This book presents an original and groundbreaking approach to gender inequality. Looking at women's power in the home, in the workplace, and in politics from a political economy perspective, the authors demonstrate that equality is tied to demand for women's labor outside the home, which is a function of structural, political, and institutional conditions.--[book jacket].

Wage setting has historically been a deeply political and cultural as well as economic process. This informative and accessible book explores how US wage regulations in the twentieth century took gender, race-ethnicity and class into account. Focusing on social reform movements for living wages and equal wages, it offers an interdisciplinary account of how women's work and the remuneration for that work has changed along with the massive transformations in the economy and family structures. The controversial issue of establishing living wages for all workers makes this book both a timely and indispensable contribution to this wide ranging debate, and it will surely become required reading for anyone with an interest in modern economic issues.

In the present stage of international capitalist development, women are increasingly being drawn into paid employment by multinational and state investment in the Third World. This volume investigates the interrelations between women's participation in the urban wage economy and their productive and reproductive roles in the household and family. It brings together a selection of important recent research on all major regions of the developing world by leading scholars in this emerging field. It argues that the household itself is an important determinant of the character and timing of women's labour force participation, and it assesses the extent to which family patterns can be expected to change as women increasingly work outside the home.

This book is a re-interpretation of labour market policy models from a gender perspective, providing an analysis of within-gender inequality and how these policies affect inequality. It sheds light on the internal and external challenges confronting different gendered political economies, with distinct constellations of adjustment problems and reform agendas to incorporate women into the labour market. As such, the book shows how female political mobilization can influence labour market policy-making process. The target audience of this book is made by researchers and postgraduate students in the disciplines of sociology, gender studies, political science, political economy, and practitioners working in the fields of welfare policies and gender labour market services.

This book explores the restructuring of the labour market and the opportunities that have resulted from economic globalization. The historical, political, geographical, and social relationships that female workers have had within the production process and the politics of work are examined to provide an understanding of the positioning of women within the global production system and the international division of employment. Unheard Voices: Women, Work and Political Economy of Global Production aims to give the reader an understanding of new workplace arrangements and the changing gendered patterns of work. The book is relevant to those interested in labour economics, the political economy, and gender studies.

Poverty is not simply the result of an individual's characteristics, behaviors or abilities. Rather, as David Brady demonstrates, poverty is the result of politics. In Rich Democracies, Poor People, Brady investigates why poverty is so entrenched in some affluent democracies whereas it is a solvable problem in others. Drawing on over thirty years of data from eighteen countries, Brady argues that cross-national and historical variations in poverty are principally driven by differences in the generosity of the welfare state. An explicit challenge to mainstream views of poverty as an inescapable outcome of individual failings or a society's labor markets and demography, this book offers institutionalized power relations theory as an alternative explanation.

The transformation of women's lives over the past century is among the most significant and far-reaching of social and economic phenomena, affecting not only women but also their partners, children, and indeed nearly every person on the planet. In developed and developing countries alike, women are acquiring more education, marrying later, having fewer children, and spending a far greater amount of their adult lives in the labor force. Yet, because women remain the primary caregivers of children, issues such as work-life balance and the glass ceiling have given rise to critical policy discussions in the developed world. In developing countries, many women lack access to reproductive technology and are often relegated to jobs in the informal sector, where pay is variable and job security is weak. Considerable occupational segregation and stubborn gender pay gaps persist around the world. The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy is the first comprehensive collection of scholarly essays to address these issues using the powerful framework of economics. Each chapter, written by an acknowledged expert or team of experts, reviews the key trends, surveys the relevant economic theory, and summarizes and critiques the empirical research literature. By providing a clear-eyed view of what we know, what we do not know, and what the critical unanswered questions are, this Handbook provides an invaluable and wide-ranging examination of the many changes that have occurred in women's economic lives.

In the period since the Second World War there has been both a massive influx of women into the Canadian job market and substantive changes to the welfare state as early expansion gave way, by the 1970s, to a prolonged period of retrenchment and restructuring. Through a detailed historical account of the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program from 1945 to 1997, Ann Porter demonstrates how gender was central both to the construction of the post-war welfare state, as well as to its subsequent crisis and restructuring. Drawing on a wide range of sources (including archival material, UI administrative tribunal decisions, and documents from the government, labour and women's groups) she examines the implications of restructuring for women's equality, as well as how women's groups, labour and the state interacted in efforts to shape the policy agenda. Porter argues that, while the post-war welfare state model was based on a family with a single male breadwinner, the new model is one that assumes multiple family earners and encourages employability for both men and women. The result has been greater formal equality for women, but at the same time the restructuring and reduction of benefits have undermined these gains and made women's lives increasingly difficult. Using concepts from political economy, feminism, and public policy, this study will be of interest across a range of disciplines.

Offers an analysis of 12 indicators from the ILO Key Indicators of the Labour Market database. The aim is to look for progress or lack of progress towards the goal of gender equality in the world of work and identify where and why blockages to labour market equity continue to exist. Focuses on the relationship of women to labour markets and compares employment outcomes for men and women to the best degree possible given the available labour market indicators.

This book focuses on the relationship between the process of producing commodities and the process of social reproduction of the labouring population, and seeks to restore that problematic relationship to the central place it had in the analysis of Smith, Ricardo, and Marx.