An Analysis Of Key Issues In Women's Work

In sociological terms how does Catherine Hakim’s work ‘Key Issues in women’s work: Female heterogeneity and the polarisation of women’s employment’ make the familiar strange?

Introduction

In Key issues in women’s work economic sociologist Hakim tests the feminist theory of patriarchy within the study field of women’s employment, in particular in comparison to men. By expanding on Becker’s rational choice theory Hakims sets out to disprove what she considers widely held feminist myths. She reassesses existing papers and research as evidence for a secondary interpretation. Her in depth arguments are further backed up with statistical data analysis and a longitude study of changes in women’s employment. Her work favours personal agency over structural

This cannot be explained by preference theory alone as it is in line with existing theories of racism and perceptions of ethnicity as social stratifying method.

McRae paper

Carries out empirical research on women’s views on work and home to test preference theory. Builds on Hakims study by adding another dimension to Hakim’s arguments: “Instead it is argued that a complete explanation of women’s labour market choices, depends as much on understanding the constraints that differentially affect women as it does on understanding their personal preferences” (McRae 2003:318) “Although support is found for Hakim’s argument that employment careers are centrally important for only a minority of women, Little evidence is adduced that it is preference that distinguish the minority from the majority” (McRae 2003:317).

Women who have similar preferences may not necessarily have the same market position in terms of employment. There are other factors to consider, which can cause inequality: education, social capital, class, ethnicity,

Even if men and women made equal career and life choices, equality of opportunity does not always equal equality of outcome as people are heterogeneous and have different negative and positive inequalities to contend with. A sociological study carried out by the University of Leicester revealed that high earning career committed men would not mind earning less if they were able to spend more time with family. “58 per cent of male breadwinners - those who earned more than their partners - were more likely to want to spend more time at home, and 15 per cent wanted to work longer” (Kanji cited by Trueman 2015)

So perhaps the choice between family and career is not a gender issue but a ‘nature of work’ issue whereby society does not have the time proportions of work and life correctly balanced to enable people to enjoy and achieve