The industrial relations significance of unpaid work

ID:	HARP-422
Title:	The industrial relations significance of unpaid work
Source:	Labour/Le Travail , (42) Fall’98 pg 199-225
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	1998
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, economic, social, and cultural rights, employment, gender equality, human rights, woman, labor market, industrial relations
Abstract:	In this paper I challenge the prevailing theoretical framework that marginalizes women by examining how unpaid work on and off the job is and is not analyzed in the literature and by demonstrating its importance to issues as central to the discipline as wages, job allocation, and industrial conflict. In the section entitled, “Unpaid Work on the Job,” I argue that the concept of the “effort bargain” — how unpaid work is currently studied in industrial relations — obscures pay discrimination against women because it is more likely to implicitly recognize as work the tasks associated with jobs traditionally performed by men than many of the tasks associated with jobs performed by women. Under the heading, “Unpaid Work in the Household,” I argue that unpaid work in the home determines, in part, how paid work is allocated and, in particular, how the social construction of women as non-workers/wives and mothers by researchers naturalizes women’s place in the secondary labour market and reifies men’s access to “breadwinner jobs.” Finally, I conclude by arguing that incorporating unpaid work into the study of industrial relations is necessary to move women from the margins to the centre of discourse.
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