The Gendering of Inequalities: Women, Men and Work

Citation

Briar, C. (2001), "The Gendering of Inequalities: Women, Men and Work", Women in Management Review, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 42-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/wimr.2001.16.1.42.1

This edited collection is part of a growing literature on working women in Europe. It is potentially of great interest to an English‐speaking readership. During the 1980s and 1990s, women in some of the western European nations experienced more favourable working conditions than their sisters in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. However, a major theme of this book is that during the 1990s, the European Union (EU) became more closely aligned with the economic policies of the USA, with the result that, in the labour market and in the home, patterns of gender inequality have emerged which are increasingly similar to those found in the English‐speaking world. Doubtless, many readers would prefer to read inspiring tales of the conditions achieved by and for women in parts of the EU in the 1980s. Instead, the book provides lessons about which policies do not work for women, and how the mistakes of the “liberal” nations have been exported to Europe, through globalisation. The book’s editors and authors argue that this has been largely to the detriment of women in Europe.

The book was originally published in France in 1998, and this is the English translation. The majority of its 32 contributors are based in France, although a significant minority are UK‐based, with Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany also represented (although, interestingly, the Scandinavian nations are not). Some of the chapters take a deliberately comparative approach, mainly within the EC, and a small number include comparisons with the USA and the UK.

As with any edited collection, especially one which has so many contributors and covers a huge topic area, it is a challenge to bring out clear, consistent main themes. The editors have worked hard to organise the material, through introductions to each of the four main sections, plus two introductions to the text as a whole. Despite their efforts, the result is not always an easy read, especially with the challenges imposed by translation. It might have been better to have narrowed the focus of the project and reduced the number of chapters. The parts of the book which I found the strongest and most useful were those which allowed and encouraged the reader to think about the social and economic policies which create the best conditions for working women, and how these policies can be brought into being.

As Jane Jenson points out, interest in the inequalities working women experience has waxed and waned over time. Moreover, the persistent discrimination experienced by working women has tended to be under‐theorised. Part one of this book is concerned with the “thinking and re thinking” of gender relations at work. It includes two chapters discussing the history of women’s work in France, and one on the French history of the sexual division of labour. I was not entirely convinced of the usefulness of three such chapters to an English‐speaking audience, especially when they feature so prominently in this comparative text. There is a single chapter (by Françoise Gaspard) dealing with the intersections of race, class and gender, although this unfortunately does not address the issue of the work done by the immigrant women who are the subjects of the research. Finally, there is a theoretical chapter by Sylvia Walby, who uses the example of “flexible” part‐time workers to argue that women’s disadvantaged position at work cannot be ascribed simply to class, but must take account of gender relations.

The second section of this collection deals with the relationship between education and women’s work. In the early twentieth century feminists regarded education and training as the key to economic independence for women by opening up access to adequately paid employment. A century later, in many countries of the world women’s educational achievements have caught up with and, in many cases, surpassed men’s. However, as the authors point out, greater access to and success in education has not translated into equal opportunities in paid work – or the equal sharing of unpaid work.

Education and training systems, although appearing to promote opportunities for women, can actually perpetuate gender divisions at work. This is largely because education provides not only knowledge, skills and qualifications: it also includes a “hidden curriculum”, a major part of which is sex stereotyping. Research by Durand‐Delvigne and Duru‐Bellat (Chapter 8) shows that co‐education, far from creating a less gendered hidden curriculum, actually has a stronger “gendering” effect (for example making the girls more “feminine” and encouraging them to avoid competing with the boys) than single‐sex schooling.

There are undoubtedly national differences in the extent to which schools sex‐stereotype children; and Marry, in Chapter 11, argues that in German schools gender inequalities are enforced more systematically than in their French counterparts. Nevertheless there are strong cross‐national similarities in the ways that educational systems use gender differentiation to an unnecessarily high degree. Moreover, even when women acquire identical or equivalent skills, these often tend to be devalued by employers, as chapters 9 and 10 show. Women with the same qualifications as men still earn less on average.

As Rachael Silvera argues in chapter 12, the gender pay gap is an enduring feature of all the European states, even in France and Sweden, which have the best record of gender pay equity in the EU (the worst being the UK and Ireland). Despite high levels of achievement in education, throughout Europe, women also suffer higher levels of unemployment than men do, as Annie Gauvin discusses in chapter 14. Theresa Torns points out in chapter 16 that young women in Spain have a joblessness rate of 49 per cent – higher than men’s, although Spanish women now have more educational qualifications than men, and women with diplomas have the same unemployment rate as illiterate men.

The role of governments and the EU in the creation of both opportunities and barriers to working women is the subject of part 4 of this book. It is argued that old forms of discrimination, such as unequal pay and opportunities have still not been fully addressed by governments. In addition, new forms of inequality have emerged as a result of the EU’s economic policy since 1994 of promoting more flexible labour markets in order to compete with the USA and Japan.

It is now well established that women are the main victims of flexibility in labour markets. Typically, flexible jobs are insecure and do not pay a living wage. Instead of benefiting from a shorter working week on an adequate wage, as negotiated by the French unions, women are increasingly cast as marginal, “atypical” workers. For example, in many of the European nations part‐timers do not qualify for unemployment benefits. In the 1990s part‐time working increased markedly in Europe, mainly amongst women, as Meulders points out in chapter 18. Through these economic policies the EU is undermining its own social policies, which are designed to promote greater gender equity and prevent social exclusion.

As in the “liberal”, English‐speaking nations, the goal of “equality” has replaced that of “protection” (based on women’s “difference”). In France, from 1983, the principle of gender equality was enshrined in labour law and included equal treatment, equal opportunities and laws against direct and indirect discrimination. This form of equality is limited because it does not take account of the care‐giving responsibilities which women are more likely than men to have. However, the goals of even this liberal form of equality for women have been undermined by the “economic crisis” in Europe of the 1990s, according to Lanquetin in chapter 17.

Despite the formal commitment of many European nations to gender equality in paid work, the unequal division of unpaid work remains a private matter in the EU, outside the parameters where state intervention is expected, as Jane Lewis points out in chapter 19. Nevertheless, some EC nations have made real efforts to “reconcile” paid and unpaid work, in a way that the English‐speaking nations have not. For example, whilst the English speaking nations, including Britain, have historically regarded lone mothers as either mothers or workers, other EC nations such as France and Sweden have recognised and resourced them as both. France has a long‐established system of free universal quality child care for all children over three years old, although parents are now being encouraged to employ child minders in their own home. Further, a major issue for women workers in Europe is the ageing population because of the difficulties which this poses for women trying to combine paid work with unpaid caregiving when state care is no longer available.

A theme which runs through most of this book is that in the EU, despite women’s sustained efforts at all levels to obtain equality in the labour market, gender discrimination remains firmly entrenched. However, the book does not highlight the fact that in some of the EU nations, such as France, Belgium and Denmark, working women’s pay relative to men plus greater access to affordable quality child‐care and a range of state benefits would be the envy of most women in the English‐speaking nations. I feel that in this collection there is a taken for grantedness about these achievements. Readers might well have wished to know more about how these more favourable conditions were obtained, how they could be retained and protected for European women, and how they might be achieved in the English‐speaking world.

A second important focus in this collection is upon the “newer” barriers to gender equality in the paid workforce which have emerged, such as part‐time work, casualisation and contracting out. In the English‐speaking world these ways of working are of course no longer new at all. However, in all nations where labour market flexibility is promoted, the result has been poorer working conditions, especially for women. Further, as the authors of the book point out, at present both the older and the newer forms of inequality are currently being given less priority by policy makers than they were during the height of second wave feminism.

My main reservation about this collection is that it provides a great deal of rather depressing information, without giving any grounds for hope. I would have liked to have seen some discussion of ways of improving conditions for working women. Nevertheless, if any change for the better is to occur, research is still absolutely necessary. This book is a useful source of information and new insights into the area of gender inequality at work. Readers may well be able to use the collection to think of ways of bringing about positive change for women.