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This chapter initiates the book's statistical portrait of employment trends in industrialized contexts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This portrait illustrates the slow erosion of full‐time permanent employment in Australia, Canada, the European Union 15, and to a lesser extent the United States. Linking employment trends to sex/gender divisions of unpaid work, it also reveals that, despite formal equality, full‐time permanent employment and non‐standard employment remain gendered and shaped by immigration status to the present. Concern about the spread of precarious employment accompanied these trends. At the international level, the result was a series of regulations aimed at shoring up this employment norm: adopted between 1990 and 2008 and organized around its central pillars of working time, continuity, and the employment relationship, these regulations seek to ensure that citizen‐workers do not see their employment and occupational opportunities or working conditions limited by barriers based on form of employment.

This chapter discusses from a capability perspective — how and to what extent gender inequalities in terms of time allocation between paid and unpaid work can affect income poverty and individual well-being. In the first part, the chapter illustrates the reasons for which Sen's capability approach, compared to other theoretical frameworks, seems to be particularly adequate to shed light on the complex linkages between time allocation and well-being distribution. In the second part, the chapter presents the results of an empirical analysis based on the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth, giving evidence that strong gender inequalities exist both in terms of time and income allocation.

This chapter considers whether it is possible to devise effective state policies to achieve equality in household labor between men and women. It begins by examining the types of policy interventions used by the government and their effects on work behavior. It then considers whether policy intervention in men's and women's shares of unpaid work is possible or realistic.

The challenge of legislating for the informal economy affords us a unique opportunity to look beyond traditional labour law and capture forms of work and activity that currently fall through the cracks of labour law. It also allows us to focus on the goals of labour law in ensuring fair outcomes through addressing issues of unpaid work vulnerability. The creation of broad, inclusive legal categories and mechanisms can help capture the work arrangements in the informal economy. Social protection (as much as trade unions and collective bargaining) becomes a central vehicle through which labour law’s ‘transformative’ capacity can create a level playing field. This chapter examines the possibilities that such an approach opens up for the idea of labour law.

This chapter addresses the crucial issues of gender and rural–urban differences in the time spent on unpaid household work in India. These are particularly pressing issues given the wide disparities between these groups. Women are largely under-represented in the workforce in India. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report on gender parity, women in India are almost ten times more likely to be engaged in unpaid work such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children and older members of the family than are men. This compares with a global average of roughly three times the amount of time spent by men. The findings that women spend more time than men in unpaid household activities related to management and maintenance and care of children, sick, elderly and disabled household members provide clear evidence that there is gender division of unproductive and productive activities which is induced by prevailing sociocultural norms and practices.

This chapter explores the growing use of internships as a route into certain careers and professions. Internships, particularly unpaid, burgeoned during the years of the recession, becoming a widespread strategy deployed both by organisations to enhance their workforces and young people keen to enhance their CVs with work experience at a time when paid jobs were in short supply. Drawing on case study research conducted in one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy practices, as well as with young people on less prestigious internships, the chapter argues that internships are a highly exclusive entry route scheme, powerfully structured by social class. They vary considerably in terms of quality, and it is, in the main, those young people with family resources who are able to access and benefit from the most supportive and best rewarded internships in terms of pay, good quality training and employment outcomes.

This chapter considers whether quantitative time-use studies support feminist claims that women's unpaid work represents a major economic contribution in capitalist societies, that they continue to do significantly more of this work than men, that women have less disposable time than men, and that policies in the Nordic nations are producing a more equal distribution of time use. It reports that the evidence clearly supports the first two claims, but at first sight undermines the third and fourth. However, the chapter also finds that the studies have been based on particular temporal assumptions that cannot capture important aspects of many women's time use and which seriously misrepresent their experience of ‘free’ time. It also finds that more-detailed studies largely confirm feminist claims about women's disadvantage and the negative consequences of this.

This chapter links the feminist-inspired heuristic of TSOL to explore the work of volunteer managers (VMs) — those staff members who manage volunteers — and examines the work they undertake, their careers, and their search for a professional identity. It notes that VMs often work above contracted hours and undertake unpaid volunteer roles. It observes that Gluckmann's (2000) conceptual framework, TSOL, encompasses activities that cut across boundaries between paid and unpaid work, market and non-market, formal and informal sectors. It emphasises that TSOL proposes a sophisticated model of work that highlights its fuzzy edges, with the existence of activities that can be work or non-work according to context. It notes that such a framework facilitates an examination of the interconnections between paid and unpaid work.

This chapter develops the idea of moving ‘beyond dichotomy’ to focus on feminist critiques of the conventional distinction between the public sphere (the sphere of politics and paid employment) and the private sphere (the sphere of the family and personal life). In revealing the interconnections that blur the public/private distinction, these critiques reveal both the domestic bases of men's privileges in the public sphere and the economic and civic importance of many community and domestic activities. The chapter argues that feminist politics should not only expose and challenge the current distribution of paid work, unpaid work, and free time, but should also insist that unpaid work, particularly time spent caring for others, must be properly valued and rewarded as a key contribution to the welfare of society.

This chapter begins by recontextualizing and re-interpreting the dominant story of labour law in order to offer a different account, one that treats labour as a ‘fictive commodity’. After historicizing labour law's narrative, the chapter reviews one of the major contemporary contenders to replace it, an account that sees the function of labour law as regulating the labour market. Using this account as a jumping-off point, this chapter develops a reinvigorated conceptual and normative account of labour law, which draw's upon Amaryta Sen's conception of capabilities and Elizabeth Anderson's idea of democratic equality. The ‘new’ account of labour law proposed herein is attentive to feminist concerns about socially necessary, but unpaid, work.

Population-level factors associated with demographic ageing and policies intended to encourage older workers to extend working lives in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, UK and US are documented in this chapter. Data are from international sources (mainly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the CIA Factbook, to ensure comparability) derived from government agencies in the seven countries covered in this volume. Presenting population-level data for each country gives readers a starting point for considering how each nation compares to the others analysed in the later country chapters. Data related to demographic ageing, including patterns in longevity, proportion of national populations aged 65+, and country-specific dependency ratios are presented first. These set the stage for understanding the potential gendered implications of demands for older workers to postpone retirement and extend their working lives. Additional comparative data provided in this chapter include nation-specific patterns of women's and men's labour force participation, gender pay and gender pension gaps, typical retirement ages, and a summary of older worker's recent experiences in the labour market. Patterns of unpaid care work, time use, and full-time versus part-time employment are also compared to provide a foundation against which readers can assess the prospects for older workers in general, and the particular disadvantages faced by older women in particular, when governments demand that individuals postpone retirement and work longer.

The conclusion briefly summarises the contributions of each of the individual country chapters; to highlight major cross-national similarities and differences; to emphasise topics where more research is needed to better understand the myriad implications of extended working lives, and to consider some policy directions that could improve prospects for extended working life by countering the increasing polarisation of later life opportunities which current policy trajectories will create. While not denying the materially better conditions in Sweden or the United States than, say, Portugal or Ireland, there is not as much variation across the countries covered as might otherwise have been expected when extended working life is considered through a gendered lens. If older women's disadvantage is to be minimised or addressed, it is certain that the private sector alone cannot accomplish that. Only governments can redistribute resources and life chances in ways that would give future women (and vulnerable men) a fighting chance at good employment in later life and adequate income in old age.

This chapter investigates volunteering, much vaunted in recent policy as a valuable means by which young people may gain valuable experience for work and careers. The chapter argues however that policies to encourage more youth volunteering are based on a conundrum: the fact that there is no robust evidence to support the view that volunteering is a beneficial means by which to access paid employment. Case study research of a volunteering organisation in Scotland, which delivers bespoke employability training to young people which includes daily spells of volunteering in a range of voluntary sector workplaces, provides some insight into why this might be the case. Work experience placements can consist of young people ‘time-filling’ with meaningless, poor-quality work and lack of engagement by employers makes it difficult for young people to gain experience in organisations offering paid employment opportunities. However, the chapter underscores the significant contribution of trainers to other beneficial outcomes of volunteering programmes, such as the confidence and wellbeing of young trainees.

This chapter emphasizes the extent to which the legal separation of unpaid domestic labour performed in the household from paid employment has shaped women’s paid work. It traces the legacy of this separation by considering the entitlement of paid domestic workers employed in private households to the statutory minimum wage. The legal treatment of paid care work in the recipient’s home is used to illustrate how atypical employment arrangements such as ‘zero-hours’ (casual) contracts have excluded women workers from a range of employment-related protections and benefits associated with the standard employment relationship. The chapter stresses the need to move beyond the contract of employment in order to cultivate gender equality in the labour market and to protect all workers against foreseeable work-related risks.

This chapter draws on the legacy of Eleanor Rathbone, an early twentieth-century British campaigner for family allowances, and her aspirations for a society without child poverty. It deploys ‘utopia as method’ both to explore the inadequacy of current policies aimed at reducing child poverty and to consider the principles on which society would have to be organised to ensure the effective eradication, rather than merely alleviation, of child poverty. Utopia as method entails looking systemically and holistically at social institutions, social processes and their outcomes. The core principles identified as necessary to eliminating child poverty are: promoting equality; revaluing care, and considering the total social organisation of labour in society both within and beyond the market; rethinking what counts as production and wealth; universal child benefit and a guaranteed basic income or citizen's income; making sustainability central; and prioritising human flourishing and well-being. The chapter focuses primarily on the UK, but the framework has general relevance. It broadens out into a global perspective on the kind of society that would secure the rights of children to economic and social security and the development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.

This chapter approaches Nordic fatherhood from the time use perspective. The chapter looks at paid and domestic work and especially the time spent on child care by Finnish fathers from the late 1980s until 2010. The changes in the time use are reflected against the basic principles of and changes in family policies in Finland, which can be assumed to affect the public attitude towards preferred division of unpaid and paid work in the families. According to the results, Finnish fathers spend significantly more time attending to child care and other unpaid work than two decades ago. On the other hand they spend less time on paid work. The results indicate that the shifts in the attitudes associated with family values have accompanied changes in the time use of fathers towards a more involved fatherhood.

This chapter argues that the gender budgeting policies often rest on a highly restricted assumption that ‘all public expenditure cannot be gender partitioned’. This is especially true with reference to the mainstream expenditure such as public infrastructure, which is assumed to be non-rival in nature and hence applying gender lens to this expenditure is not feasible. The author refutes this argument using the time-budget statistics. The time-budget data reveals that this argument is often flawed, as there is intrinsic gender dimension to the non-rival expenditure. The results suggest that the time allocation in the economic activities carried out in unpaid care sector involves more girls and women and therefore infrastructure investment with gender-sensitive water polices and energy policies can really benefit women. The chapter also puts forth that without looking at time-use data, any exercise of gender budgeting will remain partial and inadequate.

This chapter examines the impact of the 1930s economic crisis on women workers, focusing on their experience during the Great Depression and World War II while also reflecting on the 1970s. It first considers women's unemployment and unpaid work in the Great Depression, noting how the sex-typing of occupations created an inflexibility in the structure of the labor market that prevented the expulsion of women from it. It then evaluates the “reserve army” theory by analyzing how women's economic role in the family was affected by the economic crisis of the 1930s, suggesting that it was the work of women in the home, rather than their labor market participation, that was forced to “take up the slack” in the economy during this period of contraction. The chapter demonstrates that job segregation by gender persists even during major economic upheavals like depressions and world war. It also refutes the reserve army theory by showing that women were less likely to suffer unemployment than men during the Great Depression.

This chapter talks about gender and pensions in relation to the European Union. It compares the trends in fertility and women's employment, along with the differing extent to which EU pension systems are sufficient and adapted to the needs of those with caring commitments. The chapter begins by looking at the social value of unpaid care work and then compares women's fertility and their employment across EU countries. The pension system in Britain is then compared with those of other EU countries in terms of adequacy, treatment of family caring, and gender inequality of later-life income.