Gender, Place and the Labour Market

Sarah Jenkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351157629
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Although research on the labour market has remained central to the development of work on gender in geography, there has been an absence of texts on the importance of space in relation to employment. This volume explores the geography of women's participation in the UK labour market and centres on the importance of work-home interdependencies and factors which both influence women's decision-making processes and contribute to the formation of their perceived societal role. The book draws on interviews with individual women about the influential factors in deciding whether or not they participate in the formal labour market. It highlights the importance of social and cultural factors in addition to the availability of jobs in the local economy in influencing labour market participation. It also compares the choices the Government claims to provide with the choices individual women feel they have when it comes to negotiating their everyday lives.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Women, Work and Home in the Twenty-first Century

Introduction

'When Lisa Gordon announced last week that she was giving up her six-figure salary to spend more time with her children, her story was widely reported in the tabloid press, but given an all-too-familiar spin. High-flying career woman, tried to have it all, discovered she couldn't, came to her senses and returned to the domestic fold.

The 36-year-old corporate affairs director of Chrysalis Records, who earns £133,000 a year (she was on £336,000 until she went part-time last year), "faced the classic career woman's dilemma", it was reported. "From now on, however, school runs will take over from share prices and homework will supersede boardroom battles, " says the Daily Mail.'

(The Guardian, Monday 2^nd December 2002)

Can women really have it all? In fact, do women really want it all? Daily life in early twentieth-century society largely revolved around very clearly defined patterns amongst men and women: men overwhelmingly travelled to work in order to provide the household with an income, whilst women stayed in the home performing the domestic duties (Mackenzie 1986). Woman's role was seen firstly as that of wife and mother, and secondly as a provider of unskilled, low paid labour between leaving school and starting a family (Massey 1994). In the past fifty years there have been dramatic changes in the attitudes and perceptions towards woman's role within society. Changing structures in society such as the introduction of reliable contraception, new patterns of consumption and a restructuring of the labour market through the introduction and implementation of new technologies, have meant that more women that ever before are taking formal paid employment outside of the family home.

Entry by women into the labour market, however, has not been accompanied by any re-negotiation of their domestic role and women are still responsible for the majority of domestic tasks, regardless of their involvement in paid employment. Little et al. (1988) and Tivers (1977) believe that this dual role places severe constraints on women's labour market activity due to the restriction that domestic duties place on the amount of time a woman has available to undertake paid employment. The UK Government is keen to promote initiatives which encourage women into the workforce, and much time is spent advocating the economic and social benefits gained from being a working mother. However, despite the Government efforts, some women maintain the opinion that it is their role to be the primary carer for their children and therefore insist that any paid formal employment must not interfere with that responsibility. A woman's own perception or interpretation of her role is as important a constraint on activities as any externally imposed restriction. Practical and tangible support can be given such as childcare (Tivers 1986, Arber and Gilbert 1982, Brannen and Moss 1991). However, childcare is not the only barrier to women, for as McDowell (1997) argues, women's working lives still differ from men's even amongst the highly educated, well-paid and childless women. Evidence of this is found within gendered cultures which form both within and outside of the workplace (see also Deal 1988, McDowell 1997, Orenstein 2000, Turner 2000).

The current UK Labour government is keen to promote choices for women, providing them with the opportunity to have quality time with their child(ren) at the same time as fulfilling their domestic role, whilst also allowing them to maintain a valued career position within the new economy. As the current Minister for Women puts it:

Ί think ... what Government has to do, and increasingly what employers have to do, is to enable different people to make different choices about how they balance work and family, work and the rest of their lives, at different stages in their increasingly long lives. For families with children that means Government mustn't in any way dictate to families about how they balance earning and caring, paid and unpaid work. Government instead has to create the supportive environment, the provision of public services, the right employment regulatory framework to ensure that parents can make choices about how they balance earning a living and caring for their children in the ways that will suit them and their families best. And of course that commitment to greater choice, real choice for more and more parents, is entirely in line with the most fundamental values of our Government.'

(Hewitt 2002)

Given this context, and through an analysis of national, regional and local scale data, this book explores the geography of women's participation in the UK labour market, and investigates the factors, which both influence women's decision-making process and contribute to the formation of their perceived societal role. Exploring labour market geographies through various scales of analysis, this book starts with an investigation of women's formal labour market participation at the national scale including an examination of government claims regarding women's labour market position within the UK and their explanations for that. I shall then move to the meso scale with an exploration of women's labour market activity at local authority district level, identifying that in fact there is a large spatial variation of women's economic activity across the UK, which is not evident at the national scale. In order to investigate an explanation for the spatial variation, I shall present the findings of discussions with individual women about the influential factors in their decision-making process regarding their participation or non-participation in the formal labour market. This book will demonstrate the importance of local social processes in addition to the role of economic factors in making labour market geographies. Furthermore, this book will explore exactly what choices the Government claims it provides, and what choices individual women feel they have when it comes to negotiating their everyday lives.

The Structure of This Book

Chapter 2 situates my research within a wider context of academic debates on labour markets and their geography. I follow the development of, and draw together two very distinct sets of literature; labour market segmentation theory (see Peck 1996a) and the development of feminist debates within geography. Initially there was very little overlap between the two debates, and they developed in parallel to each other, but chapter 2 argues that within contemporary academic debate they do need to come together if we are to gain a fuller understanding of women's labour market participation (see Hakim 2000).

Chapter 3 examines women's position within the labour market from a national context. After positioning women's current UK labour market activity rates with respect to the rest of Europe, the chapter maps how women's participation within the formal labour market has changed over the last fifty years, notably increasing, as men's economic activity slowly decreases. This chapter explores the current demands and expectations on women as the UK enters a new 'knowledge based economy' (see Hakim 2000) where women's transferable skills are vital in taking the economy forward. Therefore, in order to utilise women's skills, the Government is trying to encourage mothers back into the workforce by establishing a better work:life balance through the promotion of initiatives such as flexible working, the National Childcare Strategy and increasing maternity and paternity rights. This chapter looks at UK national policy and considers what this means for individual women.

Chapter 4 moves beyond the national level to the meso scale and establishes that national level data is in fact not representative of what women are actually experiencing. This chapter demonstrates that there is a wide variation in women's economic activity rates across the UK not recognised in national level analysis. Looking at local authority level data and through an examination of previous academic literatures, this chapter critiques the ways in which typologies have been used to explain why women's economic activity in the UK ranges from 93 per cent in West Dorset to 40 per cent in Newham.

Having established that a spatial variation of women's economic activity exists across the UK, chapter 5 highlights the methodological considerations required to move beyond a national level analysis and investigate why the variation in women's labour market activity exists. After a discussion on the benefits of using both extensive and intensive research techniques, this chapter describes how I used a combination of the two in order to gain a fuller understanding of women's labour market activity. This chapter goes on to introduce the two case study areas for this book, providing an economic geography of each area as well as an analysis of an extensive survey carried out on mothers in each of the areas, exploring their current situation regarding labour market participation.

Chapters 6 and 7 present the results of intensive research in the two case study areas, which explores in-depth the reasons why women have taken their respective decisions regarding whether to work or not work, once they have had children. Chapter 6 presents the results of in-depth interviews carried out with women at a local level in Neath Port Talbot and West Dorset, who are currently trying to combine motherhood with paid work in the formal labour market, whilst chapter 7 focuses on those women who have withdrawn from the labour market and have 'chosen' to stay at home to be a full-time mother. The interviews asked the women about their chosen 'career path' and enquired why they had chosen to take that particular route. Both chapters establish that rather than a single barrier existing to prevent women entering or not entering the labour market, it is in fact a complex combination of interdependencies which overlap to influence a woman's decision on whether or not she wants, and is able, to enter the formal labour market.

Having explored the issues that are important to individual women at the local level, chapter 8 draws together all the findings and explores the issue of conceptualising spatial variation in women's formal labour market participation. Drawing out the similarities and differences between the responses from the women in the two localities, this chapter highlights the impact of local social relations on the implementation and conduct of national level policies. This chapter gives prominence to the fact that some of the major influencing factors in a woman's decision-making process are dominated by locally determined social factors, rather than the broader economic factors which form the basis of nationally driven Government policy. As a result, this chapter offers suggestions on policy reform which must be considered if the Government is to offer genuine choices to women.

Chapter 2
Gendering the Labour Market

Introduction

It has long been argued by labour market theorists that men and women operate in different labour market contexts (see Barron and Norris 1976, Rubery 1988, Picchio 1992, Peck 1996a). In this chapter I will attempt to trace the development of two sets of literature, which have explored women's position either within or outside of the labour market: firstly, labour market segmentation theory, which has explored women's labour market activity from its understanding of the ways in which labour markets operate; secondly, the development of literature on gender within geography which acknowledged that women operate primarily from the home, and consequently it was in fact the home which determined labour market activity not vice versa. Although these two areas of academic literature have been explored and developed separately, there are times when themes within the two literatures come together in their discussion of women's position either in the labour market or within the home. I will attempt to draw attention not only to where the links are in the two literatures, but also identify lacunae in terms of trying to explain women's position within the labour market. Both the progression of labour market theory and the development of gender literature within geography have diversified to provide a multifaceted literature base. In order to unpack the different literatures and to analyse their different contributions, I will deploy a chronological and thematic approach. By doing this, I will demonstrate their complementarities. Additionally, for the purpose of this review I will concentrate specifically on those arguments that I feel have contributed towards explaining women's decision making, regarding their subsequent role within or outside the labour market.

Separation of Men and Women

Initial literature from both labour market theorists and feminist geographers treated men and women almost as two separate categories. The main goal of both first and second generation segmentation theory and the initial impetus of feminist thought within geography, was to highlight the fact that differences existed in the type of work women undertook in comparison to men. Labour market theorists argued these were due to the level of control which the labour market had and the recognition by employers that women had an alternative role outside of the workplace which would impinge on their commitment. In contrast, feminist geographers argued that it was the alternative role of homemaker and childrearer which dictated a woman's position in or out of the labour market, which was reinforced through systems of patriarchy which existed in order to maintain women's position as subordinate to men's.

First Generation Segmentation

Theories of labour market segmentation have as their basis, the notion of the dual labour market initially developed by Doeringer and Piore in the 1960s (Peck 1989a, 120; also see Doeringer and Piore 1971). Doeringer and Piore's work represents the first generation of segmentation theory, with their development of the concepts of primary and secondary sectors within the labour market. The primary sector contains jobs, which offer relatively high wages, and provides stable and secure employment to workers who can expect to enjoy some form of career progression through an internal labour market. During their research, based in the United States, Doeringer and Piore found that jobs within the primary sector were primarily occupied by white men. The secondary sector contains the market's least desirable jobs, described by Kreckel as jobs for workers with 'everyman's qualifications' (1980, 542), and consists of poor wages, poor working conditions and few opportunities for promotion. The majority of employment in this sector is associated with small firms and is, therefore, prone to strong competitive pressures, staff turnover is high and the threat of unemployment is constant. In the industrial West, the low status jobs in the secondary sector tend to be filled by ethnic minority workers, women, the disabled and young people (Peck 1996a). According to Barron and Norris there seem to be five main attributes that make a particular social group or category a likely source of secondary workers; dispensability, clearly visible social difference, little interest in acquiring training, low economism and lack of solidarity (1976, 53). Barron and Norris fit women into each of these criteria due to their relationship towards their family, and the belief shared by many women that careerism does not accord with their place in the family after marriage. Similarly, Craig et al. (1985) also see women as secondary workers believing that they are prepared to take low-paid and unrewarding jobs, not because of a weak attachment to work and limited income needs, but because of the supplementary importance of their earnings to family living standards and the constraints on their choice of job.

The secondary sector provides a great deal of the flexibility favoured by the economic system, as increases in output required in the primary sector at the peak of the business cycle can be achieved by recruiting secondary workers on a temporary basis or by subcontracting from the primary to the secondary (Peck 1996, 51). This flexibility in the secondary sector is not nearly so readily available in the primary sector, and provides just one of the reasons why women are restricted from entering the latter. Many labour market theorists have agreed that women's access to the stable sector of the labour market has been restricted, explaining that it is because they are perceived to have an 'alternative' role outside the waged labour market to which they may be drawn (see Peck 1989a, Gordon et al. 1982, Barron and Norris 1976). It is the recognition of women's alternative role: that of homemaker and childrearer rather than a primary worker, which sparked a debate amongst geographers about the extent to which the 'predetermined societal role' has an affect on women's lives. Even for those women who do not conform to the stereotypical work pattern, the very expectation amongst employers that they will, or may conform to it serves to restrict their access to primary jobs (Peck 1989a, 130).

First generation segmentation theory, therefore, acknowledged that women occupy a different sector of the labour market to men with initial explanations for this given as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Women, Work and Home in the Twenty-first Century
• 2 Gendering the Labour Market
• 3 Women and the Labour Market: The Shifting National Context
• 4 The Uneven Development of Women's Participation in the Labour Market
• 5 Research Design and Methodology: Moving Beyond the National
• 6 Exploring the Interdependencies: Women and Work
• 7 Exploring the Interdependencies: Women and Home
• 8 Making Sense of Place
• Bibliography
• Index