Key Issues in Women's Work: Female Heterogeneity and the Polarisation of Women's Employment

Women's employment is one of the most widely-discussed and widely-misunderstood issues of modern society. Are women today oppressed, or do they have the best of both worlds? Do women have to go out to work to gain equality with men? Or do they already do more than their share of domestic work, caring work and voluntary work as well as unseen work in the informal economy? Do women seek career employment on the same terms as men, or are they content to be dependent wives or secondary earners taking jobs on a short-term basis? How important is job segregation in explaining the large pay gap between men and women? Have equal opportunities laws had real impact? Are women in Britain lagging behind or at the forefront of developments in Europe? This book addresses all the key issues currently debated in relation to women's work in the domestic sphere as well as paid employment, and comes to some unexpected conclusions.