Gender, Work, and Economy

Unpacking the Global Economy

Heidi Gottfried

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745680521
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This engaging new text uses a feminist lens to crack open the often hidden worlds of gender and work, addressing enduring questions about how structural inequalities are produced and why they persist. Making visible the social relationships that drive the global economy, the book explores how economic transformations not only change the way we work, but how we live our lives.

The full extent of changing patterns of employment and the current financial crisis cannot be fully understood in the confines of narrow conceptions of work and economy. Feminists address this shortcoming by developing both a theory and a political movement aimed at unveiling the power relations inherent in old and new forms of work. By providing an analysis of gender, work, and the economy, Heidi Gottfried brings to light the many faces of power from the bedroom to the boardroom. A discussion of globalization is threaded throughout the book to uncover the impact of increasing global interconnections, and vivid case studies are included, from industrialized countries such as the US and the global cities of New York, London, and Tokyo, as well as from developing countries and the emerging global cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Dubai.

This comprehensive analysis of gender and work in a global economy, incorporating sociology, geography, and political economy perspectives, will be a valued companion to students in gender studies and across the social sciences more generally.

CHAPTER

1

An Introduction to Gender, Work, and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy

RECENTLY, the near economic cataclysm resulting from the financial meltdown exposed hidden fault-lines in the global economy. Lehman Brothers was not the only casualty on that fateful day of September 15, 2008. Soon after, a suit brought by two female ex-vice presidents against the former head of the derivatives unit of AIG raised the specter that the “ ‘boys club’ culture” ignored the impact of risk-taking on women’s careers and on working-class communities at large. In this specific case, the boss allegedly admitted his preference for “young (female) workers with ‘curb appeal’ to those who look like his aunt” (Gallu and Son 2010: 1). Such sentiments, usually left unsaid, express a structural condition valorizing beauty over brains, profits over people’s lives and livelihoods. The usual narrative of the financial crisis glosses over the possibility that such corporate leaders’ hyper-masculine bravado may have contributed to irrational exuberance born out of their neglect of social responsibility for others. Behind the scenes, their abstract financial investment calculations, and hubris rooted in the expression of hegemonic masculine domination over nature, fostered a culture of undue risk-taking, bringing global capitalism to the precipice. Crises such as this allow a glimpse into both the intricacies of global economic processes and the usually shrouded worlds of work.

Another remnant left in the wake of the crisis has been dubbed “The Great ‘He-cession’ ” (Salem cited in the New York Times 2009). Relatively new in this recession, more men than women lost their jobs and experienced long bouts of unemployment. Between 2007 and 2009, the economy shed manufacturing and construction jobs, once the primary engines of muscular economic growth and the underpinning of working-class masculinity and the strong male breadwinner family model. This idea of the he-cession describes a process of economic restructuring already underway. Less clear is what drives the shift from industrial production to service-dominated economies.

These examples cannot be fully understood in the confines of gender-neutral theories of the financial crisis and the he-cession. Though seemingly neutral, definitions of work and economy are themselves gendered. Yet gender is more than juxtaposing men’s and women’s different work experiences and biographies. What mechanisms systematically and systemically disadvantage women in and at work, and how are differences among women structured depending on class, race and national origin? The rest of the introduction provides a brief for studying gender at work in the global economy.

Why study gender at work in the global economy?

During the closing decades of the twentieth century the work world dramatically changed. In the United States, societal norms gave way to civil rights laws opening up new employment opportunities, and women’s paid labor force participation steadily increased. Now, a majority of women with young children work at least part-time or part-year outside of their homes. In addition, young women hold more bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men, and increase their representation in law, business, and medical schools (Rose and Hartmann 2004). By 1982 women college graduates outnumbered men, and by 2007, women accounted for 57% of college graduates (Skapinker 2010: 11). No longer confined to jobs as domestic servants, sales clerks, secretaries, nurses, and teachers, women gained a foothold in management, earning 43% of all MBAs in 2006, up from only 4% in 1970 (Bertrand et al. 2010: 229). Career paths of women and men have become more similar, yet important differences remain. Despite inroads into male-dominated fields and the high rates of male unemployment during the Great Recession of 2008–9, women still earn less than men and end up re-segregated at lower ends of occupational hierarchies. What seemed like steady progress has stalled and the gender revolution remains unfinished.

It is still the case that women bear disproportionate responsibility for unpaid and, increasingly, for paid labor in the household, which makes it difficult for them to compete equally with men outside the home. Moreover, the current economic system places a burden on American men, who have the longest work week in the advanced industrialized world and consequently the least amount of leisure when employed. In this context, the relative lack of social infrastructure to support working parents in the United States, such as subsidized childcare or paid family leave, requires that families cope on their own either through paying for care and services on the market or by using unpaid labor of family members (usually relying on mothers or other female relatives), especially in times of economic distress.

Meanwhile, government cost-cutting measures deprive individuals and families of the social safety net. State and federal government budget cuts add to the economic tsunami, eliminating 581,000 jobs in its wake. Women lost 81% of the jobs disappearing from the public sector from December 2008 to September 2011 (Institute for Women’s Policy Research September 9, 2011). Though men’s employment fell by 1.6% at the local level – less than the 4.7% decline for women – men’s employment grew by 5.3% at the federal level, likely due to the expansion of homeland security jobs. Increasing unemployment and decreasing prospects for good jobs among men add to the sense of economic uncertainty and insecurity. Precarious jobs and livelihoods are now the economic reality for a growing number of men and women, both in the USA and worldwide. This book considers how economic transformation plays out across social locations, and what effects it has on gender as well as class relations.

Making global connections: unpacking the global economy

Seemingly distant work conditions and processes ripple from one location to another as a result of increasing global interconnections. Financialization of assets, already by the 1970s, generated a crisis of capital accumulation on a global scale. From the 1980s onward, the need to absorb excessive profits fueled speculation and boosted property prices, inflating an already overextended housing bubble (Harvey 2010). Meanwhile, the financial elite parked capital in construction sites of older global cities, or created crystalline cityscapes in actual urban deserts like Dubai and other emergent global cities in India and China. Capital’s attempts to overcome the most recent crisis fed the building frenzy, bid up asset values and drove up costs for all residents in the global cities of New York, London, and Tokyo. The built environment, thus, is not merely a façade behind which the real economy must be analyzed. Global urban spaces concretize capital accumulation in both form and function.

Today, old and emergent global cities and countries vie for power in their region, most prominently in Asia, and in the world economy more generally. Once the economic juggernaut in the region, Japan now faces competition from the ascending geographic powers of China and India. These new economic powerhouses’ rapid industrialization and urbanization leapfrogged into the 21st-century service economy. Exploring Beijing, Shanghai, Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), and Dubai opens a window into the spatiality of changing economic landscapes, especially migration flows within the region. From the vantage point of these new global cities, migration patterns crisscross rural villages and growing metropolitan areas both within and across Asian countries. For example, female domestic workers and male construction workers, sometimes from the same village, embark on journeys from their homes in south Asia to the wealthy oil-producing nation of Saudi Arabia and to the new shopping mecca of Dubai, and from rural areas in the interior to coastal cities in China. Female care workers from nearby countries such as the Philippines are permitted entry to work on temporary visas in the aging society of Japan (Ito 2005; Parrenas 2011). Women from lower castes support the lifestyles and work of a burgeoning middle class and the elite in cities such as Kolkata. Gender is central to understanding these migration processes and their outcomes in global cities and for the homes left behind.

A unique aspect of this book recasts political economy theory using concepts culled from social geography. Social geography has a ready-made vocabulary to map the spatial dimension of work, and to understand what accounts for the placement and spatial arrangement of concrete work performed by men and women. The social geography frame from a feminist perspective pushes us to think beyond the usual borders and categories common to the sociology of work and traditional political economy, enabling us to unpack the dynamics of the global economy.

Outline of the book

This book integrates gender throughout its study of work and economy to reveal how structural inequalities are produced, why they persist, and how they change. Further, the book advocates using a feminist lens to tells us where to look, and why we must consider work in the intimate spaces of the household, inside the offices looming over old and emergent global cities, and in the factories rusting in the span of old industrial corridors. In so doing, a feminist lens sheds light on the less visible work of care, and how this service work is related to global economic forces and political systems. It provides insight into why the same work, such as childcare or cooking, when performed for pay (market work) or unpaid (non-market work) is treated differently legally, theoretically, and socially. In particular, unpaid labor associated with mothering often goes unnoticed, uncounted, and devalued. Without a feminist lens, we cannot explain transformative processes, which in a lifetime have altered the way we live, how we work, and the cityscapes we inhabit.

What follows unfolds in three main parts devoted to the study of gender, work, and economy. Part I introduces theoretical issues at the heart of work sociology and political economy, interweaving non-feminist and feminist alternatives. Chapter 2 revisits the sociological classics of Marx and Weber in more detail to situate contemporary theories of work and economy. A review outlines their contributions and the gender gaps in both classical and contemporary theories. Then the chapter traces the emergence of three waves of feminism. In the first wave, feminists addressed women’s political disenfranchisement and economic insecurity, and directed attention to the relatively neglected private sphere more likely to be occupied by women. These debates ensuing at the dawn of the twentieth century provided the backdrop for second-wave feminism coming to terms with gender inequality. The remainder of that chapter traces the arc of feminism’s second and third waves. Early second-wave accounts introduced and refined the concept of gender (patriarchy) in relationship to class (capitalism). Conceptualizing gender continued as a key concern of later second-wave feminist theory, leading to questions about the sources of male power, how work was gendered, and what constituted the process of gendering work organization. The chapter ends with a short discussion of third-wave feminism to highlight new sensitivities toward complex relationships among women, as well as between men and women, in the division of labor, from the household to the board room. Without third-wave feminist critiques, theorists of work and economy would probably not have trained an eye on the intimate relationship and entanglement between production and reproduction.

Third-wave feminist research on care work and reproductive labor, as detailed in chapter 3, has raised many of the same concerns and conceptual issues that preoccupied first- and early second-wave feminist scholarship and politics. Understanding the shift toward service-dominated economies requires our examination of the most intimate moments in people’s lives. To know where the family and the household fit into the analysis requires focusing beyond firms, markets, or formal work organizations, and broadening conceptualization of the economy to include both activities and practices in the household and those involving care-giving. An examination of the care sector, by crosscutting the family, paid employment, and the state, points out the necessity for examining the relationships between and within these institutions. Outlining a feminist political economy perspective, the third chapter links care work and domestic labor performed in the household to national and global processes.

The chapters in Part II present case studies and other material on historical and contemporary trends, documenting and explaining forms of segregation, new ways of working, and forms of employment differentiated by gender. With the development of capitalism, cities, and industry, a public sphere dominated by men expanded and restricted the activities performed by women. Chapter 4 examines the root causes of horizontal, vertical, and spatial occupational sex segregation and related pay inequities. The chapter poses several questions, asking how and when industries and occupations change the gender composition of work from male to female (such as the historical example of clerical work), despite other employment categories remaining stubbornly gender-typed (top executives as male-typed and childcare as female-typed)? What is the reason only a small proportion of men enter female-typed occupations, while an increasing number of women seek employment in male-typed professions? It is not enough to acknowledge that some work and occupations are gender-typed. How and under what conditions do jobs become associated with gender-stereotypical images and how does this affect their value? Chapter 5 describes in greater detail the new ways of working, forms of employment, and types of economic activity manifest in the emerging service and knowledge economy. The next chapter investigates the organization, institutionalization, and value of reproductive work and caring labor, as central theoretical and empirical concerns in the commercialization of more aspects of people’s lives, including sentiments, love, and affection. Political factors are evaluated to demonstrate that they inform how, and which, services receive support from the state, and the nature of the delivery of services more generally.

Chapter 7 highlights the gender dimensions of political institutions and reviews a range of country-specific policies and regulations in a comparative perspective, integrating usually separate bodies of research on welfare states, employment relations, and policy analysis. Different types of politics, policies, and welfare state regimes have consequences for the reception of women in particular occupations and sectors, and in the paid labor market more generally. Chapter 8 reflects on how new terrains of struggle bring to the surface reasons behind women’s under-representation in traditional labor organizations throughout much of the twentieth century, and points to their increasing representation both in some traditional unions and in newer types of worker associations. Greater parity of union membership and the formation of new worker associations raise women’s profiles in the workplace, improve women’s overall working conditions, and empower women economically and politically.

Part III more extensively explores global connections, initially through a discussion of non-feminist and feminist theories on globalization, by focusing on global labor markets, globalized work, and global cities. Chapter 9 distinguishes between internationalization and globalization, sorts through alternative definitions and accounts of globalization, and highlights what we lose in nongendered accounts compared with what we gain from feminist theories of globalization. Globalization restructures the location of work and workers in different regions of the world, thereby shaping the contours of power relationships in different places on multiple scales ranging from the city, the nation, to the global. Chapter 10 traces the development of a highly integrated global labor market and the commodity chains interconnecting economic activities across place and space. We cannot understand the value of work and economic outcomes in one part of the world if disconnected from an analysis of the global labor market. Because of their centrality to understanding globalization, chapter 11 surveys the rise of and connections between old and newer global cities. Global cities attract both high-paid professionals in finance and those low-waged workers servicing them. Paradoxically, the global orientation of these cities beyond the nation state requires both local and national government action. Finally, chapter 12 examines new political landscapes encompassing spaces and places for economic governance, and for modes of association at the local and the transnational levels. By cultivating an analysis of new political landscapes in this final chapter, the book captures historical movements occupying the imaginations and spaces in our global economy. The future cannot be known; but having the analytical tools to understand the past and to interrogate the present can improve our chances of arriving at a more just future.

PART I

STUDYING GENDER, WORK, AND ECONOMY

CHAPTER

2

Theory of Work and Economy

So I take phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and I am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. (Gilman 1899)

AS evocatively captured by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s lament in her short story The Yellow Wallpaper, work has a long, but troubled, history in women’s lives and in feminist and non-feminist thought. Although writing around the late 1800s, Gilman anticipates many of the themes taken up by feminists in the late twentieth century. In the above excerpt, the female protagonist’s fragile body dooms her to play the part of the “weaker sex” in this Victorian drama. The story comments on the treatment of middle- and upper-class women as prone to infirmity, and thus physically and intellectually unfit for work and political participation in the public sphere. White male critics of enfranchisement invoked gender-stereotypical images of “true” womanhood, arguing that women were too frail and delicate to take on the responsibilities of political activity, a common trope in male political discourse at the time. The virtue of true womanhood was premised on women’s and men’s perceived different natures. But this ideal depended on the unacknowledged labor of working-class women and women of color, whose bodies suckled elite women’s infants and whose physical labor erased the traces of detritus in other women’s households. Such assumptions have confined work to, and ultimately defined work against, an implicit masculine standard. More generally, women’s life course has been intimately tied to the less visible work of caring labor and reproduction. Looking at work and economy through a feminist lens exposes how restrictions on the type of work available, on where it happens, on its rewards, and even on what counts as work, are related to the gender of who does it (Brush 1999: 162–3).

Recalling the legacy of Marx and Weber highlights the influence of these foundational texts on contemporary theories. In drawing inspiration from the classics, contemporary sociology of work and political economy inherit the vocabulary and preoccupations focusing on non-gendered classes, institutions and work organizations. Further, by elaborating on each app...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. An Introduction to Gender, Work, and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy
• Part I: Studying Gender, Work, and Economy
• Part II: Political Economy of Gender, Work, and Economy
• Part III: Gender, Work, and Economy in a Global Context
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Documents Cited
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects