ORGANISATIONS, WORK AND SEXUAL DIVISIONS: Occupational change in market economies and remaking gende

1
ORGANISATIONS, WORK AND SEXUAL DIVISIONSOccupati
onal change in market economies and remaking
gender?

• Janette Webb
• University of Edinburgh

2
Framing Questions

• Interactions of markets and gendered power
  relations
• Are some forms of market economy more conducive
  to greater equality between the sexes?
• What drives what?
• Cultural change in gender relations drives
  economic restructuring?
• Economic restructuring, and occupational change,
  drives cultural change in gender relations?

3
Two Models from Feminist Political Economy

• Varieties of Capitalism (VOC)
• Liberal market economies (LME)
• Coordinated market economies (CME)
• These result in different patterns of
  occupational sex segregation and inequality
• Post-Industrialism
• Change as dominated by universal dynamics of
  post-industrial shift, which reinforce
  occupational sex segregation and gender
  essentialism

4
Varieties of Capitalism

• LMEs
• Education and training for general skills
• Deregulated, individualised labour markets
• Short-term orientation to profitability
• Social policy emphasis on individual
  responsibility
• CMEs
• Education and training for organisation- and
  industry-specific skills
• Coordinated/regulated labour markets
• Long-term orientation to governance and
  profitability
• Social policy emphasis on protection and pooling
  of risk

5
Feminist Analysis of VOC

• CMEs/ specific skills regimes
• Expected to have higher levels of occupational
  sex-segregation
• LMEs/ general skills regimes
• Expected to have less segregated occupations but
  higher income inequality
• Might speculate therefore that
• gender is a more prominent principle of social
  division in CMEs?
• While class is more prominent in LMEs?
• Drivers of change perceived as primarily
  economic, overlaid on essentialised model of
  dualistic gender

6
Feminist Post-Industrialism

• Interaction of universalising economic forces of
  post-industrialism with universalistic gender
  dualism
• Effect is to reinforce occupational segregation
• Gender ideology, rather than economics, drives
• horizontal segregation between manual (male) and
  non-manual (female) occupations
• and pervasive vertical segregation within
  occupational hierarchies

7
Comments on the VOC and Post-Industrial Models

• Utility of models emphasising one or two
  macro-level concepts to explain complexity
• Limitations of labour market data over 15 years
  old when dealing with questions of economic
  restructuring
• Snap shot of occupational segregation at a single
  time
• Focus on occupational categories rather than
  incorporating industrial sector

8
Using Data from ILO Labour Market Stats

• Less discriminating occupational classification
• Problems of different cultural interpretations of
  the same occupational classifications
• But allows some longitudinal comparison
• And more recent data (1985-2005)
• Crude occupational breakdown compensated for to
  some extent by ability to disaggregate occupation
  by industrial sector
• Descriptive statistics for concentration of men
  and women in occupations rather than index of
  segregation

9
Rationale for Selection of Countries

• Sweden and Japan as contrasting examples of CMEs
• USA and UK as contrasting examples of LMEs
• Likely to share common shift towards services
• Since 1985, all have increased proportion of
  economically active population

10
Total Economically Active, 1985-2004
11
Women as of Workforce
12
Declining Employment in Extractive
Transformative Industries

• Growth in economically active population
• Alongside decline in proportion of employment in
  extractive and transformative industries
• Japan continues to have the highest proportion of
  employees in these sectors
• now has only 31 in such employment
• equivalent to the position of the USA twenty
  years earlier

13
of Labour Force in Extractive Transformative
Industries
14
of Women in Extractive Transformative
Industries
15
Labour Force in Extractive Transformative
Industries

• As proportion of employment declined,
  male-concentration increased
• Most noticeable in Japan - women were 35 of
  employees now 28

16
of Labour Force in Services
17
of Women in Services
18
Labour Force in Services

• Japan - men in the majority in services
• Sweden - post-industrial shift associated with
  less female concentration in 2005 than 1985
• No simple relationship between post-industrialism
  and universal reinforcement of sexual
  divisions

19
Change in Occupational Structures

• Occupational upgrading?
• Crude measure shows increasing proportion of
  workforce employed in managerial, admin,
  professional, technical and associated
  occupations in 2004-05 than in mid-1980s/1990s
• Combined with gradually decreasing proportion of
  employees in production jobs (including skilled
  craft and routine manual work)

20
Occupational structures, 2004-5
21
Sweden, 1984-2004 occupation by male-female
22
USA, 1985-2005 occupation by male-female
23
UK, 1995 2005 occupation by male-female
24
Japan, 1985-2005 occupation by male-female
25
Differences in Occupational Concentrations of men
and women - LMEs v CMEs?
26
Male-female split among occupations 2004/5
27
The Effect of Industrial Sector on Occupational
Divisions

• Using only 2004/5 data
• Excludes Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
• Groups Industrial Sectors into 3
• extractive and transformative
• business and finance, real estate and retail
  services
• public and welfare services
• Showing of women in each occupation

28
Distribution of women in occupations by industry,
Sweden, 2004
29
Distribution of women in occupations by industry,
USA 2005
30
Distribution of women in occupations by industry,
UK 2005
31
Distribution of women in occupations by industry,
Japan 2005
32
Distribution of women in occupations
33
Occupation by Industry VOC

• No simple relationship between LME policies and
  lesser concentrations of men and women in
  segregated occupations
• In the UK, barriers to the a-typical sex
  entering occupations do not seem to be lower than
  in Sweden
• Swedish social-democratic model more effective in
  facilitating movement of women into career
  occupations in industry and in private sector
  services

34
Continuity of dualistic gender ideologies?

• Evidence provides support for the argument that a
  dualistic, if not essentialist, gender ideology
  continues to underpin some universally
  sex-differentiated occupational patterns
• Not the case however that shift to services
  universally reinforces sex-segregated work
• Can conjecture that effects of shift to services
  differ according to interaction between
• cultural, and historically located, processes of
  gendered power relations
• political-economic strategies
• equality policies
• and the resulting organisation of occupations in
  different sectors in different countries

35
Evaluation of Models

• Strengths and limitations of a feminist model of
  VOC
• Utility
• But over-reliance on macro-structural concepts of
  skills and gender
• Loss of insight into process
• Need to integrate income data and
  inter-dependence of class with gender and ethnic
  divisions
• Skills, and their formation and use, are not
  independent of power relations, and are in flux
  in knowledge economies
• Strengths and limitations of a feminist
  post-industrialism
• Identifies the intransigence of dualistic gender
• But a version of convergence theory?

36
What would a sociological model of the
interactions of gender and markets look like?

• A situated account of the remaking of gender in
  the context of new occupational relationships
• Gender and markets as mutually constitutive
• Organisational level is where inter-relations of
  markets and personal biographies are worked out
• Occupational positions and skills are constituted
• And in their enactment produce the contested
  strata of class, gender and ethnicity
• Which in turn reshape occupations and skills