts of work in changing teacher education contexts reveal something about t...

Constructing Family-Friendly Careers: Mothers' Experiences.

Abstract: Numerous cultural forces have contributed to a modern polarization of work and family roles. Historically, women s work and family roles were defined primarily by male power structures, leading to a perception that work performed by women was less valuable or less prestigious (Raabe, 1996). As the United States became industrialized, work and family roles were further separated by the trend of men working away from the home and women staying at home to care for children. This trend perpetuated the power differential and minimized the potential work opportunities for women (Fowlkes, 1987). However, since the mid- 1900s, the number of women working away from their homes has increased. In particular, during the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of employed women in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Simultaneously, the average number of hours couples in the United States spend working has increased (Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute, 1999). Because the prevailing employment paradigm expects individuals to work approximately 40 hours per week to be considered a legitimate employee, most women work full-time (Rubin & Riney, 1994). Considerable research has demonstrated that these women, who are full-time employees, continue to perform the bulk of the child care and household duties (Barnett & Rivers, 1996; Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987; Moen & Yu, 1997; Scarr, Phillips, & McCartney, 1989). Thus, many women find themselves with the equivalent of two full-time jobs. This workload often leads to frustration, stress, and some degree of dissatisfaction with both jobs (Moen, 1992). Some of these studies have investigated the apparent reluctance of men to share more fully in homemaking tasks. Although some evidence indicates that men are becoming more involved in child care and, to a lesser degree, other housework, a large gap remains between the amount of housework and child care performed by employed women and that performed by their employed spouses (Fitzgerald, Fassinger, & Betz, 1995; Shelton, 1992). Although understanding this disparity and making efforts toward equalizing the home workload is important, particularly to the mental health of women, equalization may be only part of the challenge. Moen (1992) has suggested that even if a couple were to equalize the child care and homemaking work, a significant problem would remain. Instead of having one person with two full-time jobs, the family would have two parents, each with 1 1/2 full-time jobs. This 150% workload would arguably result in the same kind of stress and dissatisfaction--albeit more equally distributed between the parents. Accordingly, this research looked at the work overload dimension of the work/family dilemma. We explored the experience of women who had determined that they wanted more time available for child care and related homemaking tasks but also wanted to maintain significant involvement in their chosen career. To do this, we identified 26 women who were, by choice, working less than full-time in their chosen career and were reportedly committed to making time with their children a priority. These women were interviewed regarding their experience in identifying and constructing a "family-friendly" career. The results provide insights into the difficulties and benefits of challenging the prevailing system. As has often been the case in the study of women's vocational development, the results may provide some insights into the next wave of development for vocational counseling in general. HISTORICAL EFFORTS TO UNDERSTAND WOMEN'S VOCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT The history of efforts to describe women's career development has been inconsistent and incomplete. Early vocational theories largely ignored women's career development (Fitzgerald et al., 1995). Because many women, especially middle-class White women, did not formally pursue careers prior to World War II, women in general were ignored in accounts of career development. …

Effect of childbearing on Filipino women's work hours and earnings

Abstract: The effects of childbearing and work sector on women's hours and earnings in the 8 years following an index pregnancy were examined in a cohort of more than 2,000 women in the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. Change in cash earnings and hours worked were each modeled jointly with sector of labor force participation using an estimation strategy that deals with endogeneity of childbearing decisions and selectivity into sector of work. Two or more additional children born in the 8 year interval significantly reduced women's earnings, while having an additional child under 2 years of age in 1991 reduced hours worked.

Producing Social Class Representations Women's Work in a Rural Town

Abstract: Based on data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who live in a relatively homogeneous small, rural town, this article examines how women act to produce social class representations. By presenting symbols of socioeconomic positions, including behaviors, tastes, and values, during their work, the women in the town present themselves as working, middle, or upper class women. Through these representations, they secure a place within the town's subjective social class system.

Women's Work?: American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920

Abstract: Review of: Women's Work? American Schoolteachers, 1650-1920. Perlmann, Joel and Margo, Robert A.

Continuity of women's work, breastfeeding, and fertility in Ghana in the 1980s.

Abstract: Much of the inconsistency that has appeared in studies of the effect of women's work on fertility in less developed countries has been attributed to the varying accessibility of employment in the modern sector. The analysis presented in this paper shows that continuity of work matters more than sector of work. It also confirms that, even in a setting of low contraceptive prevalence, increased fecundity associated with the less intense breastfeeding practices of working women do not result in shorter birth intervals. The influence of women's work on fertility control is likely to be underestimated if the effects of sporadic versus continuous work are conflated, or if fecundity differentials by work status are unmeasured.

Women's Work In Regional Labour Markets: Spatial Versus Industry Differences

Abstract: This article reviews the impact of space on paid employment opportunities for women in regional areas of New South Wales. Regional labour markets have been categorised according to the distinct industry of major employment (O ‘Connor and Gordon, 1989: 212–214): agricultural regions; manufacturing regions undergoing structural change; natural resource regions; resort and retirement regions; isolated areas. The research compares six regional labour markets in New South Wales that fall into the categories of agricultural regions, natural resource regions and resort and retirement regions. It compares industry and occupation for men and women between these regions and with the metropolitan region. The article concludes that the labour market for women is more constrained in regional areas than in the metropolitan area. In addition, the article examines the differences in female and male labour markets between the three regional types and examines whether the variation in women's employment between re...

Women's Work is Never Done : Comparative Studies in Care-Giving, Employment, and Social Policy Reform

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction Sylvia Bashevkin Part I: Conceptual Issues 1. Normative Concepts in Dutch Policies on Work and Care Selma Sevenhuijsen Part II: Confronting Women's Diversity 2. It's no longer Just About Race: Social Constructions of American Citizenship in the Moynihan Report Dionne Bensonsmith 3. Paying For Caring: The Gendering Consequences of European Care Allowances for the Frail Elderly Jane Jenson Part III: Anglo-American Welfare Reform 4. Poverty, Social Assistance and the Employability of Mothers in Four Commonwealth Countries Maureen Baker 5. Road-Testing the Third Way: Single Mothers and Welfare Reform during the Clinton, Chretien and Blair Years Sylvia Bashevkin Part IV: Policy Alternatives 6. Violating Women: Rights Abuses in the American Welfare Police State Gwendolyn Mink 7. Mandatory 'Marriage' or Obligatory Waged Work: Social Assistance and Single Mothers in Wisconsin and Ontario Leah F.Vosko About the Contributors

Article: Banking on Bananas, Crediting Crafts: Financing Women's Work in the Philippine Cordillera

Abstract: This paper addresses the emergence of microfinance programmes in international development as a preferred strategy for povertyalleviation and empowering women Drawing on ethnographic research in the Philippine Cordillera, it argues that microfinance projects have embedded social change objectives in initiatives driven by market-led forces thereby failing to realize social justice for women To effect a more normative agenda for development, this paper suggests integrating women's perspectives and initiatives other than credit

Hitting Home: Feminist Ethics, Women's Work, and the Betrayal of Family Values

Abstract: At the very time when most women's lives are defined by a lack of income, time, and energy, and when being stressed-out is for them more common than the common cold, politicians and other professed guardians of public virtue are stridently lamenting the loss of what they define as "family values." Even as women enter the workforce to provide essential income for their families while attending to children, spouse, and the endless round of domestic chores, every sort of social ill from drug addiction to unwed mothering is laid at their door. As Gloria H. Albrecht shows, this dismal situation is not merely a cultural irony; it is a potential social tragedy. She explains how this paradox symbolizes the new face of family life in America's post-industrial economy. "Hitting Home" documents the growing abandonment by business and government of their social responsibility to sustain the well-being of families. She exploses "family-friendly" policies as being in fact policies that are friendly primarily to the profit-oriented goals of the corporate world. Business strategies, touted as the new methods of efficiency, reveal the fundamentally anti-family nature of an economy designed from its origins to exclude those authentic values that arise from caring relationships. Albrecht amasses data which are illuminated by portraits and stories of the real people whose daily lives are the grist of economics. She emphasizes how sermonizing family values advocates ignore the connection between their ideal family and its exploitation of underpaid "help," whether actual servants, or cooks, or nursery attendants, or child-care providers - none of whom can themselves afford to support staff necessary to attain the status of being an acknowledged nurturer of those mythic family values. Throughout her book, Albrecht maintains that authentic family values require an equal social commitment to two connected goals: women's equality and the well-being of families.

Why choose women's work if it pays less? A structural model of occupational choice

Abstract: This paper controls for the selection bias associated with occupational choice and the labor force participation decision in estimating the wage penalty for working in female-dominated occupations. Using data from the May 1979 and the April 1993 supplements to the Current Population Survey, the author finds that women working in female-dominated occupations have similar or higher expected wages in their chosen occupation compared to nonfemale-dominated occupations. This result indicates that there is efficient matching between occupations and skills for women in the labor force and refutes the theories of occupational segregation or crowding as determinants of the gender wage differential.

Swedish Longitudinal Study: Final National Report: Annex 2 : SERVEMPLOI: Innovations in Information Society Sectors: Implicatons for Women's Work, Expertise and Opportunities in European Workplaces: Project SOE-CT98-119

Abstract: This Europe-wide, three-year study of women’s employment and career prospects in the Information Society was finalised in December 2001. SERVEMPLOI (Innovations in Information Society Sectors – Imp ...

Within the Boundaries: Karuwanci as Women’s Work

Abstract: The focus of this chapter is the examination and analysis of the practice of karuwanci, which is treated here as a form of labour within particular relations of exchange. The operationalisation of the practice of karuwanci, in terms of the specific kinds of labour undertaken, brings to the fore examination of relations of production and reproduction, and a reconsideration of the extent to which karuwanci replicates or echoes the sexual division of labour within the household, and thus the extent to which these forms of labour can be treated as the same or similar phenomena, or conversely, should be treated as distinct forms of labour. Incorporated into this area of analytical concern are the additional forms of labour which karuwai undertake, which in some ways bring them farther still from the constellation of activities generally included in domestic labour.