Introduction: Gender and the concept of precarious employment

Abstract

Industrialized societies have experienced dramatic labour market transformations over the last few decades – and gender relations are at the centre of such changes. The key changes have proceeded through periods of economic growth and periods of recession. For example, women’s labour force participation rates have risen or stabilized at relatively high levels as a result of developments ranging from women’s collective struggle for formal equality, governments’ promotion of the employment of women as means of raising employment rates, changing household structures, and technological change. At the same time, the jobs taken by men and women have been restructured, resulting in more service sector jobs, higher skill requirements but also higher demands. Yet industrial and occupational sex segregation persist in the labour markets of countries as diverse as Sweden, still characterized by social democratic institutions, and the United States, defined by a prototypically neo-liberal regime. Earnings differences also remain between women and men, and they are evident among the sexes along the lines of ‘race’, ethnicity and immigrant status as well. In most industrialized societies, moreover, Keynesian strategies of demandmanagement have been in disfavour, prompting the reconfiguration of labour and social policies through which women and men access labour security. The current period is thus often characterized as an era of both gendered labour market change and concern about persistent inequality and precariousness.

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