Abstract
Any analysis of the world requires a theoretical framework that embraces the world’s complexity. In this beautifully edited book, David Peetz and Georgina Murray examine and explain factors that shape and sustain large and small gender gaps in employment conditions. They draw the complex nature of the world into their work by providing a multidimensional framework that identifies how regulations operate differently and similarly in various societies, occupations, and industries. I agree strongly with them that we need a framework that matches the multidimensionality of women’s work and that focuses on how different dimensions of the workplace—such as regulations and gender composition—shape the gender wage gap and women’s experiences of working.
The book locates its theoretical focus in sociology and in women’s studies and its empirical focus on gender inequality in the world. The first two chapters provide the theoretical framework and concepts, emphasizing that this book explores how occupation becomes salient in the contemporary world and how multiple dimensions produce gendered employment and pay gaps. Subsequent chapters, except the last, provide empirical studies exploring cases with different labor market conditions (e.g., workplace norms and degrees of gender segregation) and different levels of regulation. In particular, chapter six will be of interest to readers who study cross-national comparative work and who are interested in relationships between gender order, regulatory interventions, and the interrelationships between the employment gaps and pay gaps themselves.
While the first part of the book focuses more on theories of regulation and gender gap, the second part examines how various regulations, workplace norms, and institutions (such as advocacy groups) shape gender gaps in pay and employment. Each chapter takes a specific occupation as its case study. For example, chapter seven, a case study of coal miners, explores how gender shapes relations in a highly regulated and male-dominated occupation. Like the case studies in other chapters, this one shows how strong regulation can protect women (especially by guaranteeing equal pay), but only partially within a male-dominated environment in which women have had limited access to work opportunities and advancement. Chapter eight, in contrast, explores how women work in a highly regulated but female-dominated workplace. Examining one type of public-sector professional, librarians, this chapter demonstrates findings that show that males still prosper in the female-dominated workplace. Leveraging a comparative lens, chapter 11 provides a comparative study of home workers in Australia and India and shows how regulation and visibility matter when understanding the context in which home work continues to be devalued. The last empirical study, in chapter 12, uses a case study from the film and television production industry to examine the complexity of how state regulations influence the gender gaps in pay and employment. Importantly, the industry’s leading institutions and advocates (such as Directors of UK and the Australian Directors Guild) play salient roles in addressing gender gaps and inequality by advocating for systematic and lasting change. Overall, the various occupations and societies in this book’s empirical studies represent research settings in which regulations differ.
Several concepts are useful to the sociological imagination when examining the gender wage gap and women’s working lives. Important concepts that can be learned and used from this book are segmentation (horizontal and vertical gender segregation) and regulation (at multiple levels, including society, industry, and workplace). While the authors might have offered more discussion of the concept of labor segmentation, this book urges us to revisit important aspects, including (a) occupational groups that represent different combinations of regulations, (b) advocacy groups, (c) unions, and (d) workplace culture and regulations.
While some important concepts need to be further developed (e.g., whether or not labor segmentation is related to various factors including sex ratio), I value this book’s contribution to the literature on gender gaps in employment and wages. In particular, given the complexity of how these gaps are produced and reproduced, this book’s emphasis on a multidimensional framework will be extremely useful for students. Also, chapters 11 and 12 are particularly well written and, because of their comparative perspective, are useful in analyzing how global capital and regulations (at both the state and industry levels) shape gender gaps in employment and pay. However, although several chapters have case studies from around the globe, the comparative lens could have been further enriched in order to establish this book as an edited volume on the gender gap around the globe. While some of the arguments about the intersection (or interaction) of regulation at different levels with other dimensions, such as workplace norms, could have been fleshed out in greater detail, this well-written book is a true pleasure to read. Lastly, this is a great textbook for courses that examine work, occupations, and gender, although it is important not to read this book and argue that every aspect matters to the gender gap.
