Women's work

About: Women's work is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1625 publications have been published within this topic receiving 33754 citations. The topic is also known as: woman's work.

Social work as women's work: Census data 1976–1986

Abstract: Social work was stereotyped as women's work until more men began to enter it in the late 1960s. But the sex balance has swung back according to census data. Among those stating social work as their occupation, the proportion of men declined from one-third to one-quarter between 1976 and 1986. The total number of social workers also declined between 1981 and 1986. The apparent male exodus from social work may be because men have left, or been promoted to managers, or prefer to avoid a perceived gender stereotype in the title social worker. The social work profession once again has a problem with sex segregation and gender stereotyping in the labour market.

Explaining Women’s Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women’s Work

Abstract: The closing of the gender wage gap is an ongoing phenomenon in industrialized countries. However, research has been limited in its ability to understand the causes of these changes, due in part to an inability to directly compare the work of women to that of men. In this study, we use a new approach for analyzing changes in the gender pay gap that uses direct measures of job tasks and gives a comprehensive characterization of how work for men and women has changed in recent decades. Using data from West Germany, we find that women have witnessed relative increases in non-routine analytic tasks and non-routine interactive tasks, which are associated with higher skill levels. The most notable difference between the genders is, however, the pronounced relative decline in routine task inputs among women with little change for men. These relative task changes explain a substantial fraction of the closing of the gender wage gap. Our evidence suggests that these task changes are driven, at least in part, by technological change. We also show that these task changes are related to the recent polarization of employment between low and high skilled occupations that we observed in the 1990s.

Agricultural labour and the contested nature of women’s work in interwar England and Wales

Abstract: This article uses a case-study of agriculture to explore the range of anxieties and contradictions surrounding women's work in the interwar period. National statistics are shown to be inconsistent and questionable, raising questions for historians reliant on official data, but they point to regional variation as the continuous defining feature of female labour force participation. Looking beyond the quantitative data a distinction emerges between traditional work on the land and processes. The article shows that women workers in agriculture provoked vigorous debate among a range of interest groups about the scale, nature, and suitability of this work. These groups, such as the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the Women's Farm and Garden Association, and the National Union of Agricultural Workers represented a range of social classes and outlooks, and had diverse agendas underpinning their interest. Consequently women's agricultural labour is exposed as a site of class and gender conflict, connecting to wider economic and cultural tensions surrounding the place of women in interwar society.

The Gender Dividend: Capitalizing on Women's Work

Abstract: Efforts to improve growth and employment in Latin America and the Caribbean must focus on women. The reason is simple but powerful: women are driving economic growth in the region. This is true at both the economy-wide (macro) and the household (micro) levels.