Households, Employment, and Gender

Book excerpt: During the twentieth century arrangements governing love, work, and their routinization in households and employment underwent a transformation. During this period women gained employment opportunities. This reduced sex differentiation, but did not equalize the roles or power of men and women. The goal of this book is to describe the trends and patterns that remain constant amidst the change, and to provide an integrated framework for understanding them.The authors focus on a three-tier level of integration that is not available in other studies of this kind. First, they combine the topics of households and employment, showing similarities and causal links between household and employment arrangements. Second, a conceptual framework is provided that gives attention to both individuals' choices and to the structural constraints that limit available options. Finally, an integration of economic and sociological views of employment, demographic behavior, and other household behavior is examined.By using both individual and structural views, Paula England and George Farkas provide an overview of this coupling. This work is unique in that it draws from both economics and sociology and from demographers in both disciplines. Households, Employment, and Gender is an analytic synthesis for scholars and an invaluable sourcebook for classes on gender, labor, the family, social demography, economics, and economic sociology.