Abstract
Contemporary profitability strategies pose powerful obstacles to progressive demands for full employment as we have known it. The formerly hegemonic ideal of the nuclear family supported by a male breadwinner wage is under question, as advanced industrial economies wrestle with the integral role of women’s paid employment in the process of restructuring. These dramatic changes require rethinking traditional concepts of full employment, as embedded in the dominant schools of economic theory. Gunther Schmid, for one, refers to our traditional notion of full employment as outmoded;
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Notes
In Britain in the 1980s, part-timers were included in the calculation of numbers in work, but excluded from the unemployment statistics.
In both the United States and the United Kingdom, working time policies aregendered. Protective legislation has left a legacy of limitations on the working hours of women and young people
Full-time employment for women has also increased in most OECD countries. The ratio of female full-time employment to population declined between 1973 and 1988 in only four countries: Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, part-time work for women has expanded at a faster rate than full-time work (OECD, 1989).
The contrast between the full-time employment of black women with children versus part-time employment for white women with children is further support of the importance of differentiated opportunity structures in determing work hours (Bruegel, 1989). Further, Horrell and Rubery (1991). point out that women’s shorter hours are not necessarily accommodated to their domestic responsibilities. For example, women may be asked to work evenings and weekends.
For a feminist analysis of part-time work and other ‘family friendly’ policies as a form of efficiency wage, see Bruegel and Perrons (1995).
For a contrast between the ‘low road’ or ‘mean’ versions of flexibility and more progressive alternatives, see Appelbaum and Batt, 1994; Harrison, 1994;Babson, 1995; Gordon, 1996.
Nevertheless, there is some dissention among feminist economists who express concern that these efforts reinforce the gender division of labour by glorifying activity which disempowers women. See Folbre (1995). and Nelson (1995). for a discussion of this position by feminist economists such as Barbara Bergmann.
Folbre (1994). suggests that the development of welfare states represents a socialisation of the family wage concept when it failed to be extensively adopted within private market economies.
Service sector jobs involving cooking, cleaning, or childcare embody women’s domestic skills that are undervalued by society. This work is generally low-paid with few promotional opportunities (see for example, Woody, 1989; Glenn, 1996).
Some wage labour may in fact be caring labour since workers may bring caring motives to the labour process.
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Bruegel, I., Figart, D.M., Mutari, E. (1998). Whose Full Employment? A Feminist Perspective on Work Redistribution. In: Wheelock, J., Vail, J. (eds) Work and Idleness. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 66. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4397-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4397-4_4
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