Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

The concept of patriarchy gives a necessary causal basis to the study of gender divisions and gender inequality. However, it has often been employed in a deterministic way, where variation is unexplained and agency is underplayed. This paper reviews Walby's reconceptualisation of six dimensions of patriarchy, based on a realist view of causation, which attempts to reintroduce empirical complexity and institutional variation into the concept.

The author suggests that this reconceptualisation does not go far enough. Similarly, models of gendered welfare states, though descriptively quite detailed, are analytically weak. It is suggested that an integration of Walby's theory of patriarchy with Scandinavian ideas of the gender contract provides the best means of conceptualising difference in gender divisions.

The European Community has developed various social policies to compensate for the uneven effects of economic integration, and to bring about greater equality between women and men. In addition, the member states have their own policy traditions and institutional frameworks which likewise affect general employment conditions. In order to bring about greater economic and social cohesion in the European Community there have been moves to harmonise social policy. Clearly, if greater equality between women and men is a desired goal then it is important that the harmonisation should take place around those policies that are more progressive in this respect.

Two ways of measuring gender inequality in paid work are proposed and applied to EC data. The results of this preliminary study indicate that those countries with more formal regulatory frameworks are more conducive to greater gender equality than those where market-based policies prevail.

In Southern European countries, much of women's work lies out of the realm of ‘wage labour’ in forms of work which include agricultural labour in family farms, homeworking, unpaid domestic and caring labour, family helpers, and/or informal work in tourism, industry, or personal services. The importance of these forms of work is very likely to increase and several regions in Southern Europe present ‘ideal conditions’ for their proliferation. The bulk of women's work cannot be adequately grasped by looking exclusively at employment categories of economic and statistical surveys. These relegate to ‘nonwork’ many forms of women's labour in society. The authors discuss these ‘other’ forms of labour, focusing mainly on three issues: (a) the meaning and content of work for women in Southern Europe; (b) the connotations associated with terms such as ‘atypical’, ‘irregular’, ‘informal’, and so on, usually used to describe such activities and forms of work; (c) the effects of women's overrepresentation in such forms of work on gender divisions and on their own work prospects.

This author discusses the degree of ‘women-friendliness’ in Sweden. The focus is on the gender structure of the labour market today compared with the situation thirty years ago. To what degree has the Swedish welfare model increased opportunities for women? The author analyses both integration and segregation processes in the labour market but concentrates on different labour-market situations in order to highlight the everyday experiences of women in recruitment, in restructuring at specific workplaces, and in the workplace closure. The focus on particular situations allows for an examination of the processes of labour-market segregation—and integration—more effectively than with aggregate statistics. The crucial question is how the mechanisms of gendering are implemented in the modern gender contract in the Swedish labour market. Finally, the future possibilities of changing the gendering of the labour market is analysed. The forthcoming changes in the Swedish welfare system, resulting from cuts and notification in the public service sector, and the consequence of the application for EC membership are particularly important as women especially depend on the welfare system for jobs, and benefits, and as consumers.

The transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market economy involves a wide-ranging redistribution of paid employment, income, and individual opportunities. Men and women in the former East Germany (GDR)—who before reunification had equal roles of participation in paid labour—have been affected in different ways by the restructuring of the East German economy. Women are now more often unemployed, and for longer periods, and face greater difficulties in finding a job. In order to explain these differences between men and women, the authors investigate the economic, social, and political dimensions of the transformation process. The main argument is that economic and social disadvantages affecting East German women are not just related to the economic and political transformation as such. Rather, they are rooted in a traditional gender division of paid work in the former GDR which was reinforced by the paternalistic family and social policy developed by the East German state. At the same time, however, East German women's experiences of being fully integrated into employment, and enjoying greater economic independence, make it unlikely that they will easily accept the West German model of partial labour-market integration.

Ireland has recently been characterised as a country dominated by private patriarchy. One indicator of private patriarchy is the incidence of women engaged in full-time ‘home duties’ rather than in paid employment. The participation of women in the Irish labour force has been comparatively very low because the majority of married women in Ireland are full-time housewives. Persistently high fertility rates—in 1987 the highest in Europe—and a state ideology which enshrined women's position in the home explained this phenomenon in the past. One might have expected industrialisation to have promoted greater change, yet its influence was minimal. Early industrialisation did not create a demand for female labour. In the 1960s export-oriented industrialisation generated a demand for female labour but this was obstructed by patriarchal state policy. In the 1970s, EU membership removed many legislative restrictions on the labour-force participation of married women. However, a patriarchal family based taxation policy and the absence of state supported child care still perpetuate private patriarchy in Ireland.

Urban and regional policies are increasingly targeted by area. The common feature of this drive towards the targeting of public policy is the need for improved information on the candidate areas and better methodologies to aid the prioritisation process. The pressure for more and better information is also increased by recent academic and policy debates around the importance of identifying the distinctiveness of individual regions and localities in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, four basic steps for a well-founded targeting analysis are identified. There is a need: to clarify the concept to be measured; to specify the key issues by which the concept is to be represented; to identify adequate statistical indicators covering those issues; and to create an overall index to summarise the information. In the penultimate section of the paper it is emphasised that there are numerous ways to produce a multivariate index and that the choice between them is not simple but will greatly affect the results obtained. Although it is stressed that different options will be more appropriate for different purposes, some ‘best-practice’ guidelines are identified.