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.     

Gender discrimination and self-employment dynamics in Europe

This paper examines the effect that gender-based earnings discrimination has on self-employment dynamics among females, with a focus on four countries in Western Europe. Using data from the European Community Household Panel in the 1999–2001 time period, we test the hypothesis that the probability of moving into self-employment is positively related to prior earnings discrimination, as measured by unexplained deviations from expected (male) earnings. Our findings suggest that women who have lower than expected wage sector earnings are more likely to leave wage employment in the following year. The results with respect to discrimination, per se, however, are mixed.     

Control and subversion: Gender relations in Tajikistan

Tajikistan stands out among the republics of Central Asia fortwo important reasons. First, as the republic where the sovieticizationprocess was least successful, it managed to retain its Islamicidentity and culture. In Tajikistan today, unlike in the otherrepublics, the tenets of Islam stand solidly behind social normsand community standards. Secondly, its independence from theformer Soviet Union was followed by a devastating civil war.This has left a legacy common to any post-conflict society:the possibility of a return to violence as a way of resolvingdisputes. In most other respect, Tajikistan shares a significantamount with its geographical neighbours. This was a region ofpre-modern societies on which was imposed, first, Russian imperialismand, subsequently,     

Job quality,industrial relations and the crisis in Europe

This paper reports results from recent Eurofound research on the impact of the crisis on industrial relations and working conditions in Europe, based on the output of Eurofound's European Working Conditions Observatory and European Industrial Relations Observatory and data from the European Working Conditions Survey. Overall, the crisis – even if it is sometimes difficult to separate the effect of the crisis from megatrends in working conditions and industrial relations – seems to have had an impact on both domains. With reference to industrial relations, the impact of the crisis has influenced actors, processes, and outcomes. Regarding working conditions, the results appear to be in line with the literature on the topic, which relates the crisis to an increase in job insecurity, a decrease in work intensity, in working hours, and in anti-social working time arrangements, and a general improvement in terms of health risks and related outcomes.     

Patriarchalism in imperial China and Western Europe

Conclusion My analysis suggests that Weber's typology of domination - the cluster of patriarchalism, charisma, and law - does not fit Chinese history as it does European history. The typology has particular relevance in Europe because Weber purposefully developed types of domination that reflected and synthesized essential elements of Western historical experience: the struggles between kings and nobles, between popes and priests, between leaders and followers of all types. Deeply aware of the patterns of Western history, Weber understood that his concepts of analysis constituted historical summaries, not simply ideas and abstract beliefs but distillations of patterns of actions and of the justifications supporting and channeling those patterns. Although Weber fashioned these ideal types from his knowledge of Western history, he wanted to make them genuinely trans-epochal and transcultural so that he could test, through comparative mental experiment and imaginative extrapolation, causal explanations about the course of Western history. That the generations of students of Western society continue to learn from and struggle with Weber's concepts and historical theories demonstrates that Weber was hugely successful in his work.But are Weber's typologies as useful in the analysis of non-Western societies as they are in that of Europe? I have only dealt with Chinese society, but for this society my analysis suggests that the answer to this question is no. As Weber defined them, patriarchalism, charisma, and law do not apply to China in the way that they apply to Europe. They do not represent summaries of Chinese history; they do not distill the debates and struggles of two millenia; they do not tap those shared understandings that informed Chinese patterns of action. And because they do not gain an equivalent grasp of Chinese as they do of Western history, they are less useful and often very misleading when one uses them to analyze and explain the course of Chinese history. If those concepts do not get at the same reality in China, what is the logical status of the conclusions drawn from using them to analyze China? As I have attempted to show in this paper, they can be used to indicate through comparison what configurations are absent from China. But they are less useful in developing a genuine understanding of Chinese history. Therefore, to understand China, and perhaps most non-Western societies, Weber's typology of domination and particularly his analysis of traditional domination, should not be used directly as a summary of an underlying reality. Weber's warning about the perniciousness of Marxian concepts and theories when they are thought of as empirically valid or real effective forces should be applied with particular vigor to Weber's own concepts and theories when applied to non-Western societies. But, by equal measure, if one assumes that Weber's typology of domination misrepresents non-Western societies in some regard, it still provides an example of the sort of conceptual framework needed to analyze the historical development of state structures in any society. Weber championed comparative research, because he believed without comparisons it was impossible to examine rigorously the course of history and to develop theories of historical change. Weber rightly believed that comparisons were only possible with generalized historical concepts. But to Weber, historical research does not lead to better or more general sociological theories. Instead, sociology, as Weber put it to a noted historian, can perform ... very modest preparatory work to an adequate historical analysis. Concepts must lead the way to historical explanations and not the reverse. Similarly, Weber's analysis of the West provides the preparatory work for a better understanding of non-Western society. In this sense Weber's concepts are indispensable for the analysis of non-Western society, not because they are the last word, but because, along with other products of Western sociology, they are the first word, words that are used only to have their meanings altered by subsequent research.

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Structural considerations in the contemporary Taiwanese farm family: survival of the large family ideal

The structure of farm families in an industrializing rural area in west-central Taiwan is explored using data for 96 households in Hsiu-Shui district. The results suggest that despite modernization and social change, "the large family ideal still persists and expresses itself as a compartmental family which offers both the individual freedom of a nuclear family and the support and security of a large extended family."     

Agricultural adjustment and the diversification of farm households and corporate farms in Central Europe

Survey evidence from three Central European Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) is analysed to identify the degree of non-agricultural farm diversification and the factors facilitating or impeding it in individual and corporate farms. The effect of diversification on rural job creation and household incomes is investigated. The results indicate that the level of diversification is relatively small and enterprise diversification by farmers is unlikely to generate sufficient new jobs to solve the problem of high rural unemployment. The attempt to transpose the West European model of agricultural diversification to the associated countries via the SAPARD programme is questionable, as non-farm centric rural policies appear to be more appropriate.     

Shifting values in agriculture: the farm family and pollution regulation1

It has long been acknowledged that the notion of family continuity of farm occupation through succession is one of the central tenets of the ethos of ‘family’ farming, but recent evidence suggests that it is being called into question by family members. Farming practices are being pursued in a rapidly changing world, an important feature of which is a greater level of public and political concern for protecting the rural environment. This paper examines a range of new influences affecting farming practice and environmental consciousness and the implications these have for farming values, particularly that of family succession. Using evidence from a study of dairy farm families and pollution regulation in Devon in South West England, it suggests that rural social change is providing new routes through which environmental values can flow through farm households, influencing the ways farmers understand the environmental implications of their practices, and the ways they and their families think about their long-term futures.     

Gender Ideologies in Europe: A Multidimensional Framework

The authors argue, in line with recent research, that operationalizing gender ideology as a unidimensional construct ranging from traditional to egalitarian is problematic and propose an alternative framework that takes the multidimensionality of gender ideologies into account. Using latent class analysis, they operationalize their gender ideology framework based on data from the 2008 European Values Study, of which eight European countries reflecting the spectrum of current work–family policies were selected. The authors examine the form in which gender ideologies cluster in the various countries. Five ideology profiles were identified: egalitarian, egalitarian essentialism, intensive parenting, moderate traditional, and traditional. The five ideology profiles were found in all countries, but with pronounced variation in size. Ideologies mixing gender essentialist and egalitarian views appear to have replaced traditional ideologies, even in countries offering some institutional support for gendered separate spheres.     

The closed and union shop in Western Europe

Conclusion But in the final analysis the cases cited above in Switzerland, Belgium, or the Netherlands are only modest exceptions or glosses on the general absence of formal union or closed-shop arrangements continental or Western Europe, and this contrasts, of course, with the United States. Whether or not this particular divergence may be reduced in the future remains to be seen. Certainly, in the U.S. with the union movement increasingly aware of its relative (to the labor force) decline in numbers, if anything one could anticipate even greater determination to insist on strong union-security arrangements in the future. (Whether this might be offest by some growth in state right-to-work laws, is problematical). Forecasting the future of the closed or union shop, or other forms of union security in Western Europe is hazardous, although this paper does suggest some grounds for development of a trend in the direction of such developments in several countries. How then in retrospect does the West European experience relate to the broader theme of the conference, the free rider issue? Trade unionism in European history has been at least as much a social and political collective phenomenon, as it has been an economic phenomenon. Economists must be able to understand workers’ relationships to unions in terms of these collective realities, if their explanations of why workers do or do not join unions, or why unions may or may not feel compelled to seek the closed or union shop are to achieve a similar reality. This paper is submitted by the author in his private capacity. It is not intended to represent the position of the Library of Congress, where he is currently serving as a senior specialist, nor the University of Wisconsin. The paper has benefited from the comments of Morris Weisz, University of Wisconsin and Bruce Millen of the U.S. Department of Labor.     

Gender relations,development practice and "culture"

Most development practitioners have the following preconceived notions about gender and culture: 1) that gender relations are equated with the most intimate aspects of society; 2) that culture and tradition are immutable; 3) that there is no independent resistance to subordination within the culture; and 4) that religion is culture. These notions interfere with work on developing equitable gender relations and complicate efforts to allocate resources in ways that redress the imbalance of power between men and women. The validity of these notions can be tested by analyzing an experience the author had in 1984 when she published a book on women and development in India. On a publicity tour in Liverpool, England, she addressed an audience composed largely of men from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This audience attacked her book and defended an idealized version of the position of women in the culture of South Asia. They accused the author of being a traitor to her own culture and of being Westernized. A Pakistani woman member of the audience, however, thanked the author for her presentation and reported that she was working with Asian women facing domestic violence. The men understood the cultural identity of South Asia as being composed of identical families dedicated to mutual interest, love, and cooperation. However, this family unit requires the subsuming of women's interests. This myth of the family ignores real life experiences of women who suffer abuse and ignores the fact that the notion of "family" is constantly undergoing change. Development practitioners should use culture as a way of opening up intractable areas of gender relations rather than regarding it as a dead-end which prevents work towards equitable gender relations. A new definition of "cultural sensitivity" would be to acknowledge that contests surround the significance attached by a society to different aspects of social constraints and that these contests often represent challenges to hierarchical social relations.