2

THE METHODOLOGY OF TRANSLATION

AT HOME, IN THE WORKPLACE OR EVERYWHERE?
DISCOURSES & DEBATES ON THE SEXUAL DIVISION OF WORK, FORMATS AND CODE-SEQUENCING
How then to write the her-story of work? A her-story that adequately accounts for the origins and evolution of both change and consistency of sexual inequality and subordination in the workplace and career resumes of working women. An excellent beginners guide on the state of the art can be found in among others Harriet Bradleys1 critical literature survey. In the following discourse legend, we depart from Bradleys extensive map over current debates in the genre to isolate and discuss three chief areas of controversy

CODE-SEQUENCING CAUSAL ORIGINS:

In this regard, Bradley juxtaposes two extreme positions into which a range of different theoretical strands feed, viz., production versus reproduction-centered formats. Conning the search for causes rmly within the sphere if work, production-centered formats often involve explanations of gender differences by extrapolation as it were via existing frameworks and concepts for analyzing other social divisions of labor. As Bradley suggests, they just simply add gender in, adapting existing economic concepts to explain womens specic position. A variety of applications sort under this format.2 Reproduction-centered formats turn the table of priorities completely in the opposite direction, seeking instead the causes of gender divisions within the home or domestic sphere. They employ more non-economic concepts to capture these divisions as they articulate on different levels as well (e.g., ideology, culture). Again, here a pastiche of theoretical positions can be discerned.3 In contrast, the third format, or what Bradley refers to as joint-orientation, is an attempt to cross-fertilize the best of above rival positions. It argues that an analysis of both home and workplace, production and reproduction, is crucial to any general explanation of sexual division. It uses a more comprehensive and elaborate denition of key concepts of patriarchy

Harriet (1989) Mens and Womens Work: A sociological history of the sexual division of labor in employment. Oxford: Polity Press. Although other reviews are available in e.g., Walby (1986), Philips & Taylor (1986), Milkman (1987), Bradleys efforts exceed them in comprehensiveness, clarity and depth. Her critical discussion of both thick and thin formats, i.e., attempts to provide general as well as specic explanations to the sexual division of work, and relevant debates across disciplines (history, sociology, and political economy) has been Bradleys greatest asset.
1Bradley, 2 Ranging

from classic and rened Marxist frameworks (reserve army of labor theory (Marx 1976) and Bravermans pioneering account of the deskilling process) to the Weberian tradition (the notion of dual or segmented markets in e.g., Barron & Norris 1976; Kerckel 1980, Rubery 1980), to neoclassical economic theories of consumer choice. While we will return to some of these examples later, it is at this point important to note two common criticisms levelled against this format. Firstly, by subsuming gender divisions to other more overwhelming forms of social inequalities (e.g., class) this format fails to account for the specic nature of gender divisions. Secondly, xation on the work sphere leads it to seriously underestimate the role family relations may have in the sexual division of work.
3From

conventional mainstream sociology, specially functionalism with its stress on socialization and sex roles, to radical feminists considering reproductive relations or constructions of sexuality to be the root of sexual divisions and male power, to different shades of feminist Marxism. Critical cavities associated with this format are the reverse of those in the former. That is, insofar as it perceives economic inequalities simply as the shadow cast of those generated in the family or domestic sphere, or arising from attitudes engendered by socialization, patriarchal ideology or culture, this format tends to overlook the way in which the economy itself breeds sexual divisions. As one critic (Mies 1986) remarked, it may explain why segregation at work persists, but not why it developed in the rst place.

and male dominance to capture changing forms of sexual division at work over time and space. In this context, patriarchy, unlike in the earlier usage of the term, is perceived as being institutionally embedded not only in family and home, but in other spheres and levels (Walby 1986) of society (e.g., workplace, state, male violence and sexuality). Changes in the pattern of sexual inequalities will depend on tensions existing between economy and patriarchy and the way patriarchal institutions interlink at various levels.

THE HISTORICAL DISPUTE: CODE-SEQUENCING TIME OF CHANGE, BEFORE OR AFTER THE ADVENT OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM? AND SPECIFIC CAUSES OF CHANGE?
There is rarely any quarrel among scholars that industrial capitalism delivered far-reaching changes to preexisting sexual divisions of work and the socio-economic status of women in Western societies. What has sparked erce historical debate however is a) whether these changes add up to net-gains or losses for women in general. Disagreement on this point rests on two main issues: the actual nature of the division of labor (i.e., the degree of egalitarianism) and the exact economic role and status of women in preindustrial societies, including the way (s) in which industrial capitalism deated or inated womens opportunities. Co-extending with the above therefore are b) the question of the correct time codesequencing of these changes (whether net-positive or negative), and c) what factors specically caused them. Did these changes anticipate or synchronize with the advent of industrial capitalism? Antipodal views in the historical debates are most pointedly reliefed in Alice Clarks work (1919), to be followed up later by Ivy Pinchbeck (1930),4 versus Edward Shorters (1976) diametrically contrasting version of women in work during the pre-industrial era. Clarks classic account, for a time the uncontested orthodoxy in the eld, starts from the assumption that preindustrial societies founded on household subsistence or family-based market production logically bred relatively egalitarian institutions of marriage. The rule of joint partnership between husband and wife manifests signicantly in the more integrated character of then existing sexual divisions of work, which was, as argued, fatally erased by the rise of industrial capitalism. Accordingly, as the household economy integrated production and consumption functions, both sexes were expected to contribute to the common resource pool and thus share in both productive and reproductive work. Nor were private and public spheres, as it later came to be, sharply divided by gender. Despite the sexual division of work, work contributions of both sexes enjoyed more or less equal social recognition, thereby giving women the potential for independent existence. Industrial capitalism unleashed a series of corrosive changes in among others technology and work organization, particularly in terms of waged labor shifting from the family wages of yore to the more contemporary individual wages, and the irreversible split between home and workplaceall of which damaged beyond repair womens economic role and social status, sealing their fate once and for all to a position of domesticity, marginality and total dependency on men. In this sense, thus, correct time code-sequencing should set the advent
4While

both Clark and Pinchbeck linked the changes in womens status crucially to the decline of family industry and the spread of capitalist organization and work regimes, Pinchbecks narrative went beyond the classic account of feminine and juvenile exploitation in the early mills and factories by arguing that capitalism in the long run did benet women in terms of expanding educational and economic opportunities, and as such providing them possibilities of escape from patriarchal and parental control.

of industrial capitalism as the cut-off point for the substantive deterioration of womens position in work. Clarks version nds its quintessential anti-thesis in Shorters account of pre-industrial France and Germany. He asserts that the sexual division of labor in traditional peasant societies there were in fact stricter than Clark has been willing to admit. Far from the idyllic egalitarian image she draws, marriage institutions made women as it were virtually serve life sentences as prisoners of patriarchy. Shorter argues that strict gender divisions of labor meant that womens economic role was generally relegated to the domestic/reproductive sphere of work. Work as such conferred neither high social status nor the potentials for attaining economic independence to women. Their social status in these societies was on the contrary determined exclusively by their husbands. Industrial capitalism and the market blasted this equation asunder and decisively freed women from the cage of the patriarchal home. Hence, like Clark, Shorter sets the clock of change to the onset of industrial capitalism, but unlike her, the signication here is entirely the inverse: net-positive rather than negative gains for working women. Evidence to support either position has emerged in recent scholarship, but this remains partial rather than conclusive.5 Overall, the controversy over whether women were better or worse off before or after the birth of industrial capitalism has in different ways referred to four specic factors pivotal in either maintaining or mitigating sexual segregation at work: THE SEPARATION OF HOME AND WORKPLACE Associated with the rise of industrial capitalism this split is often summoned in net-negative gains accounts (Clark 199, Hamilton 1978) as central factor to the decline in womens economic activity. Thus it has been argued that 16th and 17th century capitalism (e.g., England), by removing the workplace from the home and by subjecting work to schedules that harmonized ill with the rhythm of the household, eliminated in effect the base on which women entered production. This splitting process is seen as the basis for the clear-cut redenition of sex roles, assigning men and women respectively to the binary opposite spheres of productive/public versus domestic/private work. However, recent studies (Gittins 1985, Bradley 1986, Rose 1986) appear to jeopardize this position, questioning the extent to which the split has really occurred (e.g., data showing widespread proliferation of female out- or home-workers in the early industrial phase, or the continued survival of family-based productive systems in some trades well into the 19th century). These studies suggest, all in all, that the links between work and family have yet been completely severed, thus casting doubt over the extent to which home/work separation is really the cause of womens inferior position at work. THE NOTION OF THE FAMILY WAGE SYSTEM This has appeared frequently in the menu of key factors constraining womens economic opportunities as well as reinforcing their unrelenting roles as unpaid housewives and domestic workers in capitalist economies. Some (Hartmann 1981) even see it as the bedrock
5

For a detailed report we refer to Bradleys discussions. For example, Segalens (1983) & Middletons (1979) works on women in French and English medieval societies appear to bring grist to the mills of Shorters arguments on the inferior economic role of women during the pre-industrial period. Conversely, Clark musters partial support from Snells (1985) data showing i.a. the greater frequency of female apprenticeship and artisanship in 18th century England, as well as Scott & Tillys (1975) report indicating that pre-industrial household production and work distinctions by sex that it engendered did not necessarily imply discrimination or hierarchy. What all this suggests however, as some contributors (Middleton 1985, Charles 1985, Gittins 1985) caution is that these processes of change are immensely complicated; that there are national and regional variations in womens roles before and after the onset of industrial capitalism; and that the ambiguities of status and power make it difcult to charaterize this change as a simple trajectory, in one direction or the other. On the basis of conicting evidence, only tentative conclusions about pre-industrial sexual divisions of work can be drawn.

of the present sexual division of labor. Historically, the negative argument here links the campaign for the family wage by mid-19th century (male-dominated trade unions) onwards to moves to exclude women from factory work, either crowding them into occupations (e.g., domestic service) seen as tting for women or conning them to the home. In contrast, the positive argument (Humphries 1977) sees it historically as part of a defensive strategy by the proletarian family to maintain its autonomy from capitalist employers. Between the two, the positive argument appears to be more shaky in the face of evidence indicating countless occasions in which the concept of family wage has been used by male trade-unionists to justify sex differences in wages. This oversight stems from an unwarrantedly unied and homogenous view of the working class family, which tends to ignore the uneven distribution of (patriarchal) power within it. Thus, it is blind to the patriarchal elements of trade union behavior, as embodied in family wage demands. Working class men in this sense have actively colluded to keep the wages of their women and wives low, making them dependent on men, a dependency reinforced in the rebound by womens generally low earning potential on the labor marketwhich then undergirds their easy withdrawal and retreat to the connes of home and domestic work. These conicting views coincide with contrasting interpretations of protective legislation discussed in the preceding text. PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION As enshrined in a series of mid-18th and 19th century Acts (e.g., Mining and subsequent Factory Acts in for instance Great Britain) dovetailing historically as believed with rising demands for the family wage. These Acts which led to the regulation of hours and conditions of womens work, have likewise been the subject of split interpretations. Like in the notion of the family wage system, some tend to see these as the culmination of working class strategy and tactics to advance general proletarian class interests by using the womens issue to outmaneuver and neutralize expected capitalist resistance(again a prominent argument in e.g., Humphries 1981). Others (most comprehensive in Walbys (1986) work included here, argue powerfully for patriarchal motives in the imposition of these Acts. In essence, male workers fearing rising competition from their female peers and the expected corresponding downward pressures on their wages, as well as wishing to establish patriarchal supremacy at home, struggle actively for the passage of the Acts. Overall, the jury on this issue is still unable to pass unanimous judgement on the exact role of legislation on segregation and sex-typing, although there is much evidence to suggest that protective laws today continue to exercise some restricting inuence. THE TWO WORLD WARS The wars have often been cited in the debates as the two most important historical events successively turning the tide against vintage sexual stereotyping in the West. Conventional wisdom here argues that the war (s) mad for womens liberation in the workplace. Responding to state calls of patriotic duty, women during the wars entered the labor market to ll in the void left behind by their men ghting in the battlefront, taking over the full range of occupations once reserved for men. While the postwar depression pushed most of the women back to housewifery, their contributions were acknowledged and rewarded politically with the granting of franchise. This was repeated in the succeeding global war, only this time, expanding consumerism and attendant rising labor demand amidst postwar calls for the return to the home, guaranteed nonetheless that women stayed on in the labor market. Moreover, the wars illustrated most spectacularly that sexual stereotypes and

divisions at work were more arbitrary than presumed and were essentially articial constructs lending themselves to exible re-denitions under changing circumstances. Recent accounts however tend to thwart this optimistic scenario. Some (Hakim 1979) contend forthrightly that wartime experience had little long-term impact on the structure of job segregation. A Pyrrhic victory for women at best, the intervening postwar periods show in the rst instance a total return to the prewar sexual division of labor and even a reinforcement of segregation with the introduction of the marriage bar by some employers; in the second instance, women may have indeed become part of the permanent workforce, but they were quickly channeled into new types of feminine occupations in the service sector. Neither was the takeover of mens jobs as complete and unconditional as hitherto assumed. On the capitalist side, as other critics argue (Thom 1978, Braybon 1981, Summereld 1984) the war disruptions inadvertently provided legroom in which to introduce and develop otherwise controversial new forms of work organization and technology, In fact, women were assigned only to the least skilled components of the reorganized work process or to jobs eventually to be labeled feminine and therefore with marginal pay-rates to match. All this added up to the maintenance of todays consistent wage gulf between men and women. Meanwhile within working-class organizations, postwar experience testify not to the reduction but reinforcement of male power. In tandem with trade union growth in size and legitimacy, men, traditionally occupying positions of authority here were able to renegotiate a return to the prewar gender status quo with their employers. To the extent that they were able to halt employer attempts to feminize the workforce in certain industries, segregation actually became even more marked in some places after the war. On balance, thus, according to critics a general re-appropriation rather than expropriation of old patterns of job segregation by sex evolved after the wars.