No More Jobs for the Boys? Gender and Class in the restructuring of the British Economy

Abstract

ACROSS THE WORLD female employment has increased in the face of overall rises in levels of unemployment. For the most part such feminisation is ‘characterised as an outcome of cultural changes associated with women’s broadening aspirations, rather than with changes in the relative demand for male and female labour. In Britain as the end of the century approached, however, commentators increasingly described the problem of unemployment as a male problem and linked feminisation with a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Balls, 1994; Hutton, 1995). While there was near parity in UK unemployment rates in 1983, by 1996 the female rate was only 77% of the male, even when measured to include all those seeking work. At the same time gender wage discrimination appears as persistent as ever, with hourly wages for women working part time trailing well below those of comparable full-time male workers (Harkness,1996). There are a number of ways of resolving these apparently conflicting trends. Most obviously, women enter jobs on terms they don’t set; feminisation in the sense of an increasing No More Jobs for the Boys? Gender and Class in the restructuring of the British Economy