Working women in the city and urban wage growth in the United States

Although the female labor force participation rate of women has been steadily rising in the United States, there is substantial variation across cities. Previous cross‐county studies find that gender inequality in employment reduces economic efficiency hindering growth. This result is examined in a regional context, across metropolitan areas in the United States. Throughout multiple model formulations including instrumental variables approaches, higher initial female labor force participation rates are positively related to subsequent wage growth in metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in female labor force participation rates is associated with an increase in real wages of nearly 5 percent.     

Migrant masculinities: Bangladeshi men in Singapore's labour force

Although there is a growing body of scholars who have examined the reproduction and experiences of masculinities, research on the experiences of migrant men remains relatively limited. While I continue to draw upon insights from these scholars of both migration and gender, my data show that there remains considerable potential to contribute to this research field, in particular, analysing the reproduction of masculinity through a class lens. Drawing upon migrants' own narratives and notions of class by Bourdieu, I examine how Bangladeshi men make sense of their labour migration to Singapore, particularly after they fall out of work. Their responses are not only based upon instrumental calculation, but are also powerfully shaped by a complex set of normative gendered formations that can further constrain them.     

Slaves, servants and wage earners: Free and unfree labour, from Grotius to Blackstone

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

Spatial distribution of US employment in an urban efficiency wage setting

We analyze whether efficiency wages operate in urban labor markets, within the framework proposed by Ross and Zenou, in which shirking at work and leisure are assumed to be substitutes. We use unique data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) that allow us to analyze the relationships between leisure, shirking, commuting, employment, and earnings. We confirm that shirking and leisure are substitutes, and present an estimate of this relationship, representing the only empirical test of the relationship between a worker's time endowment and shirking at work. Our findings point to the existence of efficiency wages in labor markets.     

In the front line: women,work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of women's lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Poland's post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.     

Gendered divisions of labour in urban crop cultivation in a Kenyan town: implications for livelihood outcomes

This article highlights the labour contributions of men and women in urban crop cultivation in Eldoret, Kenya. Divisions of labour in urban gardening were mediated by social constructs of masculinity and femininity, gender differentials in entitlements and farming knowledge and intra-household power relations. The resulting labour distribution patterns manifested itself in the type of crops men and women took responsibility for, the specific agricultural tasks they performed and the spatial segregation of men's and women's activities and tasks. Traditional gender-related labour boundaries were also challenged and reworked. With regard to livelihood outcomes, women's labour contributed more directly to household food security, although men were increasingly getting involved in subsistence farming, which held prospects for improved productivity and therefore enhanced household food security.     

Understanding the spatialities of sexual assault against Indian women in India

Both domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault against women (SAAW) in public spaces continue to be significant problems facing Indian society. Moreover, the link between DV and SAAW is also commonly misconstrued. Adding to this confusion is the way in which forms of violence against women (VAW) – battering, rape, molestation and sexual abuse – lacks spatial and contextual analysis. There was nationwide outrage over the Nirbhaya incident of 16 December 2012, which escalated the issue of VAW to the centre stage of political debates. Indeed, the Nirbhaya incident has intensified the need for understanding the spatialities of SAAW in India and propelled the Government of India to pass the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013. Using a questionnaire survey supplemented by open-ended interviews, the research aims to understand how social and patriarchal norms allow SAAW to persist. The research narratives reveal that the contours of DV, leading to sexual exploitation of women, often spill over to the public spaces, thereby restricting women's mobility and creating fear of its (re)occurrence. Finally, I urge for reforms to tackle VAW while using Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 as an asset for reform.     

Winters without women: social change,split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia

In this article, I use absence as a lens to explore social change and masculinity in rural Mongolia, with a focus on household splitting during winter months. Since the breakdown in state-sponsored dormitory systems, many mobile pastoralists split their households to accommodate children during the school year. This results in women moving to settled centres while men remain in pastures to care for livestock. In critical reflections on rural work, both male and female herders have underscored concerns around the absence of women in rural homes. In Mongolia, absence has different implications for men and women, gendered division of labour and social roles, which are tied to household economies and pastoralist work practices. Drawing from ethnographic field research, the cases contribute to understandings of the co-constitutive nature of space and society, and attempts to dislodge ideas about the fixed nature of households in rural Mongolia.     

Single women and housing choices in urban Japan

Japan has experienced a particularly sharp decline in marriage in recent decades and a subsequent increase in ‘never-marrieds’ and single-person households. Social fragmentation has been associated with prolonged economic instability and neoliberalization that has restructured employment, housing and policy contexts. A particular social concern has been the difficulties facing those who do not follow conventional married life-courses. While marriage has been important to progress up a housing ladder and property asset ownership, singledom constrains housing choices and shapes very different life-chances over the life-course. This is especially true for single women who are disadvantaged in both housing and labour markets. This article examines the ongoing restructuring of housing opportunities that are helping reshape gender differences and experiences, as well as the new housing careers being followed by the growing number of urban single women in Japan. Based on interviews with female singles in metropolitan Tokyo, as well as secondary data from national surveys, the article considers how housing opportunities and choices are being renegotiated in regard to changing expectations of marriage, life-courses and home. We also reflect upon relationships between housing choices, social policy, single life-courses and processes of individualization.     

Shaping labour migration to Italy: the role of labour market institutions

This article critically examines the existing explanations for the initiation and perpetuation of labour migration to Italy between the 1970s and early 2000s and highlights the role of labour market institutions in shaping demand for migrant labour. It posits that the institutions governing the labour market in Italy have contributed to creating demand for migrant workers first by generating a significant amount of low-standard employment and second by producing massive obstacles and disincentives to the labour market participation of the domestic supply of labour.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

Belgian labour in World War II: Strategies of survival,organisations and labour relations

A system of collective bargaining at sector level emerged in Belgium after the First World War. The commissions paritaires, in which unions and employers were equally represented, became the centres of power of the pillarised Belgian trade union movement. This system of industrial relations was challenged during the general strike of 1936. Some employers tried to compete with the unions by creating factory councils, yellow unions and 'mutual societies' at company level. The strategic aim was to remove the centre of labour relations from sector to factory level. This tendency was reinforced during the Second World War. Pre-war trade unions were abolished, employers tried to take over the role of the unions by creating all kinds of social provisions at company level. The factory became a basic element of the survival strategy of the workers. Moreover, from 1941 a clandestine and more radical trade union movement, which opposed the pre-war pillarised trade unionism, emerged. These clandestine unions were organised at factory level. In their view, the factory and not the sector had to become the locus of industrial relations after the war. The organisational framework that was established between 1944 and 1952 was a synthesis of the pre-war model of industrial relations and newly established councils at company level.     

Farming in the troposphere: drawing together affective atmospheres and elemental geographies

This paper focuses on the much-neglected contribution of weather to research encounters. Affective atmospheres and elemental geographies are used as a platform to examine the vibrant materialities of the troposphere. The weather encapsulates human and non-human bodies, moods and actions in an enveloping space and I trace how these materialities and immaterialities are transmitted between bodies in the research setting. In a (post)phenomenological sense, certain atmospheric and meteorological events figure as lively participants. Through three research moments with farmers, I discuss how various weather conditions such as a warm balmy spring, wet muddy winter and the suffocating heat of summer enables thinking on the relational weight of atmospheres. By following participants throughout the circadian rhythms of farming over a year, seasonal fluctuations were recorded. Thus, researcher effort to comprehend how bodies become attuned and sensitive to the causal powers of the troposphere is foregrounded within share-farming experiences.