Job insecurity, gender and work orientation: an exploratory ... - GeNet

More documents

Recommendations

Info

mentioned earlier, this was a combination of time with family rather than becoming involved in the day to day organization of domestic work and childcare). During the second round of coding, the role of gender ideology and labour market opportunity were once again fore-grounded in each group’s account of the experience of job insecurity. Table 6 Variation in family form, occupation and division of labour for men Work-to-Live Ambitious n=14 n=2 Family form Married with children 11 1 Long term partner no children 3 1 Occupation Part-time professional 2 - Full-time professional 5 2 Full-time associate professional/technical 5 - Full-time plant operator 2 - Gender-role attitude Strong identification with 5 1 Traditional role Moderate identification with Traditional role 9 1 _____________________________________________________________________________ Men’s experiences of job insecurity ‘Work to live’ As with the female ‘Balancers’, the male ‘Work-to-Live’ group were very diverse. Overall, while most were concerned with the financial difficulties they would face should they lose their jobs, only some saw this as a threat to their ‘breadwinning’ identity. For others, the exposure to job insecurity initiated an ‘epiphany-like’ experience and was seen as an opportunity to become more involved with their families. 18
i) Job insecurity as a crisis The eight men in this group worked full-time in both professional and manual jobs, all were married with children. As with the women, their overriding concern was with the economic costs of job loss, more specifically, however, they each discussed job insecurity in relation to their breadwinning identity. Each emphasised the importance of the relationship between a stable home life and a stable work life. By way of example, one full-time engineer, married with two children, noted that job security was important to him principally because he needed: To have a reasonably stable situation at home, that’s the most important thing. A stable home life and a stable situation and then obviously the work is tied in because you can’t do it without money, really. For each of the men in this group, it emerged that the threat to their identity as ‘economic provider’ was proving difficult for them to manage. One engineer, married with 2 children, whose wife works part-time, made the following reflections on his past experiences of unemployment, noting how this amplified the worries he had about losing his job again: I felt that although I was still the father and the husband at home, whilst I wasn’t working, I didn’t feel that I was the provider … I felt I was letting them down … My work provides me with the wherewithal to give my family what I believe they’re entitled to. Mckee and Bell (1986) have noted that traditional beliefs that men should be the breadwinners are still pervasive and can have a profound effect on unemployed men and men facing imminent job loss. The men they interviewed discussed their wounded pride, self-image and loss of authority in the family. For some men, then, job insecurity seems to be another aspect of the ‘masculinity in crisis’ debates (Crompton and Harris 1999; 19
Page 1 and 2: Job insecurity, gender and work ori
Page 3 and 4: psychologically, to the men in this
Page 5 and 6: Furthermore, Hakim makes only fleet
Page 7 and 8: ii) experiences of job insecurity.
Page 9 and 10: Table 4 Variation in family form, o
Page 11 and 12: frank interview demonstrates how a
Page 13 and 14: The Traditionalists At first glance
Page 15 and 16: There were strong echoes here of th
Page 17: would like to spend more time with
Page 21 and 22: e ‘satisficing’, making decisio
Page 23 and 24: The Ambitious There were few who op
Page 25 and 26: time’ may be particularly difficu
Page 27 and 28: Amongst the men, 2 groups emerged:
Page 29 and 30: Denzin, N.K. (1970) The Research Ac

Job insecurity, gender and work orientation: an exploratory ... - GeNet

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?