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Showing papers on "Women's work published in 2003"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored whether occupational gender segregation at the labor market level exacerbates the wage penalty associated with female-dominated jobs, and investigated the association between gender composition and the size of within-job gender gaps.
Abstract: Although abundant evidence documents pay penalties for female-dominated jobs, there is also substantial variation in gender inequality across U.S. metropolitan areas. These lines of research are united by exploring whether occupational gender segregation at the labor market level exacerbates the wage penalty associated with female-dominated jobs, and investigating the association between gender composition and the size of within-job gender gaps. Results show that the penalty accruing to female-dominated jobs is weaker in more integrated labor markets, but only among men, and that labor market integration does not significantly influence the association between the gender composition of jobs and within-job inequality. Further, even women in completely segregated jobs benefit from a context of occupational integration. It is concluded that, although gender devaluation is widespread and systematic, variation in gender composition effects across local contexts is an important dimension of gender inequality.

252 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For example, this article found that higher levels of occupational segregation at the labor market level are associated with a significantly increased tendency to devalue women's work roles, and that men are in a stronger position to benefit from devaluation while women are less able to resist it.
Abstract: Previous research on the devaluation of women's work has investigated whether the net effect of gender composition varies across jobs and organizational settings. We extend that research by using hierarchical linear models that combine data from a random sample of U.S. work establishments with metropolitan-area data to explore whether macro-level gender inequality also influences the tendency to devalue women's work roles. Thus, we offer the first attempt to examine processes that lead to organizational gender inequality in local labor market contexts. Specifically, we hypothesize that gender devaluation will be strongest in highly gender-segregated labor markets. One reason for this may be that in segregated markets, men are in a stronger position to benefit from devaluation while women are less able to resist it. The results strongly support this hypothesis: Higher levels of occupational segregation at the labor market level are associated with a significantly increased tendency to devalue women's work roles. This finding is not explained by a diverse set of controls at both the establishment and local labor market level. Our findings highlight an additional way that gender segregation intensifies labor market inequality.

195 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results reveal that wasting among infants increased when mothers did not take them to work, and mothers' work reduced stunting in their children, but the expected positive effect of earning cash from work on childhood nutrition was less visible from the results.

125 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a profile of women's work participation among slum dwellers in Dhaka city and find that almost 50% of adult women are engaged in income-generating work outside the home.

69 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed women's self-employment in artisanal gold mines in Suriname, South America, and found that if long-term social and health conditions are considered, women's work in the informal mining sector is not likely to improve the quality of life in the interior of the country.
Abstract: Development policy makers increasingly focus on the informal sector as an area to alleviate poverty and promote gender equity. Female self-employment is especially encouraged because higher incomes for women empower them, improve the health of their families, and alleviate poverty in society at large. In this context, development institutions have been urged to increase female participation in artisanal mining. However, knowledge about the gains and costs to women who earn a living in informal, artisanal mines is sparse. This study analyzes women's self-employment in artisanal gold mines in Suriname, South America. The results suggest that if long-term social and health conditions are considered, work in the informal mining sector is not likely to improve the quality of life in the interior of Suriname. The analysis contributes to informal-sector research by focusing on women and on rural regions, two areas of investigation that have received relatively little attention. The author cautions against develo...

61 citations


Posted Content
TL;DR: This paper explored the prospects for gender equality within contemporary Australia and concluded that, in the absence of political will and fundamental institutional and social change, the prospects are grim, and pointed out that despite massive change in women's educational outcomes, labour market activity and fertility levels, the last two decades has seen no change in the share of participating women in the full-time labour market.
Abstract: Notwithstanding massive change in women's educational outcomes, labour market activity and fertility levels, the last two decades has seen no change in the share of participating women in the full-time labour market, little change in the overall distribution of women across jobs and little change in the size of the Australian gender pay gap. These facts are not easily accounted for by conventional neo-classical theory suggesting the presence of some strong and persistent normative forces (e.g. ideology with respect to gender roles) in the shaping of women's labour market outcomes. This paper explores the prospects for gender equality within contemporary Australia and concludes that, in the absence of political will and fundamental institutional and social change, the prospects are grim.

36 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article examined women's involvement in the Gulf War Illness movement and found that women's cumulative grievances of health concerns, financial hardships, and emotional problems opened them to movement recruitment as they surfed the Internet for information and support.
Abstract: We use in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to examine women's involvement in the Gulf War Illness movement. We find that women's cumulative grievances of health concerns, financial hardships, and emotional problems opened them to movement recruitment as they surfed the Internet for information and support. The movement's division of labor was influenced not by gender but by health status. Women used the Internet to provide medical information and emotional support to geographically dispersed veterans. Activism transformed women activists by endowing them with a sense of empowerment and a somewhat broadened concern for social justice. Although their transformations disposed the women to become active on related issues, it did not extend to concerns about gender discrimination. We suggest that the next research step is to investigate gender differences in movement processes by surveying activists across a variety of movements to test propositions and to identify the characteristics of other social contexts that structurally instigate a departure from traditional gender roles.

15 citations


Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors pointed out that the majority of women work in a limited number of occupations characterized by a proportionately high number of female workers and that workers in these female-dominated (FD) occupations earn less, on average, than workers in traditionally male or integrated occupations.
Abstract: It is well-known that the majority of women work in a limited number of occupations characterized by a proportionately high number of female workers. Moreover, workers in these female-dominated (FD) occupations earn less, on average, than workers in traditionally male or integrated occupations (McPherson & Hirsch, 1995). This occupational wage differential is widely accepted as a partial explanation for the pervasive gender wage-differential. However, it is unclear why an individual would enter into a FD occupation if the wages are lower than in nonfemale-dominated (NFD) occupations. It is also unclear if women who choose FD occupations could earn more in occupations that are NFD. Therefore, attributing a portion of the gender wage differential to occupational differences may be incorrect. Indeed, differences in the occupational choices of men and women will only explain the wage differential between genders if females in FD occupations could expect to earn higher wages elsewhere.

13 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: Bashevkin et al. as mentioned in this paper present a collection of women's work in care-giving, employment, and social policy reform with a focus on women as welfare recipients, caregivers, workers, and citizens.
Abstract: Women's Work Is Never Done: Comparative Studies in Care-Giving, Employment, and Social Policy Reform. Sylvia Bashevkin. (Ed.) New York: Routledge. 2002. 208 pp. ISBN 0-415-93481-8. $23.95 (paper). Women's Work Is Never Done is an engaging feminist collection that advances our understanding of how welfare discourses and policies affect women as welfare recipients, caregivers, workers, and citizens. A number of contributions of this solid scholarship are worth mentioning. First, by providing a cross-national analysis of welfare regimes and their influences on women, the authors recognize the dynamic nature of welfare language and practices. Second, although the male-female differences in welfare experiences are well-documented, the contributors examine a diversity of experiences among women depending on their race, class, and age. Finally, throughout the volume the authors draw our attention to construction of citizenship in terms of who "deserves" to be considered a citizen and whether access to citizenship rights should be based on one's needs or one's societal contribution. Collectively, the contributors criticize the Moynihan report's stereotypical portrayal of African American women and contribution to the racialized construction of citizenship; the movement toward conservative family structures, in which women's interests are pushed aside; and the neoliberal practices and moralistic rhetorics of economic self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. A strong feature of the volume is that it offers alternative policy suggestions that could rectify the punitive organization of the current welfare systems and in the long-term advance gender equality. The book is organized into four sections that allow readers to easily locate topics of interest. In the first section, "Conceptual Issues," Selma Sevenhuijsen, by using the ethic of care, makes care-giving visible in the state-market-family relation triangle. Also by looking at care from a power/conflict perspective, the author recognizes that "care can be debilitating and patronizing, as well as enabling and supportive" (p. 25). In the second section, "Confronting Women's Diversity," the contributing authors bring into focus diversity among women along race, class, and age lines in their experiences in welfare state regimes. The third section, "Anglo-American Welfare Reform," examines differences and similarities in public discourses and policies on social assistance across a number of Anglo American welfare regimes. Using case study methods, the authors show that in the context of neoliberal economic restructuring, the four Commonwealth countries, with the United States in the vanguard, are shifting more toward marriage-oriented and market-based approaches to welfare that undermine the foundations of expansive social citizenship rights. …

11 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, Connell et al. argue that there exists a gender regime of technology, which in concrete terms manifests itself in the sexual division of labor in the realm of information technology, and highlight how these arrangements are shaped in part through policy discourse that reproduces ideas about Third World women as knowledge-and technology-poor.
Abstract: International organization policies pertaining to gender and information technology address gender in terms of the relations between men and women as defined by sociocultural norms. In doing so, they do not account for how technology is itself gendered, or how people use technology in ways that call up and reproduce gendered relations in society. Certain assumptions that underpin these policies-that argue that there exists an imminent danger of losing women because of a lack of technological skills-even serve to reproduce gender relations in the realm of information technology. In this article, I deal with three questions. First, how are issues of gender and information technology conceptualized in the international educational policy literature? Second, what are some limitations of this policy conceptualization that surface in Internet cafe settings in northern Tanzania? The two issues I specifically investigate are the extent to which policy focuses on women's access to technology and the role that policy plays in the positioning of women as knowledge-and technology-poor. Third, how can we discuss these issues without either relying on an ethnocentric discourse and theory of gender relations that privileges white, Euro-American perspectives, or by reducing gender power relations to a faulty cultural logic in which sociocultural norms are blamed for imbalances of power? In order to address these questions, I offer a conceptual language for thinking about gender and information technology through invoking the concept of "gendered social regimes." Crediting Foucault (1977, 1978), cultural anthropologists and gender theorists (Connell 2002; Escobar 1995; Ong, 1999) have used the concept of power and knowledge "regimes" to address ways that gendered structures of power and knowledge are normalized. A "regime" is a "structure of relations" that "defines possibilities and consequences" (Connell 2002, 55). I argue that there exists a gender regime of technology, which in concrete terms manifests itself in the sexual division of labor in the realm of information technology. While I show that this regime is composed of gendered arrangements that draw on both global and local relationships and discourses, I also highlight how these arrangements are shaped in part through policy discourse that reproduces ideas about Third World women as knowledge- and technology-poor. Method This article concerns itself most directly with the language and direction of international education policy dealing with issues of gender and information technology. I ground it in an extensive conceptual and discursive analysis of two information technology policy documents (UNCSTD Gender Working Group 1995; Hafkin and Taggart 2001) that I have selected as representative of the themes and language of a broader sample. I locate these policy documents in the research and policy debates, which they both reflect and shape, and then offer a critique informed by recent anthropological analyses of the conceptualization of technology and by interpretations of several gendered dynamics of Internet cafes that point to the problematic nature of policy objectives, strategies, and outcomes. My understanding of Internet cafes as gendered spaces derives mainly from conversations with Internet cafe owners, managers, staff, customers, and other townspeople during a two-month period I spent in northern Tanzania conducting anthropological research on a separate project. Although this article draws on my daily experiences in at least seven cafe, I highlight one in particular, the Safari Internet Cafe (a pseudonym), located in a medium-sized city in northern Tanzania where as many as ten Internet cafes have opened in the last five years. I offer my thoughts on these gendered dynamics not as evidence derived from a systematic long-term study, but rather as vignettes in which I highlight issues and raise questions regarding the direction of international policy in information technology. …

10 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
Lotta Vikström1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reveal that alternative sources are better than the quantitative data at revealing the often multi-occupational and part-time work of urban women in Sweden, whereas the parish registers enable us to deal with demographic issues concerning the marital, geographical and social path of women in the past.
Abstract: It is often hard to unravel the actual work of women in history. Generally few sources are able to give vital information on their occupational structure. What we know, though, is that a vast majority of women were engaged in domestic work. Servants frequently appear in quantitative data, such as parish registers, poll-taxes, or censuses. Nevertheless, these sources fail to cover what women really were doing in order to pay for their daily bread. But in what ways the occupation reported in the quantitative records disagreed from women's actual work is difficult to judge. Additionally, in many cases these records leave no occupational information on women at all. With the computerized parish registers of the Demographic Data Base at Umea University, Sweden, it is possible to link alternative information on individual women's work to the quantitative data and build on the picture of women's occupations. Consequently, whereas the parish registers enable us to deal with demographic issues concerning the marital, geographical, and social path of women in the past, the alternative sources formed by local newspapers, patient records, and business statistics offer further information on their life and working conditions. This paper reveals that alternative sources are better than the quantitative data at revealing the often multi-occupational and part-time work of urban women. Newspaper advertisements, announcements, and police reports, for instance, reveal the voices of the otherwise silent women workers and tell us about their urban context. The town and time in focus is Sundsvall in 1860–1893, a Swedish sawmill town situated about 400 kilometers north of Stockholm.

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Brenner and Sen as mentioned in this paper argue that the Sum of representations of women in these middle-class texts 'offer[s] a bewildering array of lifestyle possibilities' and that the new 'iconic figure' of the working woman is a professional who legitimises Indonesia's position as a modern nation, not a working-class woman labouring on the factory floor.
Abstract: In the late 1990s, scholarly attention turned to glossy publications such as Femina, the premier Indonesian women's magazine, for insights into what it means to be a woman in Indonesia. When Brenner analysed the visual and verbal images of the 'many incarnations' of the modern Indonesian woman, she found that, in addition to being a 'happy consumer-housewife, devoted follower of Islam '" model citizen of the nation-state and alluring sex symbol', the modern Indonesian woman is a wanita kaner, working as a business executive, secretary, lawyer or civil servant (Brenner 1999, 17-24). Sen, too, has noted the increasing dOminance of images of professional, working women in 'official and commercial texts emanating from metropolitan Jakarta' (Sen 1998, 35). Unlike Brenner, however, who argues that the Sum of representations of women in these middle-class texts 'offer[s] a bewildering array of lifestyle possibilities' (Brenner 1999, 17), Sen privileges images of the working woman asserting not only that 'working woman' has replaced 'housewife' as the 'new paradigmatic female subject in political, cultural and economic discourses in Indonesia', but that the new 'iconic figure' of the 'working woman' is a professional who legitimises Indonesia's position as a modern nation, not a working_ class woman labOUring on the factory floor (Sen 1998, 35). Brenner and Sen deal with similar texts and, indeed, similar themes, but they place a different emphasis on the extent to which their conclusions can be extrapolated. In seeking the modern, Brenner makes only modest claims for broader Indonesian society. While the bulk of her discussion is focused on the images of women


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The ways in which dramaturgy has been marked as female labor in America demand rethinking since that feminization has made it difficult for the profession to generate and receive the respect it deserves as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The ways in which dramaturgy has been marked as female labor in America demand rethinking since that feminization has made it difficult for the profession to generate and receive the respect it deserves.

Journal Article
TL;DR: Based on some current studies on the"work-family conflict", role conflict faced by professional women in Hangzhou was investigated in this article, where the status quo of professional women's work-family conflicts was outlined,relationship of the women's WF conflict and the stressors was discussed, and factors influencing the extent of work family conflict for the professional women were analyzed.
Abstract: Based on some current studies on the"work-family conflict",role conflict faced by professional women in Hangzhou was investigatesed in this researchThe status quo of the professional women's work-family conflict was outlined,relationship of the women's work-family conflict and the stressors was discussed,and factors influencing the extent of work-family conflict for the professional women were analyzed

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of rural women in agricultural production activities and rural development in Turkey is discussed based mainly on secondary sources of data, such as surveys and secondary data collected from research studies.
Abstract: This study focuses on the role of rural women in agricultural production activities and rural development in Turkey and is based mainly on secondary sources of data. It describes their present situation compared to that of men across rural and urban sectors. Findings of eight research studies on Turkey were used in the paper. These studies surveyed 662 rural women in 105 villages located across various regions of Turkey. In addition some other secondary sources were also used in the study. Data discussed in this paper illustrates the important role played by women in agriculture in the country. In order to explain this more clearly issues relating to reproductive work known as womens work and womens contribution to agricultural production are discussed. In order to explain rural womens contribution to agricultural activities more concretely research conducted in different regions of Turkey was examined. For this purpose research findings on womens contribution in different agricultural production activities were examined separately. Data collected from research studies highlight the role and work of rural women in agriculture as farmers in Turkey. (authors)

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the construction and reproduction of gender identity in women's work songs specifically songs of the millstone or jatsaars in the Bhojpuri-speaking region.
Abstract: This analysis is concerned with the construction and reproduction of gender identity in womens work songs specifically songs of the millstone or jatsaars in the Bhojpuri-speaking region. Sung as accompaniment to the daily grinding of grain and spices the songs rich in narrative content cover a range of womens concerns including caste and partriarchal anxieties. As the songs also serve a pedagogical purpose whereby societal values are transmitted from older to younger women they serve to warn and prepare women for the hardships of married life also spelling out the limits of transgression the nature of punishments and the rewards for compliance. Through the delineation of family relationships which might be potentially threatening and antagonistic and by outlining approved codes of honour and conduct in such contexts the songs indicate the extent to which women are complicit in their own oppression. While the jatsaar cuts across caste lines the songs presented below are collected from women belonging to a range of castes and classes and thus can be said to represent an authentic female voice. The main issue concerns the extent to which lesson learnt throught the jatsaar have a bearing on female subordination in the sphere of agricultural production particularly in relations with the employer in the field. Hence the question: is singing about oprression in itself empowering or is it rather a reflection of the acceptance by women of gender disempowerment? (authors)


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In World War II posters aimed at the American housewife and mother, a woman's work inside the home was conceived of and celebrated as a direct part of the over?ll war effort as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: II Posters at Rutgers University, and in the Still Picture Branch of the National Archives. In World War II posters aimed at the American housewife and mother, a woman's work inside the home was conceived of and celebrated as a direct part of the over?ll war effort. The images represent but a small subset of the hundreds of images of women during the war, for the sheer vol ume of home front posters during World War II was staggering. Yet there was considerable variety even within the range of imagery aimed specifically at the housewife. Such images encouraged women to plant gardens, can food, conserve, and ration foodstuffs, to write letters to those serving in the war, and to recycle household goods and wastes.




Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the early 1990s, scholarship on gender and sexuality has increasingly become part of the mainstream in eighteenth-century studies as mentioned in this paper and the three books under review here demonstrate the breadth and variety of such work.
Abstract: Since the early 1990s, scholarship on gender and sexuality has increasingly become part of the mainstream in eighteenth-century studies. The three books under review here demonstrate the breadth and variety of such work. Historian Randolph Trumbach has been a pioneer in the field of gender and sexuality studies for over two decades. His recent book examines prostitution in London to argue that the appearance of three genders—“men, women, and sodomites”— gave rise to a revolution in the ways in which English society constructed gender and sexuality (3). Tobin and Honeyman offer interesting contexts in which to read Trumbach’s study. Paralleling Trumbach’s earlier work on English homosexuality, Tobin’s Warm Brothers studies the emergence of sodomitical subcultures in Germany. He argues that eighteenth-century constructions of homosexuality set the stage for the work of nineteenth-century German sexologists. Where Trumbach’s work has emphasized the contribution women’s sexual labor made to changes in constructions of gender and sexuality, Honeyman looks at women’s contributions to manufacturing, especially their competition with men for jobs, as formative of gender identities during industrialization. All three of these books trace changes in gender constructions during the eighteenth century, though each connects these changes to sexuality and women’s work in strikingly different ways.



Posted Content
Reg Graycar1
TL;DR: Chesterman as mentioned in this paper argued strongly in favour of abandoning earnings-related compensation and moving away from lump sum payments; and, secondly, he proposed compensating losses suffered by 'non-earners' (mostly, but by no means exclusively, 'homemakers').
Abstract: Professor Michael Chesterman was among the first scholars to address questions about gender and more broadly, the meaning of 'work' in the context of personal injury damages assessment. In his 1983 research paper, commissioned by the New South Wales Law Reform Commission as part of its inquiry into Accident Compensation, he made two key contributions: first, he argued strongly in favour of abandoning earnings-related compensation and moving away from lump sum payments; and, secondly, he proposed compensating losses suffered by 'non-earners' (mostly, but by no means exclusively, 'homemakers'). This essay explores and draws upon the issues raised by Chesterman and reviews how if at all these themes have been developed in the decades that followed this path-breaking work. Despite some initial advances in recognising the value of work not traditionally seen as having economic value, and in creating a head of damages recognising the caring work done (usually by women) for accident victims, (Griffiths v Kerkemeyer damages), substantial inroads have been made on these heads of damages. Decades after Chesterman's pioneering work, we are still debating how women's work, particularly their work outside the paid labour market, should be recognised in the context of schemes that compensate accident victims.


Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2003

01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, Park's 1996 statement applies to contemporary practices of community engagement in Australian universities, and the authors argue that, in raising the profile of service and alternative participatory modes of research as valuable pursuits in academic work, the community engagement movement may contribute to a more equitable academic reward and promotions system for males and females alike.
Abstract: In a 1996 article published in the American Journal of Higher Education, Shelley M Park declared that: A gendered division of labour exists within (as outside) the contemporary academy wherein research is implicitly deemed "men's work" and is explicitly valued, whereas teaching and service are characterised as "women's work" and explicitly devalued. The purpose of this paper is to critically appraise Park's claim regarding a gendered division of labour in the context of Australian universities. The paper will question in particular whether Park's 1996 statement applies to contemporary practices of community engagement in universities. The authors will include a brief outline of contemporary feminist and community engagement thinking as context for the paper. By way of conclusion, we suggest that feminist scholarship and methodology, and other areas of critical scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, have a lot to offer to establishing - and critiquing - emerging community engagement activities in Australian universities. We also argue that, in raising the profile of "service" and alternative participatory modes of research as valuable pursuits in academic work, the community engagement "movement" may contribute to a more equitable academic reward and promotions system for males and females alike.