Coyle, Angela (1984) Working women : a study of the meaning of employment and unemployment in women's lives. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis has addressed an ongoing debate on gender differentiation
in employment which has been concerned to analyse why women's economic
activity should be constructed as more marginal than men's and why women's
employment should be so concentrated in low paid, low skilled jobs. The
research has examined the nexus of women's paid and unpaid work and how
the form of the organisation of the family and familial ideology undermines
the crucial importance of paid employment both to women and the family,
whilst the form of the organisation of the labour process often undervalues
the real competences women have. The research makes plain the contribution
of women's paid and unpaid work. It has been focussed as a case study, on
the experiences of a sample of women clothing workers who were made
redundant. The case study provides material on the organisation of the
clothing industry and the nature of women's jobs there; on employer's
strategies for restructuring and rationalising the labour process - which
includes factory closure, and the impact and meaning of job loss in the
context of patterns of female economic activity, women's familial role and
the conditions of the female labour market. As such therefore, it is a
study not just of job loss, but of the nature of women's work. The thesis
concludes that women's paid employment remains differentiated and
marginalised whilst women are employed as cheap labour and whilst that is
endorsed by men's claim to a breadwinner's wage. The sexual division of
labour within the family contributes to the construction of women as cheap
labour. However the wage form, as an unequal wage, sustains those
familial relations.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Women -- Employment -- Great Britain, Sex role in the work environment -- Great Britain, Women clothing workers -- Great Britain -- Case studies, Clothing trade -- Great Britain
Official Date:	July 1984
Dates:	Date Event July 1984 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Elger, Tony, 1946-
Extent:	vi, 264 leaves
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/4245

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