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United by Gender or Divided by Class? Women's Work Orientations and Labour Market Behaviour
Author(s) -
James Laura
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
gender, work and organization
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.159
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0432
pISSN - 0968-6673
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2007.00367.x
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , work (physics) , social psychology , social class , class (philosophy) , meaning (existential) , paid work , sociology , demographic economics , constraint (computer aided design) , psychology , gender studies , labour economics , positive economics , economics , political science , demography , epistemology , law , mechanical engineering , population , philosophy , engineering , psychotherapist , working hours
Recent debates on the relationship between women's work orientations and their labour market behaviour have been marked by a polarization between those who emphasize personal choice and those who argue that constraint is equally, if not more, important. However, in both approaches ‘orientation’ is understood primarily as a choice between prioritizing paid work or family (understood almost exclusively in terms of childcare responsibilities) for all women regardless of socioeconomic class. Drawing on in‐depth qualitative interview data, this article outlines some of the similarities and differences in the work orientations of women in professional/managerial, intermediate and routine/manual socioeconomic classes in Oxford. It develops the concept of ‘work orientation’ to include the meaning of paid work as well as labour market behaviour for women with and without children. The data presented here suggest that there are important class‐based differences in women's attitudes and that apparently similar work orientations may have very different causes and labour market consequences.