Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

A fabulous article in the Guardian - “Bringing in Baby” takes a light but serious look at the practicalities of bringing a young baby into your workplace - apparently a promoted alternative to expensive childcare in the US where maternity leave is only 12 weeks.

After making some general points, three parents recount their experiences of an ‘experiment’ in the Guardian office. While the experiment is hardly reliable or representative it raises some interesting points. There is also a link to an audio slideshow which brings home some of the points.
As the article points out, such policies essentially negate the fact that childcare is a form of work - the assumption is that ‘real’ work is what is done outside the home and in exchange for payment. The message is that baby-care is easy and not time-consuming and that a young baby can essentially be wheeled into an office and left while the parent works at their ‘proper’ job.

This of course brings up the debate about maternity leave, maternity pay, working mothers, discrimination and whether modern women are trying too hard to ‘have it all’.

A little while ago I visited the current exhibition at The Women’s Library in London looking at Lone Motherhood. It is a brilliant exhibition with lots of information and the education workshops being run alongside it are also stimulating. While I was there I managed to interview Joanna Ingham who runs the education programme at The Women’s Library, she talked about some of the key themes that come out of the exhibition and about some of the surprising things about lone motherhood that go against our common assumptions.

Use the links below to listen to the intervew:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I thought we’d got beyond heavily gendered assumptions but I’ve just discovered that Sixt Car Rental (a fairly large, mainstream care hire company) offer a “Sixt Ladies Card” which allows ladies to

“Profit from your partner’s corporate rate.”

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent ‘Gentlemen’s Card’ which speaks volumes about who is expected to be the one with the corporate job and is just another one of those little things that add to the reinforcement of assumptions of women’s lack of economic independence.

This article looks at changing patterns in parental custody of children and the social attitudes associated with it.

Hidden heartache of the weekend mothers - Times Online

More fathers are now gaining custody of their children after divorce, however this article suggests that social attitudes and assumptions are not changing at the same rate.  “Part-time” mothers talk of their shame at being separated from their children, shame which seems to come from the fact that being a “weekend mother” is not yet socially acceptable.  This raises the question of whether what happens in the courts reflects social change or creates it.

Another link is to the issue of women’s ‘Triple Shift’ of work - paid, emotional and childcare/housework.  This article claims that it is often women who work full-time outside the home who lose custody of their children, adding another layer to the burden of the Triple Shift.  There is however, at the same time a suggestion that it is becoming more acceptable for fathers to become the main carers and that men may themselves be taking on a new form of triple shift.

Lives in a Landscape is a BBC Radio 4 series looking at “real lives” in Britain today.  Today’s programme was following 3 “glamour girls”.  It was fascinating to hear the women talking about their perceptions of their bodies, their choices and their perceptions of their power situations - none of them constructed themselves as exploited, but rather as women doing a job that involved having fun.

For those of you who visited the Women’s Library exhibition earlier this year or have made use of their resources this is another angle on the question of power, sexuality and gender.

Unfortunately the Listen Again will probably only be accessible for a week, but you can find it here

A little while ago I visited the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame in Alice Springs, Australia. Possibly not very handy for your next college or school outing but a fascinating visit all the same! However there is a good website which has lots of information for those unable to visit the museum, including pictures and brief biographies of various pioneer women. The intention seems to be to expand the site over time and to include more educational resources. Go to www.pioneerwomen.com.au to have a look.
The museum has displays about women’s lives in Australia over the past 200 years, looking at the roles women played in the early white ’settlement’ of Australia and also in their pioneering roles in science and technology and other areas. The exhibitions also look at the ways in which individual women have pioneered the breakdown of male dominance in a wide range of fields.

Essentially the exhibitions cover women’s lives from the very ordinary to the extra-ordinary and give an insight into what life has been like in the past and tells some of the often forgotten stories about women’s roles in creating modern society.

My only criticism of the exhibitions is that they centre heavily on the contributions and lives of white European women. There does seem to be some attempt to redress this and the oral rather than written tradition of Aboriginal culture, as well as Australian society’s tendency to ignore and even suppress its Aboriginal heritage until recently, is no doubt partly to blame. However, in attempting to redress the power imbalance between men and women in Australia’s past the Hall of Fame seems to gloss over the role that white European women must have played in the oppression of less powerful groups such as Aborigines and in particular Aboriginal women.

Overall though this is a website (or a venue!) which is worth a visit for the ways in which it highlights women’s lives in what is a predominantly male history.

The Women’s Library have now announced details of their forthcoming exhibition Sinners, Scroungers, Saints: Lone Mothers past and present which will run from October 2007 to March 2008 and looks at lone motherhood both past and present in Britain.

Going on their previous exhibitions, which have always been thought-provoking, informative and absolutely packed with information, I expect that this one will be provide a real insight into single motherhood, its realities and the different attitudes towards it. In the past I have found that my A-level students have got a lot out of the Women’s Library’s exhibitions.

As usual Joanna Ingham, their Learning Coordinator, will be running debate workshops specifically for A-level students and tailored to the A-level specifications (single parenthood is of course a key issue that come up when looking at families as well as gender, welfare and poverty). The 2-hour workshops consist of a guided visit to the exhibition and a facilitated debate for AS and A2 level Sociology students, with a supporting resource pack for teachers (these are usually stuffed full of useful data and good ideas for further learning activities). For those of you on tight budgets, or for whom a trip can be financially difficult it is worth mentioning that the workshops themselves are FREE with a small charge for the resource pack.

Joanna has sent me a flyer and a booking form and has given permission for me to put these here for you to download

Lone Motherhood Flyer (PDF 200KB)

Booking Form (PDF 24KB)

For more information you can give her a call on 020 7320 3504 or e-mail her: joanna.ingham@thewomenslibrary.ac.uk

Personally I’d get booking if you’re in reach of London!

The latest claim about changes in the occupational structure of the UK economy seems to be that the caring professions traditionally staffed by women are to gain in importance.  According to Ian Pearson there will continue to be a decline in traditionally ‘male’ manual jobs, but there will also be a decline in service economy jobs as they are increasingly computerised.

The argument of the article, which is based on Pearson’s theories, is that increasingly “soft skills” ie interpersonal, communication skills will become of key importance - something which the current education system in the UK is often criticised for not helping students to develop.  Pearson argues that by 2020 “most of us will be working in the care economy”.

Pearson’s assumption seems to be that the increased importance of such soft skills will advantage women in the work place, however, this assumption raises several questions.  Firstly, Pearson seems to take a socio-biological view of gender - similar to that of Parsons and Murdock, assuming that men and women have naturally different roles, meaning that women are better suited to caring roles.  From a viewpoint that argues that socialisation is the cause of gender differences (eg. Oakley, 1984) it could be argued that over time the socialisation of boys and girls may change to develop greater caring capacities (for example, think of the emergence of ‘metrosexual man’).

Pearson also picks out jobs such as nursing, hairdressing and care-work (eg in nursing homes and children’s nurseries) as examples of areas which are female dominated and require such skills. He argues that these are areas which will therefore grow in importance and status.  Currently such roles are typically low-status and are relatively poorly remunerated and Pearson actually states that he doubts that pay in such sectors will increase significantly.  This brings into doubt the claim that women are likely to be economically and socially better off in a new economic order.  In many ways Pearson seems to be confusing such roles with much more highly paid, high status roles in business which also require interpersonal skills.

BBC NEWS | Business | ‘The future is female’ BT predicts

This article highlights the ongoing, but often hidden issue of prostitution, sex slavery and human trafficking in the UK:

BBC NEWS | England | Sex slavery widespread in England

Women in the sex trade are often forced into it - either by socio-economic circumstances or by boyfriends or other males with power over them (eg traffickers). As well as the bare facts about women being forced into the sex industry against their wills, articles like this also raise wider issues about inequalities of power between men and women in wider society - although women are increasingly able to be independent of men both socially and economically, inequalities remain and these are seen at their most extreme in areas of the economy such as the sex trade.

Human trafficking associated with the sex trade can also be related to World Sociology and issues of power relations between the “developed” and “developing” world. Many of the foreign women involved in the sex trade in Britain are here because they were lured here with promises of ordinary jobs - waitressing, cleaning, kitchen work - where they would earn more than they could earn in their home countries and which would allow them to send money home to their families. International wealth inequalities can of course be linked to issues around international debt.
The issues and debates around the sex industry are explored in greater depth by an exhibition currently on show at The Women’s Library in London, they are also running workshops for groups of A-level Sociology students.

This is a link to a comment piece that appeared on The Times’ website today.  The article is about the situation of Asian (mainly Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) women brought to the UK as brides and their often vulnerable position as victims of domestic violence with few options and choices for escape.
The secret violence that challenges Britain’s Asians-TimesOnline

Hundai raises issues around Asian communities’ and the authorities’ attitudes towards domestic violence and also expectations of womens’ roles as submissive and housebound, with brides often being “imported” with the expectation that they will be more submissive than British women.

Although it does not offer a huge amount by way of hard research-based evidence this article ties together several important threads and is a must-read for anyone studying gender, ethnicity or the family.