Education and labour supply inequality in the informal sector: the case of Cameroon

This paper estimated the effects of education on labour supply inequality in the informal sector. For this purpose, it used quantile regression and data from the national institute of statistics of Cameroon. The results indicate that labour supply decreases with education in the informal sector. Indeed, the effects of education on the labour supply is as follows: primary education ?0.054; lower secondary education ?0.083; upper secondary education ?0.18; and tertiary education ?0.34; no level of education is the reference. It appears that, labour supply of unqualified employees of the informal sector in Cameroon is very high. For this reason, the government should promote transition from informal sector to formal sector by encouraging private sector to create more jobs for skilled workforce. The government could also use media to spread information on the benefits of formalization of employment.     

Women's right to work: The interplay of state,market and women's agency

This article addresses questions central to the conception of women's citizenship: Do women have the same right to wage work as men have? That is, do women have the same access to and chances to keep jobs as men? Is women's right to employment perceived as an individual right, disconnected from men's traditional prerogative to hold jobs as breadwinners? Women's right to work is conceptualized as a complex structural and ideological construct, shaped by the interplay of the labour market, welfare state and women's agency. The empirical analysis takes one of the Scandinavian welfare states, Norway, as its main case. The study concludes that women's individual right to work was significantly strengthened from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.     

上海职工队伍状况评价研究

五年一次的职工队伍状况调查是全面了解职工队伍总体状况、变化特点和发展趋势的重要举措。2017年6月,上海启动第八次上海职工队伍状况调查,利用此次调查获得的数据,通过构建评价体系,采用无量纲化方法对上海职工工作生活情况进行打分,利用多元回归分析测度不同特征性因素的影响程度。从整个评价分析结果来看,各模块的得分存在较大的差距,不同群体间的差异同样非常明显。性别、婚姻状况、户籍作为求职过程中简历筛选的主要因素,对于职工队伍状况评价的影响相对较小;年龄、文化程度、工作岗位等三个因素的影响则更为明显,代际差异、学历鸿沟、岗位壁垒尤为显著。     

Gendered perceptions: women in the labour market in Poland

Abstract

This paper considers the consequences of economic and political change in the early 1990s for women's situation in the Polish labour market. New types of employment emerged in various sectors of the Polish economy around the mid-1970s. Some, such as finance, insurance, education and health care became highly feminised. Under the Communist system, many regulations were introduced to allow women to combine paid labour with taking care of the household. In the new post-Communist economic situation, these gender-specific regulations work against women, making them less attractive to employers. In a situation of high unemployment, employers in the growing private sector can afford to make specific demands of their employees: that they be young, male, and mobile. Women are thus in a worse situation in the labour market even though they are often more educated than the men with whom they must compete for work. There is urgent need to introduce mechanisms to create a more equal labour market.     

Simply a Matter of Being Male? Nurses’ Employment Outcomes in the Norwegian Labour Market

The gendered segregation of the labour market is well documented: men tend to be employed in more prestigious and powerful jobs compared with women, even within female-dominated occupations. The research that describes the male privilege in nursing rarely problematizes, however, that these men belong to the majority ethnic population. Qualitative studies from the US and Norway show that men of minority ethnic origin experience discriminatory practices from supervisors and colleagues that can have a negative impact on their career mobility. An important insight from those studies is that it is not only gender that shapes careers, but the particular intersection of gender and ethnicity. But to what extent are the employment outcomes of ethnic minority and majority male nurses characterized by similarities or dissimilarities? The current article uses individual-level administrative data to investigate and compare employment outcomes among ethnic minority and majority male nurses in Norway. More precisely, we investigate the likelihood of being employed in long-term care, psychiatric care, and somatic hospitals. Our empirical approach is to estimate employment outcomes by gender, ethnicity, and their interaction. Based on this, we can determine whether it is primarily gender, ethnicity, or gender and ethnicity in combination that predict any intra-occupational segregation of minority and majority ethnic male nurses. The results show that minority ethnic men are over-represented in long-term care and under-represented in hospitals compared with majority ethnic men, whereas both men of minority and majority ethnic origin are over-represented in psychiatric care. We conclude that employment in health care organizations considered more congruent with “masculinity” is most pronounced among male nurses of majority ethnic origin. The results also reveal an emerging pattern of intra-occupational segregation with a clustering of minority ethnic nurses in long-term care, and this tendency is particularly pronounced among male nurses.     

Women's work in offices and the preservation of men's ‘breadwinning’ jobs in early twentieth-century Glasgow

As Britain's industrial economy matured and the volume of administrative work increased, different kinds of clerical jobs and clerical careers became possible. Using examples from a variety of small- to medium-sized enterprises in Glasgow, this article will describe how the main functions of administrative work – financial, secretarial and managerial – were divided both horizontally and vertically in order to preserve secure, well-paid, ‘breadwinning’ jobs for men, leaving routine secretarial work for women. The isolation of women in all-women enclaves carrying out shorthand and typing work and the subsequent devaluation of these as kinds of work were of primary importance in the creation of office work that was explicitly women's work     

Paradoxes of Gender in Elderly Care: The Case of Men as Care Workers in Sweden

The Swedish public system of elderly care is highly relevant for studying gender relations, specifically when male care workers are more frequently seen within this female-coded field of practice. In this article, qualitative interviews with male and female care workers, elderly women and men, and care managers are analysed to discover how they talk about care work and how gender is expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, in the materialization of care. By illuminating the dynamics of how gender is constructed and negotiated in the intersection of the different actors' perspectives, the paradoxes of gender appeared. The care workers' moral responsibility seemed to undermine equality between male and female care workers, and the elderly clients' gendered expectations and representations created inequality in care work. Furthermore, the gender-neutral assessments made by the care managers came to favour elderly men. Thus, the results suggest the importance of capturing the different perspectives in society's institutions, such as elderly care, in order to understand the complexities of gendered processes.     

Bosnian refugee women in (re)settlement: gender relations and social mobility

Bosnian refugee women adapted more quickly than their male partners to their host environments in Vienna and New York City because of their self-understanding and their traditional roles and social positions in the former Yugoslavia. Refugee women's integration into host societies has to be understood through their specific historical experiences. Bosnian women in exile today continue to be influenced by traditional role models that were prevalent in the former Yugoslavia's 20th-century patriarchal society. Family, rather than self-fulfillment through wage labor and emancipation, is the center of life for Bosnian women. In their new environment, Bosnian refugee women are pushed into the labor market and work in low-skill and low-paying jobs. Their participation in the labor market, however, is not increasing their emancipation in part because they maintain their traditional understanding of zena (women) in the patriarchal culture. While Bosnian women's participation in low-skill labor appeared to be individual families' decisions more in New York City than in Vienna, in the latter almost all Bosnian refugee women in my sample began to work in the black labor market because of restrictive employment policies. In contrast to men, women were relatively nonselective and willing to take any available job. Men, it seems, did not adapt as quickly as women to restrictions in the labor market and their loss of social status in both host societies. Despite their efforts, middle-class families in New York City and Vienna experienced substantial downward mobility in their new settings. Women's economic and social downward mobility in (re)settlement, however, did not significantly change the self-understanding of Bosnian women. Their families' future and advancements socially and economically, rather than the women's own independence and emancipation remained the most important aspect of their being.     

is there really a second shift,and if so,who does it? a time-diary investigation

This paper draws on data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) (over 4,000 randomly selected households) to tease out the dimensions of the ‘second shift’. Predictions that as women entered the paid workforce men would contribute more to household labour have largely failed to eventuate. This underpins the view that women are working a second shift because they are shouldering a dual burden of paid and unpaid work. However, time use research seems to show that when both paid and unpaid work is counted, male and female workloads are in total very similar. This has led to suggestions that a literal second shift is a myth; that it exists in the sense that women do more domestic work than men, but not in the sense that they work longer hours in total. Using a more accurate and telling measure of workload than previous research (paid and unpaid labour including multitasked activities), this paper explores the second shift and how it relates to family configuration, ethnicity and indicators of class and socioeconomic standing. It finds a clear disparity between the total workloads of mothers and fathers, much of which consists of simultaneous (secondary) activity, and some demographic differences in female (but not male) total workloads. It concludes that the view that the second shift is a myth is only sustainable by averaging social groups very broadly and by excluding multitasking from the measurement of total work activity.     

The position of women in the Hungarian labour market after the regime change

Abstract

This paper examines changes in the position of Hungarian women in the labor market since 1989, arguing that women are disadvantaged in a competitive market because of specific features in their social position and their lack of means of defending their interests. Drawing on surveys and other government statistics, women are compared with men in terms of unemployment, their opportunity to do wage work, returns to schooling (which are low, and women are more likely to possess formal educational qualifications), mobility, wage and income differences, and the consequences of sex segregation of jobs. In response to unfavorable economic conditions, households have increased domestic work and decreased consumption. Financial problems are damaging family relations, according to recent surveys.     

Fashion culture: creative work,female individualization

This article explores some of the key dynamics of the UK fashion sector as an example of a post-industrial, urban based, cultural economy comprising of a largely youthful female workforce. It argues that the small scale, independent activities which formed the backbone of the success of British fashion design as an internationally recognized phenomenon from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, represented a form of female self-generated work giving rise to collaborative possibilities and co-operation. However without an effective lobby or association (despite the expansion of the fashion media) and under conditions of rapid individualization and in an increasingly harsh climate of neo-liberalization, this creative economy has been overtaken and virtually demolished by the joint forces of a re-vitalized high street fashion culture and the aggressive presence of corporate fashion (‘Prada-ization’). While the UK government celebrates the growth of the cultural economy, it also overlooks the processes making the livelihoods of its predominantly female workforce either untenable or else requiring de-specialization and ‘multi-tasking’.     

a migrant ethic of care? negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low-pay economy

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research on how this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform.     

Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain

Abstract

While scholars have emphasised the positioning of women as wives and mothers in working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England, their position in the workforce remained significant, even in such disparate industries as cotton and chain-making. In the former, while excluded from spinning, women's employment in powerloom weaving brought them into the heart of the production process, encouraging their participation in workplace struggles and ultimately influencing a transformation in the working-class family in terms of fertility control. In chain-making, while some male workers attempted to position women in the domestic sphere, others were dependent on their labour. Cultural constructions of gender were thus undermined, as the struggle for the minimum wage superseded attempts to remove women from the workforce. In neither industry was equality between men and women realised, while antagonism on the basis of gender persisted. Yet women's identification with their work remained evident while mutuality across gender lines was also apparent, as women themselves played an active role in the shaping of gender relations. Conceptions of gender, as they intersected with particular labour market structures, thus came under duress. Consequently, a more complex picture of gender in working-class life emerges than an analysis which privileges cultural constructions would allow.     

Murder,cruelty and sexual assaults

As more and more political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. In this article we are interested in problematizing visions of gender equality by studying the challenges that the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households poses for gender equality policies and practices in two European countries. The aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to gender equality by comparing how “paid domestic work” has been framed in policy debates in Sweden and Spain. As welfare states, Sweden and Spain are generally considered to be very different, and in policies on care for children and the elderly the differences are perhaps most apparent. In both countries, however, paid domestic work in the home has become more and more common in the last two decades. The rise of paid domestic services in European households has been interpreted as due to the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing numbers of dual-earner families. These services are most often provided by women, predominantly of immigrant background, and involve a wide range of tasks, including care work. The phenomenon of an increasing sector of domestic (care) work poses a theoretical and methodological challenge to gender and welfare studies. This article argues that the analysis of debates surrounding domestic service in private households is a useful starting-point for an intersectional analysis by means of revealing the normative assumptions and marginalization embedded in gender equality policies. It uses a comparative frame analysis in combination with intersectional analysis to assess how interactions between gender, class, race, and sexuality have been articulated in the policy debates on domestic services in Spain and Sweden.     

Relating rationality to context: interinstitutional complexity and embedded individual agency within industrial training in the UK tableware sector

ABSTRACT

The central contribution of this paper lies in showing a need to consider the complexity of interinstitutional systems, thereby more effectively relate rationality to context. Drawing on an institutional logics perspective, it presents a study of workplace training in a particular industrial sector in the UK: ceramic production. While identifying a vicious circle in the form of, what can be termed, a ‘high-quality/low-(formal-)skill’ system state, rather than simply privileging structure over action, findings show embedded individual agency. Besides being directed by goals, interests and self-seeking behaviour, a dominant logic for senior management personnel towards technology and home-based production was guided by issues of social identity and identification. ‘Nested’ in different opportunities and constraints presented at the levels of organizations and institutions, this individual-level logic was translated into not one, but two alternative corporate logics towards existing state-led intermediate-level workforce training arrangements. Both perpetuated a low-(formal-)skill situation in the sector.     

Migrant women breadwinners in Italy during the crisis: improvement or trap?

Gender gaps in some aspects of the labour market in Europe narrowed during the recent economic crisis, mainly because men were hit harder and because of the ‘added worker effect’. Therefore, the number of families with a single wage-earner, in particular female-headed households, increased. However, the differential impact of the crisis on male and female labour force in part was an unintended effect of the ‘gendered’ and ‘racialized’ structure of the labour market. Occupational concentration in care and reproductive work and the public sector in fact protected women from unemployment. Adopting an intersectional approach and using individual and household data from the Labour Force Survey from 2008 to 2015, the aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the gendered and ‘racialized’ structure of the Italian labour market has changed, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, and to what extent the increase in female breadwinner families, especially among migrants, hides widening or narrowing intersectional inequalities by gender and citizenship.     

Manning the Fields: Remaking Women's Work in the Tobacco South in the Twentieth Century

Today, men make up the vast majority of the workforce in the tobacco fields of the American South. This was not always the case. For more than two centuries, enslaved women worked alongside men in the tobacco fields. In the late nineteenth century, the unpaid labor of female kin made possible the household's replacement of the plantation as the center of production, and it remained critical for farm families well into the twentieth century. Following World War II, agricultural engineers developed new technologies to eliminate tasks traditionally done by women. In the 1980s, the process of defeminization accelerated as growers began to hire male guestworkers from Mexico as more women moved into the non-farm labor market to supplement their families' farm incomes. The transition from family to wage labor in the tobacco South was far from a ‘natural’ process, but one nurtured by state agricultural, labor, and immigration policy.     

Gender,Care, and the Normalization of Violence: Similarities between Occupational Violence and Intimate Partner Violence in Finland

According to the statistics, violence against women is quite common in Finland, particularly in partner relationships and in care work. The present article looks at the similarities in the ways in which victims of occupational violence in care work and victims of intimate partner violence understand their experiences of violence. The commonalities among interpersonal relations are highlighted in order to offer new insights to the analysis of gender in research on occupational violence. Drawing on empirical data and research literature on the experiences of violence of Finnish women, this article suggests that minimization, naturalization and legitimization of the encountered violence is typical for women in care work as well as for quite ordinary women in their intimate relationships.

The article identifies gendered ideals of caring as an area overlapping and in disjunction with violence at work and at home. These contribute to the ways in which women tend to belittle the impact of violence targeted at them in both these spheres of life. Women are traditionally assumed to be responsible for taking care of others and for maintaining interpersonal relations. In the Finnish context, the responsibility for care is associated with an assumption of endurance that Finnish women show even in violent situations. However, the complexities involved in the phenomenon of interpersonal violence give rise to a need of conceptualizing gender in a more multi‐faceted manner than as a binary opposition between men and women. While analysing the gendered meanings of care we should bear in mind the dynamic nature of gender as a process of signification.     

Film noir’s ‘gal producers’ and the female market

ABSTRACT

This article surveys publicity surrounding the work of three female producers active in Hollywood in the 1940s and early 1950s: Joan Harrison, Virginia Van Upp, and Harriet Parsons. All three produced key titles in the cycle of film noir that emerged during this period. Publicity that emphasized their work behind the scenes on these productions was part of broader attempts to cultivate a female audience for film noir. Marketing campaigns suggested that ‘gal producers’ catered to unconventional feminine appetites for criminality and violence, all the while celebrating their ascendance in the traditionally male-dominated profession of producer. Such profiles would have been particularly appealing to female moviegoers during the Second World War, when many women held jobs previously dominated by men, and in the immediate postwar period when they sought to retain those lucrative positions.