A reveiw of Key issues in Women's Work: Female Heterogeneity and the Polarisation of Women's Employment by Catherine Hakim (Athlone Press £35 hardback and £14.95 paperback) (See also the British Journal of Sociology, September 1995 and March 1996)
A controversy has broken out in the world of sociology between researchers into women's employment. The debate has reached the pages of the Guardian and has caused strong feelings on both sides. These centre on one of the most controversial questions of politics in recent decades: do women want to work outside the home or would they rather give their priority to home life and childcare?
Many feminists and socialists would have believed this question settled rather a long time ago. Women do work outside the home in ever increasing numbers. Whereas less than half of all women of working age had jobs in the early 1960s, now nearly three quarters do. One estimate assumes that young women growing up now can expect to work a decade longer than their grandmothers did. Even women with young children are returning to work - and increasingly to full time work - long before the children are at school age.
So where does the argument come from? It has been triggered by the writings of one sociology researcher, Catherine Hakim, who wrote an article last year entitled 'Five Feminist Myths about Women's Employment'. She argued as follows: that women's employment had not in fact been rising; that women were less committed to work than men; that their childcare responsibilities were not the main reason for them working part time; that part time jobs were not necessarily worse; and that women were less likely to be in stable employment.
These claims contradict much of the best known research on women's work, and it is not surprising that some of those most identified with such research - Jill Rubery and Shirley Dex, who have written books on aspects of women's employment, and Ceridwen Roberts, who co-authored perhaps the best known survey on women working - have joined with others to reply to the supposed myths. Hakim in turn has written a rejoinder, and has also published a new book elaborating the arguments.
So is it just a storm in a sociological teacup, or does the debate really matter? The implications of Hakim's analysis are fairly serious: they suggest that women's roles have not really changed, that the majority are still most happy as homemakers, and that anyone who says differently is simply a 'career woman' who has no understanding or sympathy for those who prefer a 'homemaker career'.
These are similar arguments to the ones that existed before the social explosions of the 1960s: the development of the women's movement, the expansion of education for women, the impact of the pill and freer abortion on women's sexuality. Then women who followed 'careers' - and often decided not to have children in order to do so - were regarded as a tiny minority who had little in common with the mass of women. Now we are again being told that women would 'really' rather be in the home and that those of us who say differently are merely fuelling our own (minority) prejudices to the detriment of most women.
The arguments are as ideological as they ever were and rest on an interpretation of the facts which is at least open to challenge. Take, for example, the question of women's employment. Hakim disputes the view that this has continued to expand especially since the Second World War. She argues instead that 'there was no change in female full time work rates from 1841 until 1993, which remained at an almost unvarying level of one third of women of working age.
Economic activity rates for women aged 15 to 59 years have increased steadily in the postwar decades, from 47 percent in 1961 to a projected 74 percent by 2001' ('Five Feminist Myths').
This does, of course, represent a very large increase in both the numbers and proportion of women working. But, as Hakim points out, this increase has been very largely in the area of part time jobs, not full time. She counts every part time job as half a full time job and so assumes that - in terms of full time equivalents (FTEs) - 'there was absolutely no increase in the volume of female employment, measured in full time equivalents numbers, from World War Two up to 1987 in Britain.'
There is, however, a flaw in the argument. Part time work cannot simply be judged as half full time work. There are many part time jobs which only amount to ten or 12 hours a week. But there are equally a great many which involve working only a few hours less than similar full time jobs. Part time work is generally calculated as 30 hours or less a week, which is only five or seven hours less than the typical working week in many clerical jobs.
There is no fundamental difference between a woman who works between 9.30 and 3.30 in a building society with a half hour meal break and one who works 9 to 5 with an hour break. As Hakim's critics have written, 'Even if two part time jobs are comparable with one full time job for statisticians, this is not so for those who hold the jobs nor for their employers' ('Feminist Fallacies').
For many women who work part time (and women are still the overwhelming majority of part time workers) the effect of having such a job can be as great as working full time. Women develop an identity outside of the home, have some independence financially and do not just see themselves as centred on the family. In general, this has been one of the most positive aspects of women working and one the majority of women would seem to want to hold on to, if we are to judge by the most recent rates of economic activity, which show 71 percent of working age women continuing to work.
Catherine Hakim, however, regards this in a different light. She says that women have less 'commitment' to work than men and cites in her defence a survey of all employees who were asked if they would still keep a paid job even if 'a reasonable living income' were still available. Interestingly enough, of those asked this question in 1989, 72 percent of all male employees and 76 percent of all female employees said they would still work - so men's commitment was lower than women's. When the figures are given as a percentage of the working age population as a whole, men's commitment rises to 9 percent above that of women - to 63 percent against 54 percent.
But all this particular statistic tells us is what we know already: that there is a higher proportion of women in the home than there are men. It doesn't tell us why they are there. Hakim assumes it is because 'well over one third of adult women choose not to work at all in Britain' ('Five Feminist Myths'). But this is a supposition that neither she nor anyone else is in a position to make. We know that many women are at home for reasons other than 'choice': they may not be able to find a job, they may be caring for sick relatives, and most commonly they may have childcare responsibilities which prevent them from working outside the home. In the early 1980s, for example, one study showed that 70 percent of working mothers worked part time compared with only 26 percent of working women who did not have children. And women who leave employment for whatever reason are more likely to at least temporarily become 'housewives' again as far as statistics are concerned. For married women in particular will be less likely to sign on as unemployed or sick than would men in an equivalent situation, as they are usually not entitled to benefits. This does not mean, however, that they would not want to work given the opportunity.
Yet Hakim assumes that all these women are positively choosing to stay at home and bases her evidence for women's lack of commitment to work on this supposed fact. But it makes a mockery of the original survey to include in the figures on one side of it people who were never asked if they wanted to work or not.
She similarly claims that work commitment among women part time workers is less than among full timers. Again, how can we possibly know or surmise that because people work 20 hours rather than 35 they are less committed? There are many signs that part time workers are more likely to be committed long term to particular jobs, partly because they are chosen to fit in with a particular pattern of family life. Studies of part time workers often show a level of benefits and perks for part time workers which are identical or very similar to those available to full timers. So for example in the Savacentre hypermarket in Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping centre, part time staff get the same benefits as full timers, with all permanent staff in the pension scheme, and able to partake in the profit sharing schemes. Part timers receive subsidised meals, staff discount tokens on a pro rata basis, maternity and paternity provisions according to the hours they work. 'Staff turnover within the store is very low, but rates are slightly higher for part timers.' Part timers working at the Cheltenham and Gloucester building society are entitled to mortgage benefit, pension, sick pay, loans, meal concessions and discounts.
Perhaps the most controversial of Hakim's assertions is her rejection of the notion that childcare is a barrier to women's employment. She argues that 'childcare problems are in a sense chosen by women who choose to have large families'. Leaving aside the value judgements involved in this statement, and the careless use of 'choice', it is simply not the case that childcare problems only exist for those with large families. In a society where only a tiny proportion can get their children into state nurseries, the options for many women with one or two children are few indeed.
The 'choice' for a woman in a routine clerical job is extremely limited. Returning to work full time means having to pay a minimum of £50 to £60 per child for childcare a week. Even with one child, this can add up to more than most women workers can afford, with one survey estimating that the average cost of such care is a quarter of that woman's earnings. When the costs of working - fares, lunches, clothing - are taken into account, it is no wonder that most women workers find the 'choices' come down to effectively working for no more than benefit levels when all costs are taken into account, not working at all and living on benefits, or working part time often close to home and thereby alleviating or avoiding the costs of childcare.
Of course, this is only a problem for some women. A minority have access to the sort of salaries and conditions which enable them to go to private nurseries or to employ nannies. The differences of class which allow this to take place have become more exacerbated and more marked in recent years. But Hakim sees the division not as one of class but of commitment - that there is a 'polarisation into two groups that are currently fairly evenly balanced in size: a group giving priority to marriage and child-rearing as their central life activity, and another group giving priority to market work as their central life activity.'
In her new book, she makes a similar point. She claims that the 'modern homemaker career' is chosen by over half of women of working age in Britain' and this reflects a growing division between two quite distinct groups:
'Women in senior grades have invested in qualifications, work continuously and full time, are as ambitious and determined as men, are concentrated in integrated or male dominated occupations and have high earnings. Women who pursue the modern homemaker career are secondary earners, fail to utilise any qualifications they may have, choose jobs for their convenience factors and social interest rather than with a view to a long term career, are concentrated in female occupations and have lower earnings'.
The assumptions here are really quite astonishing: that the only people who care about work outside the home are those already in high paid professional jobs. At a stroke this writes off routine clerical workers - the biggest single number of women workers - sales workers and the vast majority of those employed in health and education. It also writes off the majority of those in factory work, postal workers and many of those women in traditionally 'male' jobs such as ambulance workers or bus drivers.
Most women are in low paid, low grade jobs - and, according to Hakim, that is precisely what they want!
In fact, the opposite appears to be true. More women are now going back to work full time after the birth of children - and these are not simply the 'career women' targeted by Hakim. Far more women are obtaining qualifications for work at every level and in every industry - hardly a sign of lack of interest. And women's employment is going up.
They are doing so not out of abstract choice but because women workers - just like their male counterparts - are increasingly forced to sell their labour on the market. The growing inequality within capitalist society and the encroachment on health and welfare provision all mean that they do so on more and more unfavourable terms. Women workers are now faced with low wages, flexible hours and attacks on unions, coupled with greater domestic pressures as a result of the recession and cuts. Of course such people find it hard to gain 'stimulation' from their jobs but this does not mean they reject working. Instead they now cope with long hours of work outside the home and the domestic burden inside the home.
There are two quite distinct approaches about how to deal with this. The first is that of Hakim, to assume therefore that if something has to give it will be paid work. This is simply not an option for the vast majority of working class women, whose earnings are an essential part of family income, not a means of paying for a few luxuries. But it is also clear that millions of women feel that a life outside the home is essential for them, and have no intention of giving up work, however hard it may be.
Her conclusions about women wanting to be at home fail to take into account changes in women's situation and in their attitudes. In this respect - despite Hakim's attack on 'feminist myths' - they have more in common with a great many feminists, who deny the centrality of work to women's lives and who stress their role in the family.
The real polarisation of women's work which has occurred - between the mass of women workers and a comfortable minority of managers and professionals - has left feminists with little to say to working women. If women's liberation is about individual advancement, then the growth in numbers of working women with nannies, or the expansion of female managers in areas such as education and health, have to be welcomed.
That is why we have to look beyond gender divisions to those of class. Women workers face increasing exploitation along with their male counterparts. Because of the way in which that exploitation is structured around the family, they also face continued oppression within capitalist society. The end to that oppression and exploitation can only come from the same source - the overthrow of a system based on profit for a tiny minority and its replacement by a society based on production for need.
The increasing involvement of women in the workforce can only help that process - and the differentiation between different classes of women can only make the goal of class struggle and social revolution easier to see.