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.

Women's work and women's worth: the leisure implications of women's changing employment patterns.

Abstract: This paper reviews the interrelationship of work and leisure in British women's lives. It focuses in particular on the practical and ideological significance of changes in women's patterns of labour market involvement. While women's gross employment levels have risen substantially over the last three decades, the scale and pattern of female employment is strongly differentiated across social groups. Most women's work involvement continues to be primarily shaped by the requirements of their family role, and to be strongly differentiated from male employment patterns. Among women with higher status jobs, however, a contrasting pattern is emerging. This paper considers whether the ‘advances’ of professional women are indicative of a general tide of change which can be expected to permeate to other sectors of the female population, and highlights structural factors in both work and family domains which are likely to inhibit this. It concludes that current trends in women's employment patterns both represent i...

Women's work or household strategies?

Abstract: Women's work or household strategies considers some conceptual and methodological issues in seeking a better understanding of the position of women in urban areas. The author discusses the nature of the "household" and draws on the literature to highlight the unequal balance between male and female household members in terms of power and access to knowledge, resources and income.

Men’s business, women’s work: gender influences and fathers’ smoking

Abstract: To further understand men’s continued smoking during their partner’s pregnancy and the postpartum period, a study was undertaken to explore women’s perspectives of men’s smoking. Using a gender lens, a thematic analysis of transcribed interviews with 27 women was completed. Women’s constructions of men’s smoking and linkages to masculine and feminine ideals are described. The findings highlight the ways women position themselves both as defenders and regulators of men’s smoking. Femininities that aligned women with hegemonic masculine principles underpinned their roles in relation to men’s smoking and presented challenges in influencing their partner’s tobacco reduction. By positioning the decision to quit smoking as a man’s solitary pursuit, women reduced potential relationship conflict and managed to maintain their identity as a supportive partner. Insights from this study provide direction for developing gender-specific tobacco reduction initiatives targeting expectant and new fathers. Indeed, a lack of intervention aimed at encouraging men’s tobacco reduction has the potential to increase relationship tensions, and inadvertently maintain pressure on women to regulate fathers’ smoking. This study illustrates how gender-based analyses can provide new directions for men’s health promotion programmes and policies.

Family Ties: Women's Work and Family Histories and Their Association with Incomes in Later Life in the UK

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between the family and work histories of older women in the UK and their individual incomes in later life, using retrospective data from the first fifteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey. The associations between women's family histories and their incomes later in life are relatively weak, and in many cases insignificant. Divorce, early widowhood and re-marriage are not associated with significant differences in older women's incomes, whilst motherhood is only associated with a small reduction in incomes later in life - and not at all for certain sub-groups of the population. Whilst there are significant differences in the work histories of older women with different family histories, this does not translate into large differences in their personal incomes, because work history-related income differentials are also relatively small. Even long periods in employment are not associated with significantly higher incomes in later life if these periods were in predominantly part-time or 'mixed' employment. Our analysis demonstrates how effective public transfers have been in dampening work history-related differentials in older women's incomes, especially for widows and those towards the bottom of the income distribution. On the one hand, this could be seen as a positive finding in that the 'pension penalty' associated with events such as motherhood and divorce are not as severe as is often anticipated. On the other hand, the main reason for this is that the pension returns to working longer are relatively low, especially for low-skilled women. Recent pensions reforms should eventually produce more equitable outcomes as between men and women, though possibly at the expense of greater inequality among women with different work and family histories.