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.

Why is Women’s Work Low-Paid? Establishing a framework for understanding the causes of low pay among professions traditionally dominated by women

Abstract: This discussion paper was commissioned by Oxfam’s UK Programme to understand why certain occupations in the UK labour market, traditionally dominated by women, are low-paid. The paper argues that jobs associated with traditional and outdated notions of ‘women’s role in the home’ extends into the jobs market. This affects attitudes towards remuneration in professions such as cleaning and caring. The paper sets out a framework for understanding the risks of low pay and to explore the issue of the undervaluing of low-paid jobs with respect primarily to women. The author calls these the five ‘V’s: visibility, valuation, vocation, value-added and variance, and sets out a possible series of policy responses.

Don’t tell them I can type: negotiating women’s work in production in the post-war ABC:

Abstract: This article examines the pervasive mechanisms of discrimination in Australian public broadcasting in the 1950s and 1960s and considers how concepts of femininity were engaged to maintain the sexua...

Women’s work unbound: Philippine development and global restructuring

Abstract: Global restructuring scenarios include capital’s relentless quest for productive compliant labor, on the one hand, and the proliferation of new sites and forms of consumption, on the other. Proponents of the benefits of globalization and neoliberal monetary strategies sometimes confuse production and consumption to argue from evidence of either new forms of employment, or new modes of consumption in particular locations, that globalization diminishes global inequalities. Critical feminist scholarship challenges these interpretations through analysis of the gendered results of apparent change. In a proliferating literature,2 interdisciplinary migration research comprises one significant component of the analysis of the gendered affects of globalization. A common theme in this literature is the persistent inequalities and stratification dynamics underlying contemporary migration flows within and between different regions of the world (Sassen 1998 and 2000; Castles 2007; Portes and DeWind 2007; Piper 2008a). Stratification between nations is registered in the flows of capital and people within the global political economy, historically marking out certain nations or regions as migrant-sending, others as migrant-receiving.3 Stratification also structures particular migration flows in terms of class, age, ethnicity, racialization, and cultural difference, always differentiated by gender. Within nations and regions there are flows and counter-flows with shifts in the direction of movement relative to the ebbs and flows of capital and production, national and regional economic policies, and the intensification of border security regimes. Post-9/11 securitization of border policies is accompanied by contradictoryprocesses of invisibilization and marketization of women in migration and citizenship policies (Dobrowolsky 2007). These processes are tied to the feminization of global migration. With women comprising almost half of all global migrants, Stephen Castles and Mark Miller (2003) rank feminization as one of the major features of international migration. Trends in the feminization of migration (ILO 2003) have been researched by feminist scholars for several decades (see Donato et al. 2006; Kofman 1999). Sometimes feminization references a quantitative shift in the gender composition of a particularmigration flow. On the global stage, however, while the gender balance is variable context by context, women typically constitute a significant portion of any national flow (see Bach, this volume). Thus, feminization can also refer to the higher incidence generally of women as independent migrants and the significance of their economic contributions as employees and family providers. Feminization research therefore challenges previous patriarchal conceptualizations of women migrants as “dependents,” a facet of women’s invisibilization. Further, feminization can be linked to global restructuring scenarios in developing countries whereby structural adjustment policies and the imposition of austerity measures have contributed to the greater economic vulnerability of significant numbers of people (Ramirez, Dominguez, and Morais 2005). Migration provides one avenue in women’s search for economic resources. As this chapter shows, Philippine migration reflects feminization in all ofthis complexity, quantitatively, and qualitatively. One recent study of gendered stratification and polarization in migration notes feminization of a particular migration flow can result from male unemployment or underemployment in the countries of origin, a process which may, in turn, lead men to seek employment in feminized areas such as nursing and/or caregiving.4 Where women are in skilled and professional streams, they may represent feminized sectors of their particular occupations (Piper 2008a). Further, marketization, associated with neoliberalism, privileges certain kinds of skills and economically resourceful migrants, even as it de-skills and de-values others, typically to the detriment of women from the Global South. For example, the significant number of women migrants, including Filipinas, who work as caregivers continue to struggle for rights as workers and citizens in many parts of the world (Pratt 2004; Stasuilis and Bakan 2005; Barber 2008a; Piper 2008b; Zontini 2008). Invisibilization is an apt characteristic for their work and their political struggles. A further paradox, as Castles (2007) notes, is that in many cases, state efforts to better manage migration prove to be ineffective, though as will be demonstrated below, policies certainly do have consequences for migrants’ lives. Mode of entry (for example, with or without documents) and types of laborcontracts (temporary or renewable) on offer to migrants from various parts of the world, regardless of skill sets, are further aspects of stratification and polarization dynamics. But for those exceptional cases involving professional and highly skilled women migrants who are able to find properly remunerated employment in their fields (not to be taken for granted), typically, gender is associated with intensified inequalities for women throughout the migration and settlement processes. As has been well documented, this is partly for structural reasons tied to labor markets which racialize women who are ethnically and culturally different, as well as the lesser value applied to women’s gendered work and skill sets (see Chang and Ling, this volume). As noted, for women migrants in domestic service jobs, the situation is particularly troublesome because of the multiple possibilities for exploitation andreduced access to citizenship rights (Anderson 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Parrenas 2001; Stasiulis and Bakan 2005; Barber 2006; Briones 2008). This chapter draws on 15 years of ethnographic research on genderedlivelihood practices in the Philippines to illustrate the persistent contradictions, continuities, and changes associated with reliance upon migration as a key component of the nation’s political economy. The second half of the chapter analyzes the gender and class complexities, and the economic agency of Philippine women who work in global caregiving and service labor markets. But it is not simply a rehearsing of victimizing discourse about commoditized domestic labor – arguably a preoccupation in earlier moments of feminist scholarship about women’s migration (see Briones 2008). It is also an account of the nimbleness and flexibility of Philippine migrants in the twenty-first century and a call for greater theoretical and methodological nuance in analyzing the social and cultural relations of production and social reproduction (class and consumption) in global and local labor markets.