Gender and Employment: A Global Lens on Feminist Analyses and Theorizing of Labor Markets

This review of feminist analyses and theorizing of labor markets uses a global lens to reveal the forces shaping gender inequality. The review focuses on the increasing dominance of services primarily in the liberal market economies of the United States and the United Kingdom along with examples from Asia where restructuring has shifted locations of work and affected new ways of working by a diverse and mobile workforce. Labor market restructuring through commodification of care, outsourcing of household tasks and informalization of employment affects the complexity of relationships between and the interconnectedness of social inequalities transnationally and in global cities. Place matters when analyzing how service employment alters divisions of labor and how these labor market changes are gendered. Global restructuring not only poses new challenges but also creates new opportunities for mobilization around a more robust notion of equality.