2a - Contemporary patterns and trends of inequality and difference in relation to gender, esp. in workplace.

Question 1

Labour market disadvantage.

Answer 1

• Women have often been marginalised in the workplace. In the past, men have used their collective power to resist the entry of women into certain crafts (eg printing) or professions (eg medicine). Although legal barriers have now been eliminated, certain workplaces are still unfriendly to women. For example, the ‘long hours culture’, and the lack of creches, put the mothers of young children at a disadvantage.
• Women are more likely than men to work part-time. Of the 6.8 million part-time workers in the UK in 2002, about 80% were women. About 44% of female employees were part-timers, compared with only about 8% of male employees. Only 20% of women with school age children (5-16) work full time in Britain
• Government statistics show that almost half of all women have total individual incomes of less than £100 a week. Additionally, female poverty is often hidden as the most common measure of poverty used is ‘household income’ which conceals the low income of women on the assumption that they share their husband’s income.

Question 2

Family life

Answer 2

• Research such as Elston, Dunscombe and Marsden, Grundy and Henrietta, Pahl, Rapoports and Gershuny shows that there is still an unequal division of labour within the home. This includes housework, decision making, emotion work and control of finances.
• Childcare - the main burden of childcare tends to fall on women. This unequal division of labour has serious implications for women’s work participation, especially when the children are young. In Boulton’s sample, less than 20% of men played a major role in childcare.
• There has been a large increase in the numbers of lone-parent families, mostly female-headed, and these families are much more likely than two-earner families to be poor. 45% of all poor children live with a lone parent. 30% of single parent families live in poverty.

Question 3

Unfair shares

Answer 3

• There is no guarantee that household income is distributed fairly among the members. Pahl presents evidence that some women live in poverty even in households with adequate overall incomes. For example, men often have more ‘personal’ spending money, while women cut back when money is short.
• One of the advantages women enjoy is that they live longer than men. Yet Gannon believes that women face a double disadvantage as they are likely to be poorer in old age as their dwindling state pensions fail to keep pace with inflation. Women are less likely to have built up occupational pensions, because of their more sporadic career patterns.
• They also face dwindling status as they lose their social networks as friends and husbands die; and face lower status due as they lose their looks and sexual reproduction role.