Search

This paper explores how workers in the women-dominated public sector in Sweden speak about and make sense of gender and intragroup conflict and the consequences of this way of thinking and acting for gender equality at work. Using qualitative interviews with 26 first-level managers and employees, we introduce an analytical framework that employs critical discourse psychology and the conceptualization of a postfeminist sensibility at work. We identified three competing meanings (postfeminist storylines) of gender and intragroup conflict: Supporting the gendered meanings of conflict, Unawareness of conflict's gendered meanings and Counteracting the gendered meanings of conflict. The welfare workers acknowledged the role of gender in intragroup conflicts but, paradoxically, constructed their own workplaces as gender neutral, without inequalities related to gender. We interpret these three postfeminist storylines as coping strategies; that is, as ways to make sense of the false promise of gender egalitarianism that characterizes the Swedish labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial evidence in the global literature that women have been disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 crisis and associated lockdowns. In this paper, we use five waves of the National Income Dynamics Study - Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) to track the gendered effects of the pandemic in South Africa during the first year of the crisis. We focus here on the impact in the labour market and on unpaid care work in the home. We find that, relative to men, women were more severely affected in both spheres, yet they benefited less from the government income support provided to unemployed and furloughed workers. The evidence from the NIDS-CRAM survey from the first year of the pandemic therefore suggests that gender inequality in South Africa has risen, undoing some of the gains of the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent gender gaps characterise labour markets in many African countries. Utilising Eswatini's first three labour market surveys (conducted in 2007, 2010, and 2013), this paper provides first systematic evidence on the country's gender gaps in employment and earnings. We find that women have notably lower employment rates and earnings than men, even though the global financial crisis had a less negative impact on women than it had on men. Both unadjusted and unexplained gender earnings gaps are higher in self-employment than in wage employment. Tertiary education and urban location account for a large part of the gender earnings gap and mitigate high female propensity to self-employment. Our findings suggest that policies supporting female higher education and rural-urban mobility could reduce persistent inequalities in Eswatini's labour market outcomes as well as in other middle-income countries in southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the differences in employment probabilities and their changes over time for the different tranches of Egyptian society. For this, I simulate probabilities for four labour market states (inactivity or unemployment; government sector; private sector and, self-employment and unpaid work) separately by marital status and level of household wealth. Then, I follow these probabilities over time using the three rounds of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Surveys of 1998, 2006 and 2012. The findings of this research, and unlike what the previous literature established, confirm that the gender gap in employment Egypt differs according to the economic and the social circumstances. For instance, if both a man and a woman come from 'relatively good' economic and social circumstances, they showed relatively equal employment chances. The findings of this research show that the gender gap in employment aggravates with the deterioration of the individual's economic and social characteristics. For instance, education and income in addition to a number of other individual and household characteristics would allow women to attain a better position of gender equality in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's economic empowerment remains an important global policy issue and their involvement in household decision-making is critical for development. This paper aims to elucidate a key feature of bargaining models of intra-household decision-making, namely the dynamics between women's economic bargaining power and their financial decision-making power. The paper also documents trends and transitions in financial decision-making. Using balanced panel data from South Africa's National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the analysis finds that women who are married or living together remain economically disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts. Although gaining ground in terms of financial decision-making responsibility, women also remain disadvantaged compared to men in terms of financial decision-making power. Yet, employment opportunities significantly enhances women's role in financial decision-making, thus arguing a case for continued efforts at women's economic empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores perceptions regarding family and paid employment expressed by university students in Chile, based on the analysis of quantitative data from the Maule region (southern Chile). We argue that the increasing unpredictability of labor markets has eroded the role paid employment historically has had as the lynchpin of individual’s – particularly men’s – life project, altering the expectations about both work and family life. Likewise, changes in gender roles have shaped youngsters’ ideals about family life. This seems to be the case especially for women, who strongly affirm their economic independence and personal projects, departing from traditional family views. We conclude that young people are demanding a new balance between life (understood mainly as personal and family time) and work. There is also a strong affirmation of the individual project, including a demand for greater gender equality. Although still at the level of projected visions of the future, these findings signal changes in the way the relation work–family is traditionally organized, bringing new challenges for public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Emotions have received increasing attention in educational circles in the last decade. Drawing on Bourdieu, feminist scholars use emotional capital to illustrate the ways gendered inequalities can compound the disadvantages of social class. This paper examines relationships within childcare services in Australia, showing how emotional capital functions as a resource for staff. Data from interviews with childcare staff illustrate key aspects of emotional capital, such as reflexivity, resilience and embodiment. Findings show that investing in emotional capital is the key to a long-lasting commitment to childcare work, and should be valued accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study advances research on the structural dimension in the predominantly individual-oriented field of poverty studies by evaluating to what extent cross-national differences in population and structural characteristics can explain the differences in poverty outcomes by gender. To facilitate an approach that integrates individual and structural context dimensions, the paper takes advantage of multilevel techniques to test gender differences in the risk of being poor, entering into poverty, and exiting from poverty among seventeen European countries. The analysis covers single-adult households, drawing on data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for the years 2007–8. The study concludes that structural effects, such as welfare state policies, labor market characteristics, level of inequality, and the level of women's empowerment in the country, seem to be more relevant than individual effects in explaining differences in the gender poverty gap among countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]