Strangers in Paradise? Women, Work and Management

Abstract

The achievement of gender equality in paid work is an important issue for many women, especially feminists. Despite comprising almost half the paid UK workforce, women remain occupationally segregated; the gender pay gap may have reduced since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act (1975) but it persists; and notwithstanding a raft of family-friendly policies and legislation, combining work and caring/domestic responsibilities remains a problem for the majority of working women. Almost half of all employed women in the United Kingdom work on a part-time basis, where the quality of work and possibilities for promotion remain low (Durbin and Tomlinson, 2010; 2014). Reducing occupational segregation, abolishing the gender pay gap and making the combination of employment/unpaid care/domestic work acceptable to employers remain key issues for many feminists.