Key Issues in Women's Work

Women's employment is one of the most widely-discussed and widely-misunderstood issues of modern society. Are women today oppressed, or do they have the best of both worlds? Do women have to go out to work to gain equality with men? Or do they already do more than their share of domestic work, caring work and voluntary work as well as unseen work in the informal economy?

Do women seek career employment on the same terms as men, or are they content to be dependent wives or secondary earners taking jobs on a short-term basis? How important is job segregation in explaining the large pay gap between men and women? Have equal opportunities laws had real impact? Are women in Britain lagging behind or at the forefront of developments in Europe?

This book addresses all the key issues currently debated in relation to women's work in the domestic sphere as well as paid employment, and comes to some unexpected conclusions.

Dr Hakim tests the power of patriarchy theory against economic and psychophysiology theories. Sex discrimination, part-time work, flexible hours, homeworking, marriage and career patterns, labour mobility, labour turnover and the impact of the European Union are all considered. Analysis of the grand sweep of history over the last century, based on large national surveys, is complemented by case studies of people working in occupations undergoing change and their resistance to it.

Throughout the book comparisons are drawn between Britain, the USA, and other European countries and also China, Japan and other Far Eastern societies. The analysis draws on sociology, economics, psychology, labour law, history and anthropology to conclude that female heterogeneity is increasing, explaining the growing polarisation of women's employment and many contradictory research results.