Women's Employment and Gender Attitudes: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Norway and the Czech Republic

Abstract

A series of changes in the nature and organization of productive activity, and thus in the structure of employment, are under way around the world. Manufacturing employment is in decline, and service-related employment is on the increase. Technological changes have facilitated the internationalization of finance, as well as the possibilities of employment relocation and transfer. These globalizing (or internationalizing) trends are also associated with an increase in the level of women's paid work, which seems to be universal.1 Many of the jobs created within the service sector are 'women's' jobs - e.g. in teaching, caring and the leisure industry, and electronicsrelated light assembly work is replacing jobs in heavy manufacturing. In contemporary debates, the increasing importance of such 'global' trends has been associated with theoretical arguments which suggest that the national or 'societal' level has become of less significance in sociological explanations. Global capital can bypass national attempts at control and regulation. Similarly, it is suggested that (in part because of the impact of electronic media), dominant national cultures are also becoming of less relevance. Paradoxically, however, it is argued that the decline of the 'national' is accompanied by a renewed importance of the 'local', as subnational and regional cultures become more prominent. Increasingly, therefore, there is a celebration of diversity of practice and individual identities - arguments centrally associated with the closely related theme of 'postmodernism' (Kumar 1994:122).