Mothers in the workforce

This evaluation of maternity leave was completed by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. The use of maternity leave was investigated in 3 separate surveys. In 1, all women throughout Australia who had borne a child during 1 week in May 1984 (2000 women) were surveyed 18 months after the birth. The 2nd and 3rd surveys examined the experience of maternity leave in 1252 private sector businesses of varying sizes and a smaller number of public sector organizations. The study found that 46% of women are in the workforce during pregnancy. However, looking only at women in employment before the 1st birth, 3/4 of them are in the workforce. 44% of women took maternity leave, 33% were eligible but did not take leave, and the remaining 24% were ineligible for maternity leave either because they were casual workers or because they had not been in continuous employment with their employer for the required minimum period of 12 months. Of all maternity leave taken, 78% is taken by public sector employees and only 21% by women employed in the private sector. 1/2 of the women eligible for maternity leave in the private sector who did not take up the option had no information about maternity leave provisions. The main determinants of taking maternity leave, apart from having information about it, are working in the public sector, having a strong attachment to the workforce, having values which see work and child rearing as complementary, being a member of a trade union, having a high education and high status occupation, and being employed in a large establishment. Other survey findings follow. 1) 55% of women who were in employment before their 1st child returned to the workforce within 18 months of the birth. 2) 45% of women returned to work used informal child care provided by family or friends (usually unpaid). 32% used formal care only. 23% used a combination of formal and informal child care. 3) Women are spending an average of between 20% and 25% of their income on child care. 4) Financial reasons are the main reasons given by women for their return to the workforce. 5) Cost and availability of child care is an important issue in determining women's workforce participation after the birth of a child. 6) 60% of women do not return to the workforce after childbirth; 90% of these women intend to do so in the future. 7) For the majority of women who give birth, motherhood emerges as their most important role in life. Almost 1/2 the women agree that a woman should give up her job if it inconveniences her husband and children. 8) 2/3 of working women can establish just as warm and secure a relationship as non-working mothers, compared with 4 out of 10 non-working mothers.     

Les groupements d'employeurs : la sécurité dans la flexibilité ?

An employer pool is an association that, formed under a French act of 1901, hires wage-earners who share their time between two or even three employers who are members of the association. The objectives of these pools are: to turn contingent or part-time jobs into steady, full-time occupations covered by permanent employment contracts; and to make the employer's need for economic flexibility compatible with the individual's need for security. The results of a survey conducted in two employer pools are used to examine actual practices by inquiring into the meaning of a "shared worktime" for wage-earners and by observing the various uses that these employers make of this work force and the new social forms that thus arise. Employees' intermittent presence in the firms and the triangular features of their employment relationship lead to socially distributed sets of constraints and resources, as well as a stronger individualization of work relations.     

The role of the health care sector in the U.S. economy

This Issue Brief discusses factors that contribute to the growth of health care expenditures and the reasons that many individuals, employers, and policymakers consider health expenditures too high. In addition, it describes various industries that make up the health care delivery system and their role in the U.S. economy as employers, producers, exporters, and suppliers of research and development. The report also discusses the economic implications of rising health care expenditures for individuals, employers, and the federal government and the potential impact of proposed health care reform on the health care sector and the U.S. economy as a whole. Health care delivery industries such as pharmaceuticals and medical equipment suppliers have higher than average research and development levels, in addition to a positive balance of trade. Moreover, while the total number of jobs in the private sector declined between 1990 and 1993, the number of jobs in the relatively high paid health services sector continued to grow. In aggregate, employer spending on health care represents only 6.6 percent of total labor costs. In comparison, wages and salaries represent 83 percent of total labor costs. Consequently, the growth rate of health care expenditures has a smaller impact on the growth rate of total compensation than does the growth rate in wages and salaries. Using job multipliers developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is estimated that the 18,600 health care services jobs in Rochester, Minnesota in 1993 created another 32,000 jobs in the area. Any contraction of the health care sector in cities that have a large concentration of employment in health services would result in reduced employment in restaurants, retail stores, janitorial services, and other local businesses. EBRI's simulations estimated that between 200,000 and 1.2 million workers could become unemployed as a direct result of a mandate that employers provide health benefits to their employees, assuming that wages and salaries did not adjust at all. Others find that approximately 50,000 individuals would lost their jobs, assuming that wages and other labor costs adjust downward to completely account for increased costs. As is apparent, the estimates of job loss (and of the total costs of the policy) are extremely sensitive to the assumptions used in the simulation.     

Women and changes in the Chilean economy: some questions

The author argues that a new development model that encourages greater participation of women in the work force in domestic piecework, temporary work, and subcontracting may further lead to the exploitation of women in Chile. The importance of women in economic development in Chile should be based on building skills, providing support child care services, reorienting women's education, and tax incentives. Chile over the past decade has achieved relatively stable economic growth and increased employment of women. During 1990-93 the growth of women in the work force increased at a rate of 16.8%, while men's presence increased by only 9.8%. The Chilean economy is based on a sophisticated modern sector and a labor-intensive informal sector. The Chilean model of development relies on cheap, flexible labor and a government approval of this model. Increased participation of women in the labor force is usually perceived as increased economic empowerment. A 1994 Oxfam study found that women were being forced into the labor market due to declines in family income and low wages. 46% of men and women received wages that did not cover basic necessities. The Chilean labor market is gender-stratified. Men are paid better than women for the same work. Men are in more permanent positions. Labor laws are either inadequate or violated, particularly for hours of work and overtime pay and conditions of employment and benefits. Traditional female jobs are those that rely on women's natural attributes. These unskilled attributes are rewarded with low wages. Little opportunity is provided for upgrading skills or acquiring new skills. Some women turn down advancement because of a lack of role models. Women have little opportunity to develop their self-image as workers. Poor self-images affect women's work attitudes and motivation. Some firms use competition between women to boost production. Chilean women remain in subordinate roles.     

THE POLITICS OF PROTECTION:

This article examines the factors influencing the enactment of protective legislation for women, specifically maximum hours and minimum wage laws, by state lawmakers in the United States between 1870 and 1930. Traditional class theories of the state argue that employers are generally able to shape state policies to suit their interests. Yet, although employers staunchly opposed protective laws, most states enacted such laws. This article seeks to understand the conditions under which social groups, such as the women's reform groups who supported protective laws, are able to win legislative reforms in the face of employer resistance. Four conditions are found that allowed a gendered movement to counter the economic interests of employers: the women's groups' ability to form organizations and coalitions with powerful political actors, their use of a legitimating ideology, historically specific circumstances that reduced employer opposition, and the nature of the particular form of legislation being demanded.     

Jobs for Mothers: Married Women's Labor Force Reentry and Part-Time,Temporary Employment in Japan

This paper explains the increase in middle-aged women reentering the labor force in Japan and their concentration in part-time or temporary employment. Existing explanations attribute women's concentration in part-time employment too narrowly to supply or demand factors. In Japan, both the labor supply of middle-aged women and the demand for part-time workers have increased, but these conditions channel middle-aged women into part-time or temporary employment only when systematic barriers obstruct their access to full-time jobs. Because it plays an important role in women's employment decisions, the rigidity of standard, full-time employment needs greater attention in studies of nonstandard, atypical types of work.     

Statutory leave entitlements across developed countries: Why US workers lose out on work–family balance

Using a composite index of legal provisions for annual and family leave in western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea, the authors rank legislative support for this aspect of work–family balance. The United States ranks last: its employers are not required to grant annual leave and employees can take no more than 12 weeks' family leave per year. The United States' comparatively low labour standards, the authors argue, may be due to the dominance of a market‐based conception of employment and the assumption of equal employer–employee bargaining power, neither of which is fully shared by the other industrialized democracies.     

Entry-level jobs: First rung on the employment ladder or economic dead end?

The ability of young workers to move from dead-end jobs into higher-wage jobs which have better career prospects is greatly influenced by the individual’s characteristics, local labor market conditions, and his or her human capital. This paper examines the characteristics of entry-level jobs of young workers in the 1980s with emphasis on how education and training influence the types of jobs held. The incidence of post-school training is quite low even though all types of post-school training raise wages significantly. Company-provided training reduces the probability that a young worker will leave his or her employer, while off-the-job training increases the ability of employees, especially young women, to move out of a dead-end job.     

Labor force participation and fertility: a study of married women in Bangladesh

Most researchers support the notion that a direct negative relationship exists between married women's labor force participation and fertility behavior, yet female employment shows no consistent, general relationship with declining fertility at individual and societal levels. Specific conditions under which employment lowers fertility are therefore explored for the case of Bangladesh. The economic, sociological, and world-system theoretical approaches to the relationship and empirical studies in developing countries including Bangladesh are reviewed. 1975-76 Bangladesh Fertility Survey data on births, deaths, nuptiality, and family planning knowledge and practice for 5772 currently married women of 6513 ever married women under 50 sampled are subjected to multivariate analysis for the study. Analysis revealed that women's modern and traditional occupation as well as higher and secondary education significantly lower their fertility, and that higher age, Islamic religion, use of modern contraceptives, and husband's occupation in transitional and modern sectors have significant positive effects on fertility. The correlation between higher fertility and contraceptive use may be due to women's delay in practicing family planning until reaching desired parity and/or high infant mortality driving women to cease practice in order to replace lost offspring. Future research should be conducted with larger samples and also consider occupations of both husbands and wives. Societal attitudes about women's education should be reformed in support of opening rural schools for women. With 90% of women residing in rural areas and women with traditional occupations having lower fertility, more traditional sector opportunities for women in cottage industry and agriculture production are also recommended, and would help balance skewed urban growth and hypertrophication of the tertiary sector. Finally, motivational efforts should be focused upon encouraging younger instead of older married couples to limit fertility.     

Women's status and fertility in the Sudan

This paper summarizes the history of women's education in Sudan; data on the relationship between their educational levels and fertility; and data on the relationship between fertility and women's employment. In general, the data point to an inverse relationship between the education of women and fertility. This relationship exists when considering the education of husbands. In terms of employment, women who report no work experience have the highest fertility, those who are self-employed or are family workers have an intermediate level of fertility, while those women who work for others have the lowest level of fertility. Education appears to be more closely associated with fertility than employment. The author concludes that as the status of women shifts to perceptions based on education and gainful employment, fertility will decline. However, in the Sudan, strong traditional values, based on women's roles related to childbearing and childrearing, will continue to sustain a relatively high fertility rate. (author's)     

The deregulated global economy: women workers and strategies of resistance

This article discusses the lack of input from women in international debates about the global economy. Women in the South are the most vulnerable to exploitation and most ignored in international discussions of how to protect fair labor standards. Restructuring has led to loss of secure jobs in the public sector and the expansion of female employment in low-paid, insecure, unskilled jobs. Businesses desire a cheap and flexible workforce. Declines in social services, the elimination of subsidies on basic goods, and the introduction of user fees puts pressure on women to supplement family income. A parallel outcome is reduced employment rights, neglect of health and safety standards, and increased disregard among women for their domestic responsibilities. There is a need for alternative models of development. The Self-Employed Women's Organization in India serves as a model for resisting exploitation among self-employed and home-based employees. Female industrial strikers are demanding attention to excessive hours of work, enforced overtime, bullying, and lack of sanitary and medical facilities. There is always fear that organized resistance will lead to industrial relocation or loss of jobs. The International Labor Organization has had a code for 20 years, but the threat of exposure to the press is sometimes more effective. There must be regulation throughout subcontracting chains of transnational companies. International alliances should revolve around issues/strategies identified by workers. International alliances are needed for influencing multinational companies and national governments and lobbying global economic and financial institutions. Standards that are included in social clause discussions are minimum requirements that do not address gender-specific issues. Women Working Worldwide is developing a position statement of social clauses that incorporates a women's perspective.     

Women farm workers on South African deciduous fruit farms: Gender relations and the structuring of work

Utilizing a feminist perspective and based on data obtained by interviewing 350 women farm workers on South African deciduous fruit farms, the article analyses how existing gender relations structure various aspects of women's paid work on farms. It explores the recruitment and employment of women, the division of labour and existing wage differentials between women and men workers, and the nature of women's work relations. Women's participation in the reconstitution of existing gender relations and the obstruction of women's choices are interpreted within the context of ‘the farm as family’ and the farm worker community as subculture. It is suggested that some women workers on fruit farms are gaining a measure of control over certain aspects of their work lives. The transformation of traditional to neo-paternalistic labour relations, the extension of labour legislation to the agricultural sector, and especially farmers' changing perceptions of women (and consequently their utilization as farm workers) have been central to women farm workers gaining more power in the workplace.     

Intersections on the Class Escalator: Gender,Race, and Occupational Segregation in Paid Care Work

As U.S. manufacturing and production industries have declined, the growth of the care sector has increasingly become an important source of jobs for workers without a college degree. Often requiring some form of postsecondary credentialing, many care occupations can provide better wages, job stability, and possible upward mobility for less educated workers. However, employment patterns in paid care work are both gendered and racialized: women and workers of color are overrepresented in care occupations with fewer entry barriers, benefits, and lower pay. Although these patterns are well documented, the mechanisms producing them are less well understood. Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), this study evaluates the explanatory power of neoclassical economic, status attainment, and social closure theories of occupational segregation for black women’s and men’s greater hazard or “risk” of entering care occupations, relative to white workers. Net of individual and closure mechanisms, significant residual effects suggest labor market discrimination remains a primary explanation for the over-representation of black workers in less credentialed care jobs with fewer benefits.     

Black/immigrant competition re-assessed: new evidence from Los Angeles

Findings are presented from a survey of employers conducted to assess the impact of immigration and employer practices upon the chances of Blacks finding employment in Los Angeles. The highest ranking person involved in the hiring process at each of 44 restaurants, 46 printers, 41 hotels, and 39 furniture manufacturers was interviewed. The hiring of new employees drawn from the network of current employees seems to have the dual function of bringing immigrant communities into the workplace, while detaching vacancies from the open market, thereby reducing the number of employment opportunities for Blacks. Employers also perceived immigrants to be far more desirable employees than Blacks, partly because they believe that immigrants will work more productively. Immigrants are also seen as the more tractable laborers. Any managerial propensity to favor immigrants over Blacks will probably be reinforced by the attitudes of the mainly Latino work force, for placing a Black worker in a mainly Latino work crew may frustrate productivity given the animosity between the two ethnic groups. Blacks also appear to opt out of the low-level labor market in response to rising expectations, on the one hand, and the anticipation of encountering employment difficulties on the other.     

TECHNOLOGICAL WORK AND WOMEN'S PROSPECTS IN THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: an agenda for research

This article sets out the conceptual and analytical framework underlying a 3-year long, 8-country research project which will examine the dynamics of women's employment in sectors critical to the so-called 'Information Society'. The project is fundamentally concerned with the gender dynamics of employment in the 'Information Society' or 'Knowledge Economy', and with whether they signal potentially greater gender equity than we currently have in contemporary capitalist society. Specifically, the project's central objective is to examine the prospects for women workers to develop new forms of expertise and skill which promote their career and personal development potential. It will focus on women's work and employment in two growing service sectors, retailing and retail financial services, in the context of leading edge innovations in technology and work organization. This article outlines the thinking behind the research project, in particular the major conceptual frameworks and the research questions which they have generated. It discusses the concepts of the 'Information Society' and the 'Knowledge Economy', and questions their relevance for female employees in routine jobs, raising the historical issue of women's exclusion from knowledge and skill. It considers the importance of the two sectors under study, retailing and retailing financial services, both for notions of the Information Society and for their role as important employers of women. It reviews recent organizational, technological and employment innovations in these sectorsparticularly in the Anglo-Saxon economies. It then raises questions about how far these dynamics might be present in other European economies, and what their implications are for women's ability to develop significant bodies of expertise and career prospects. The project is in its early stages, and this article is planned as the first in a series of papers dealing with the work as it progresses.     

Poking a sleeping bear: the challenge of organizational recruitment for controversial topics

ABSTRACT

Researchers often approach employers to investigate employees’ work and family experiences. Organizational willingness to grant access to employees can vary, especially when the research topic is seen as controversial or contentious for the employer. This paper explores this methodological challenge using a research example from Manitoba, Canada, which explored the use of parental leave by male employees and the impact of managerial attitudes and corporate culture on usage. Sixty large employers were recruited with only seven of those organizations agreeing to participate. In this paper, the reasons organizations gave for declining to participate and the implications of their decisions for the research are examined. Although the final sample included 905 managers and employees, participating organizations tended to be employee-focused and family-friendly employers. Organizations declined participation for a variety of reasons: avoiding raising the issue with unions, awareness that their policies unfairly benefited female leave takers, and simply not seeing the relevance of a topic relating to men’s work–family experiences. A dialogue often absent from the literature, it is important to understand how employers can limit researchers’ access to employees on controversial topics. The existence of such barriers suggests alternative avenues to recruit participants directly when topics are contentious for employers.     

Men doing women's dirty work: Desegregation,immigrants and employer preferences in the cleaning industry in Norway

The literature on gender desegregation has documented the gendered nature of employment hierarchies and opportunities, but less work has examined how the influx of immigrants in the labour market might affect employment hierarchies and gender segregation. This study examines employers' perceptions of ‘the suitable cleaner' — a traditionally female‐dominated occupation that has received a substantial number of male immigrant workers. Departing from the notion that men in female‐dominated occupations are advantaged by a ‘glass escalator' effect, we analyse how employer preferences position different categories of workers as hireable. Building on interviews with employers in the Norwegian cleaning industry, the study demonstrates how three different but intertwined logics define employer preferences: effectivity demands, professionalization and devaluation. While the first logic favours men as workers and the second devalues ‘female' competence, opening the occupation for men, the third logic favours immigrants, combined positioning immigrant men on top of the hierarchy of suitability.     

Engendering Inequality: Processes of Sex-Segregation on Wall Street

Women's numbers in high-paying, male-dominated occupations have risen in the past three decades, but they disproportionately hold lower-paying jobs within those occupations. A cohort sample of Wall Street securities professionals shows how sex segregation occurs over time, as men's and women's different experiences lead them to change functions, to change firms, or to leave the securities industry. While seemingly similar processes impinge on the careers of everyone in this exceptionally high-paid occupation, family constraints and gender discrimination produce differential results for similarly qualified men and women. Over time men disproportionately gain the very highest paying Wall Street jobs.     

How Does Occupational Access for Older Workers Differ by Education?

To assess the employment opportunities of older job-changers in the years prior to retirement, this study examines the how the breadth of occupations in which they find employment narrows as they age past their prime working years and how this differs by gender and educational attainment. The results indicate that workers who change jobs in their early 50s find employment in a reasonably similar set of occupations as prime-age workers, with opportunities narrowing at older ages. They also indicate that job opportunities broadened significantly for better-educated older workers since the late 1990s. While job opportunities now narrow significantly for less-educated men in their late 50s, this narrowing primarily occurs in the early 60s for women and better-educated men. In contrast to previous research, the study finds that employer policies that emphasize hiring from within are less important barriers to the hiring of older job-seekers. The study also finds that the narrowing of job opportunities is associated with a general decline in job quality as measured by median occupational earnings, a decline associated with differences in occupational skill requirements and the underlying economic environment. These results suggest that older hiring is not as limited to a select few occupations as it had been in previous decades, and that policy reforms aimed at increasing opportunities and improving labor market fluidity might best be served if they focused on less-educated men.     

Structural changes in the receiving country and future labor migration--the case of Kuwait

This article describes changes in the volume, age and sex composition, retention, productivity, types of occupation, and economic sector of the labor force in Kuwait. The focus is on the structural changes in the indigenous labor force. Data were obtained from censuses and labor force surveys during 1965-93. Policies after the 1990 invasion pertained primarily to security of public employment sector among natives. Over 98% of private sector employment is among non-Kuwaitis. Government programs support high fertility. Female illiteracy has declined, and the proportion of women with a higher education has increased. Natives comprised 20.4% of the total labor force in 1993. About 90% of native males work in the public sector. 45% of total male employment is in the production sector. Around 50% of non-Kuwaiti males have been employed in production work over the decades. Over 90% of Kuwaiti females in 1993 worked in professional or clerical work. Over 50% of total female labor force participation is in the service sector. Concentration in the public sector increased for Kuwaitis and declined for non-Kuwaitis. Labor force participation declined with increasing age. Retirement benefits encouraged early retirement. The private sector is experiencing the departure of long-term migrants and more rapid turnover of labor. Hours of work are longer in the private sector. Kuwait is still dependent on foreign workers in the production and service industries. It is likely that native male workers will replace foreign workers in professional work and administrative/clerical work. Policies that will assure future reliance on imported labor include the assurance of government jobs for Kuwaitis, retirement rules, and the profitability of the trade in labor.