Women, Work and Family - Midterm 1

Question 1

What is the new economy?

Answer 1

The transformation of the economy from the manufacturing sector to a sector oriented towards the service industry

Question 2

What are the signs of a decline in manufacturing and a rise in the service economy?

Answer 2

• Free trade agreements promoted closure of some branch plants
• Globalisation: it became easier to open factories in cheapest parts of the world (cheaper labour markers)
• Microelectronics revolution gave rise to restructuring and re-engineering of work organisations
• Layoff in companies using highly advanced technologies

Question 3

What are the arguments for and against the view that we have a new economy?

Answer 3

Some believe we do due to an increase in producibility, some argue the economy is not new but it is changing, and some argue that we do not have a new economy - capitalism has always been exploitative

Question 4

What have workers experienced under globalisation?

Answer 4

• intensified labour processes
• meaner workplaces
• unemployment and job insecurity
• mobility (workers often need to move to find work)

Question 5

What are some of the characteristics of the service economy?

Answer 5

• Low wages
• Low rates of unionisation
• Few benefits
• Part time or limited term contracts are common
• Few or no opportunities to advance and learn
• Characterised by precariousness
• Insecure work

Question 6

What are dynamic services?

Answer 6

• Transportation, communications, utilities etc.
• Located in competitive markers
• Reasonable secure employment
• Relatively high wages
• Many jobs are unionised

Question 7

What are traditional services?

Answer 7

• Shielded from globalisation and international competition
• accommodation, food preparation, personal services
• Jobs are often non-union (therefore few benefits, low wages, female, young or immigrant workers, often part time)
• Often pressure to express and learn an expanding range of skills

Question 8

What are non-market services?

Answer 8

• Health, social services, education, public administration
• Among the best jobs within the service industry
• Relatively high paying
• Relative secure (but this is changing)

Question 9

What was the impact of industrialisation on the home/family?

Answer 9

• Separation of work from the home
• Pushing women into the home raises the notion of a family wage (where men are paid enough money to look after the whole family)
• Differentiation between adult and child roles
• Dependence of women in marriage

Question 10

What are some of the risks/hazards associated with women’s work?

Answer 10

• Lack of input in decision making
• Low job satisfaction
• Few opportunities to learn new skills
• Pace of work is either too slow or too fast
• Multi-tasking
• Feeling trapped
• Unpaid work affects paid work
• Lack of job security
• abuse

Question 11

What is the difference between productive time and labour time?

Answer 11

PRODUCTION TIME is the duration of the task from start to finish (e.g. roasting meat can take hours) whereas LABOUR TIME measures the specific period during which the worker is actually expending labour

Question 12

What are women’s employment patterns?

Answer 12

• Early 20th century: worked for a few years before marriage, then only some informal employment (selling fruit on stands, taking in washing, childcare)
• 1950s (post WW2): more women returned to paid employment after having children
• After 1970s: many women returned to paid work and shortened or eliminated time out of work
• Today: lifelong employment patterns

Question 13

What is the ‘M’ shaped pattern of employment?

Answer 13

employments rates high for unmarried women, they drop when women are married and having children, the rates rose again when the women’s childrearing responsibilities and then dropped when the women reached retirement age

Question 14

What are the two spheres of women’s work?

Answer 14

1. Productive: public sphere, paid, contributes to social economy and the household economy
2. Reproduction: private sphere, unpaid, contributes to household economy and only indirectly to the social economy

Question 15

What are the factors pushing women into the labour force?

Answer 15

1. Economic pressure
2. Economic insecurity - rising rates of divorce (therefore sensible for women to maintain a measure of economic independence rather than relying on the economic security of men)
3. Later marriages - rising rates of non-marriage
4. Increases in educational and employment qualifications - encourages women to remain in paid employment

Question 16

What is emotional management?

Answer 16

we decide what kind of emotional demeanour is required and we display the appropriate emotion

Question 17

What is emotional labour?

Answer 17

refers to work where emotions are performed for pay as a job requirement (and therefore it has exchange value)

Question 18

What are feeling rules?

Answer 18

how you’re supposed to feel or “best practices” for managing feelings. They may involve surface acting or deep acting.

Question 19

What is the difference between surface acting and deep acting?

Answer 19

SURFACE ACTING refers to faking it or expressing effective displays whereas DEEP ACTING refers to modifying your behaviour and inner feelings to elicit the expressions that are expected of you by your employer

Question 20

What is the ‘golden age’ of the family?

Answer 20

1950s: three ideals - the nuclear family, compassionate marriages and motherhood that viewed stay at home mothers as best suited to raise children and maintain domestic life.

Question 21

What is the dual labour market theory?

Answer 21

Capitalists systematically develop conditions that create divisions in the workforce - exploitation and inequality where white male workers hold the best jobs and women were excluded from trade unions

Question 22

What is the labour segregation theory?

Answer 22

The labour market is split into primary core sector and secondary/peripheral sector

Question 23

What is the Marxist theory?

Answer 23

Structure and processes of capitalism cause or give rise to the dual/segmented labour market and women’s disadvantaged role in it. Work is degraded and feminised BUT: this approach ignores sex roles and patriarchy

Question 24

What is the Marxist-feminist theory?

Answer 24

Expands Marxist theory to include domestic labour. Domestic labour isolates women and effects their waged labour and their opportunities (their social condition is grounded in the material conditions of women’s work in the home). It argues the notion of reproduction is vital for production

Question 25

What is the socialist-feminist theory?

Answer 25

It is both capitalism and patriarchy that oppresses women. Women’s domestic labour is economically beneficial to men as a group as it frees men from domestic work, allowing them to do more paid work. Therefore, women’s domestic labour is essential to patriarchy and capitalism

Question 26

What is feminist political economy?

Answer 26

• acknowledges intersectionality
• Explores the way in which relations of gender, race and class interact with political, economic and cultural conditions to shape the organisation of the economy and its impact
• Three major aspects: gender, intersectionality and reproduction

Question 27

What is the Employment Equity Act?

Answer 27

An act which strove for equity, arguing that four major groups are likely to experience discrimination in employment:

	1. Women
	2. Visible minorities 
	3. Aboriginal people 
	4. Persons with disabilities

Question 28

Is equity legislation effective?

Answer 28

• they are limited in scope
• limited to differences of pay between full-time men and women workers and do not apply to workers from other disadvantaged groups (who are more likely to be in unstable and precarious work)

Question 29

What is the Keynesian Welfare State?

Answer 29

A form of welfare which advocated for high rates of employment and universal health care

Question 30

What are some of the criticisms of the new economy?

Answer 30

• child poverty rates increasing
• difficulty finding full time work
• increase in the number of people working multiple jobs
• minimum wage rates falling in relation to inflation
• high unemployment rates
• communities aren’t doing well economically
• rise in tuition fees for education

Question 31

What is the ‘leisure revolution’?

Answer 31

25 years ago social scientists believed that a rise in technology would lead to our work being overshadowed by our leisure pursuits. If this were the case, we would be working roughly 4 days a week and retiring around the age of 45. Instead, our retirement age is increasing, as is the hours we work, precarious labour and job insecurity

Question 32

What are some of the changes as a result of women and WW2?

Answer 32

• more women entered the paid labour force
• married women’s participation in the labour force increased dramatically
• women of all ages (married and single) worked in occupations previously unavailable to them

Question 33

What are the (7) key reasons for women’s labour force position?

Answer 33

• falling birth rates (introduction of birth control): reduced childcare responsibilities
• legislation (e.g. maternity/paternity leave, eradication of the marriage act)
• experience of women and women challenging traditional values
• reduction in general housework
• attitudes and values changing (changes in labour patterns and women’s rights)
• more equitable DOL in the household
• increased availability for childcare

Question 34

What is occupational segregation?

Answer 34

The concentration of women and men in different occupations, firms and jobs. A shift has taken place whereby jobs are becoming feminised, manufacturing is changing and jobs are viewed as needing certain characteristics (this in turn impacts hiring practices where men/women are viewed as better suited to a particular job)