The compounding feminization of animal cruelty investigation work and its multispecies implications

All forms of human labour performed with and/or for animals are gendered, although not always tidily. Here we focus on animal cruelty investigation work, a particularly complicated gendered occupational case. Drawing on survey, interview and focus group data, we focus on a regionally based workforce's gendered specifics. In keeping with feminist political economy and labour process theory, we highlight both material and experiential dimensions, examining physical and psychological risks, and rewards. We argue that the gendered and multispecies entanglements of the work and the victims coalesce in the compounding feminization of cruelty investigation labour. We raise questions about the implications of the gendered and multispecies interconnections for the women and men involved, and for the animals dependent on their work.     

Post‐Fordist reconfigurations of gender,work and life: theory and practice

Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever 2014 ; Morini and Fumagalli 2010 ; Gill and Pratt 2008 ; Weeks 2007 ; Hardt and Negri 2004 ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.     

Parenthood,Gender and Work‐Family Time in the United States,Australia, Italy,France, and Denmark

Research has associated parenthood with greater daily time commitments for fathers and mothers than for childless men and women, and with deeper gendered division of labor in households. How do these outcomes vary across countries with different average employment hours, family and social policies, and cultural attitudes to family care provision? Using nationally representative time‐use data from the United States, Australia, Italy, France, and Denmark (N = 5,337), we compare the paid and unpaid work of childless partnered adults and parents of young children in each country. Couples were matched (except for the United States). We found parents have higher, less gender‐equal workloads than nonparents in all five countries, but overall time commitments and the difference by parenthood status were most pronounced in the United States and Australia.     

Legitimizing leisure experiences as emotional work: A post‐humanist approach to gendered equine encounters

Due to changes in lifestyle and work patterns, education and values associated with wellbeing, non‐human animals are now incorporated into a range of human experiences and environments. This research specifically focuses on human–equine relations, examining blurred boundaries between therapeutic and recreational interspecies encounters. It is acknowledged that human–equine relations are often gendered and this research focuses mainly on women's narratives. Viewed through the post‐humanist lens, horses now form kinship and companionship roles, particularly for women, where relations have become mutually emotionally dependent as a result of interspecies communication and embodied encounters. Research utilizes feminist post‐humanist and cultural politics of emotion frameworks associate with the co‐agency on the co‐agency of animals. Embedded in the concept of equiscapes, or post‐humanist leisure spaces, research methods employ qualitative approaches, including in‐depth interviews, participant diaries and multispecies ethnography. Findings reveal how women make considerable investments in equine activities, which develops mutual welfare and wellbeing. Yet, despite these benefits, emotional and other expenditures are justified in work discourses to legitimize them as valuable to themselves, their families and their communities.     

In the Face of Conflict: Work‐Life Conflict and Desired Work Hour Adjustments

This study helps integrate the work‐life and work hours literatures by examining competing predictions about the relationship between work‐life conflict and the desire for paid work. Using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N =2,178), I find that work‐life conflict makes women want to decrease the number of hours they work whether the conflict originates at home or at work. Men only want to decrease their hours when work‐life conflict originates at work, and some men facing frequent conflict actually want to increase their hours. I also find that having children does not increase the likelihood of wanting to work fewer hours but having a higher income does.     

Gender Differences in Restricting Work Efforts Because of Family Responsibilities

In egalitarian families, we might expect that men and women similarly prioritize work and family obligations. Yet, prior research examining gender differences in work‐family priorities often use measures that imperfectly reflect those priorities. Drawing two samples of full‐time married workers from the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce, this article analyzed the determinants of placing restrictions on work efforts (reducing work hours, refusing to travel, etc.) for the sake of family life. Results showed that women imposed more job trade‐offs in response to husband’s work efforts, whereas men’s work restrictions were largely unresponsive to familial characteristics. In conclusion, prioritizing work and family obligations is governed more by gender traditionalism than by egalitarianism.     

Adaptive Strategies,Gender Ideology,and Work‐Family Balance Among Dutch Dual Earners

Using questionnaire data on 149 Dutch dual‐earner couples with young children participating in the European Famwork study, we examine how adaptive strategies and gender ideology relate to parents’ perceived success in balancing work and family. Path analysis indicates that some adaptive strategies may harm individuals’ work‐family balance, particularly when they are made in the domain where the time budget is limited. In the need to succeed in multiple roles, however, endorsement of traits traditionally linked with the opposite gender, that is masculine traits for women and feminine traits for men, seems beneficial. We speculate that two underlying mechanisms — social pressure and time constraints — jointly operate in determining perceived success in balancing work and family.     

Transnational Traders: El Salvador's Women Couriers in Historical Perspective

An estimated one‐third to one‐half of Salvadorans who carry remittances and goods between El Salvador and the United States are women. Scholars studying these viajeras argue that their work simultaneously represents a break from traditional gender relations confining women to the home and an extension of gender traits that favor women in developing social ties. Although social ties are crucial to the courier trade, this argument ignores antecedents to viajeras' work in El Salvador and suggests that transnationalism pushes women into realms of labor and physical mobility that have been gendered masculine. Using ethnographic methods, I examine the relationship between women's historical work in El Salvador and their current work as viajeras, as well the relationship between viajeras' experiences and those of women transnational traders in other parts of the world. My findings contribute to a small but growing body of research suggesting that instead of merely being excluded from or manipulated by global processes, many women in the Global South have expanded the realm of their activities to help shape variable forms of global capitalism. Studying how they do so sheds light on local mechanisms for combating gender inequality and promoting development.     

Man Up,Man Down: Race–Ethnicity and the Hierarchy of Men in Female‐Dominated Work

Scholars have largely overlooked the significance of race and socioeconomic status in determining which men traverse gender boundaries into female‐dominated, typically devalued, work. Examining the gender composition of the jobs that racial minority men occupy provides critical insights into mechanisms of broader racial disparities in the labor market—in addition to stalled occupational desegregation trends between men and women. Using nationally representative data from the three‐year American Community Survey (2010–2012), we examine racial/ethnic and educational differences in which men occupy gender‐typed jobs. We find that racial minority men are more likely than white men to occupy female‐dominated jobs at all levels of education—except highly educated Asian/Pacific Islander men—and that these patterns are more pronounced at lower levels of education. These findings have implications for broader occupational inequality patterns among men as well as between men and women.     

Navigating the gendered academy: women in social work academia

ABSTRACT

Women fare less well than men across all academic disciplines: they are less likely to be promoted, they earn less, and many more professors are men. There has, however, been little analysis to date of the experience of women in social work education, a discipline that has historically had higher representation of female staff and students. This study set out to explore women in the social work academy through a case-study of social work education in Scotland. A mixed-methods approach was used, including a review of relevant literature; an online survey of women and men academics in social work education; and semi-structured interviews with female social work leaders, past and present. The study found that women in the social work academy faced the same pressures as other women in higher education; some of these pressures were also shared by men. Most significant, however, was the extent to which women in social work academia experienced twin challenges, firstly, as female academics and secondly, as female social work academics in a discipline that struggles for recognition in the academy. We conclude that this makes for a contradictory and, at times, ambiguous experience for women as they navigate the gendered academy.     

Women Elite Leaders Doing Respectable Business Femininity: How Privilege is Conferred,Contested and Defended through the Body

This paper offers a theory of respectable business femininity. Respectable business femininity is theorized as a discursive and relational process that explains tensions women elite leaders experience at the nexus of being both One and Other and sometimes privileged, embedded notions of leadership as masculine and wider expectations of acceptable embodied femininity. Such tensions manifest through a disciplining of women leaders’ bodies and appearance by self‐and‐others, as a means of appraising women as credible elite leaders and respectable women. Through a qualitative study we show how, within sites of ambiguity, embodied leadership and subjectivities are both enabled and constrained. Accounts highlight how privilege is fluid and (de)stabilized in that it is conferred, contested and defended through women's bodies and appearance. We advance understandings of contemporary respectable femininity, privilege at work, and body work, and consider practical implications for women leaders and management education.     

Gender,Work Time,and Care Responsibilities Among Faculty1

This study explores how faculty at one research‐intensive university spend their time on research, teaching, mentoring, and service, as well as housework, childcare, care for elders, and other long‐term care. Drawing on surveys and focus group interviews with faculty, the article examines how gender is related to time spent on the different components of faculty work, as well as on housework and care. Findings show that many faculty report working more than 60 hours a week, with substantial time on weekends devoted to work. Finding balance between different kinds of work (research, teaching, mentoring, and service) is as difficult as finding balance between work and personal life. The study further explores how gendered care giving, in particular being a mother to young children, is related to time spent on faculty work, controlling for partner employment and other factors. Men and women devote significantly different amounts of time to housework and care giving. While men and women faculty devote the same overall time to their employment each week, mothers of young children spend less time on research, the activity that counts most toward career advancement.     

Going Against the Flow: A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Cognitive Skills and Gender Beliefs on Occupational Aspirations and Outcomes1

Occupational sex segregation persists in part due to cultural beliefs in the existence of gender differences in skills. This article explores potential resistance to the gender‐typical aspirations and outcomes that re‐create occupational sex segregation: cognitive skills in gender‐atypical areas (i.e., math skills for women and verbal skills for men) and beliefs about women’s prioritization of family over paid work. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, I find that individuals with skills in areas considered gender atypical have less traditional occupational aspirations and outcomes than their otherwise‐similar counterparts. This process varies by gender, however. The results reflect the differential valuation of math and verbal skills. I conclude that programs designed to encourage women to pursue gender‐atypical occupations that align with their gender‐atypical skills are focusing on the least resistant group.     

Equality and Illusion: Gender and Tenure in Art History Careers

Using a national survey of 508 art history Ph.D.s including data on graduate school performance and careers 10 – 15 years post‐Ph.D., this study investigates gender, family, and academic tenure in art history, the humanities field with the highest proportion of women. Alternative hypotheses derived from three perspectives—termed here clockwork, two‐body, and synergy—are evaluated with multivariate logistic regression. Analysis finds that marriage increases men’s tenure odds and decreases women’s, but that some types of marriages do not decrease women’s odds, and some types dramatically increase men’s. This study calls attention to male advantage in female‐dominated academic disciplines and demonstrates the potential to better understand the interactions of gender, marriage, and careers by conceptualizing different types of marriages.     

Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st Century

Scholarship on work and family topics expanded in scope and coverage during the 2000–2010 decade, spurred by an increased diversity of workplaces and of families, by methodological innovations, and by the growth of communities of scholars focused on the work‐family nexus. We discuss these developments as the backdrop for emergent work‐family research on six central topics: (a) gender, time, and the division of labor in the home; (b) paid work: too much or too little; (c) maternal employment and child outcomes; (d) work‐family conflict; (e) work, family, stress, and health; and (f) work‐family policy. We conclude with a discussion of trends important for research and suggestions about future directions in the work‐family arena.     

Why emotion work matters: sex,gender, and the division of household labor

Attempting to explain why biological sex remains the primary predictor of household labor allocation, gender theorists have suggested that husbands and wives perform family work in ways that facilitate culturally appropriate constructions of gender. To date, however, researchers have yet to consider the theoretical and empirical significance of emotion work in their studies of the gendered division of household labor. Using survey data from 335 employed, married parents, I examine the relative influence of economic resources, time constraints, gender ideology, sex, and gender on the performance of housework, child care, and emotion work. Results indicate that gender construction, not sex, predicts the performance of emotion work and that this performance reflects a key difference in men's and women's gendered constructions of self.     

Gendered,Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers, employers, policymakers and sometimes even workers themselves. Although there is some indication that jobs in the restructuring social services sector can be characterized by constant demand, high stress and violence, research into the working conditions and health hazards of these types of jobs has not been a priority. Using data from a qualitative study examining work in NPOs, we trace the ways that work performed in these workplaces is both gendered and invisible. We identify three types of invisible labour. ‘Background work’ facilitates and supports more visible and recognized organizational activities. Certain organizational language obscures the full spectrum of work that takes place in the organizations and the risks it may involve. ‘Empathy work’ includes the relationship building, counselling and crisis intervention that comprise key components of social service delivery. ‘Emotional labour’ involves the management of client emotions and workers' own emotions in the process of working with clients and delivering care under conditions of scarcity and contraction. The invisibility of these activities means that much of the day‐to‐day work done in the organizations, while particularly important in the context of social service restructuring, is taken‐for‐granted and undervalued by organizational outsiders. As a result, many of the hazards present in the jobs are hidden from view and workers' health may be compromised. We argue that the invisibility and taken‐for‐grantedness of certain types of work in NPOs is reflected in, and constitutive of, particular exclusions and shortcomings of current occupational health and safety systems designed to protect the health of workers.     

Gendered Identities in the Work of Overseas Tour Reps

Gender construction within the tourism and leisure industry is under‐researched. In this article, we draw on empirical research on overseas tour reps to consider the ways in which men and women working alongside each other in the same feminized role ‘do gender’. In particular we explore how these workers deal with the particular dilemmas of the sexualization of women at work and the men reps’ potential threat to their heterosexuality, in a role where the boundaries between work and play are ambiguous. We argue that reps reveal masculinities and femininities that comply with traditional expectations. Young men reps are portrayed in ‘laddish’ terms in relation to their engagement with alcohol and sexual relationships with guests. Women reps emphasize their role as providers of emotional labour and taking control of guests’ perceptions and report refraining from sexual relationships with guests. Even within the same work role in this case study, men and women appear to construct different work identities.     

‘Not one of the family’: Gender and precarious work in the neoliberal university

Gender inequality within the university is well documented but proposals to tackle it tend to focus on the higher ranks, ignoring how it manifests within precarious work. Based on data collected as part of a broader participatory action research project on casual academic labour in Irish higher education, the article focuses on the intersection of precarious work and gender in academia. We argue that precarious female academics are non‐citizens of the academy, a status that is reproduced through exploitative gendered practices and evident in formal/legal recognition (staff status, rights and entitlements, pay and valuing of work) as well as in informal dimensions (social and decision‐making power). We, therefore, conclude that any attempts to challenge gender inequality in academia must look downward, not upward, to the ranks of the precarious academics.     

Just one of the guys until shower time: How symbolic embodiment threatens women's inclusion in the US military

The military constitutes a complex occupational field for women — one in which embodied masculinity is legitimized and rewarded, and women's bodies are often perceived as problems to the extent that they deviate from this masculine standard. Drawing from 33 in‐depth interviews with men and women who served on active duty in the US military between 2005 and 2015, we ask: How does female embodiment raise barriers to the full incorporation of women as equal workers in a total institution? Our analysis focuses on three primary aspects of what we call symbolic embodiment (female bodies as physically weak, as leaky/unclean and as sexually distracting), as they are rooted in the cultural imagination more than in any biological or experiential reality. We show how the symbolic embodiment of female workers effectively undermines individual claims of honorary masculinity by reasserting the pre‐eminence of naturalized capacities over individual performance and experience, and constructs women as second‐class workers within the masculine culture of the military. Our results extend the literature on the embodied self at work and reveal potential limits to Bourdieu's theory of the gendered habitus.