Women at Work: The Broken Promise of Flexicurity

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Abstract
This article argues that the rhetoric of ‘flexicurity’, with its promise that flexibility can be matched by security, is far from being realised. The result is a precarious workforce, characterised by low pay, low status and little job security. Nor is it an accident that the precarious workforce is made up predominantly of women. Women are now both homeworkers and breadwinners, constantly traversing the boundary between unpaid and paid work. Yet the change in women's role has not been matched by changing the basic assumptions in labour law that ‘work’ encompasses paid work only, and that employers' social responsibility only arises as a quid pro quo for the worker's full commitment to the individual employing enterprise. It is argued here that employment rights need to be divorced from the individual employment relationship. Rights should be afforded to all who participate in the paid workforce, however marginally. Duties fall on employers, not because of their immediate control over the time and commitment of an individual worker, but because of the civic responsibility which attaches to those with power. The gendered nature of non-standard work will only be overcome when it brings real rewards, so that women enter the workforce on equal terms, and men are in a position to share the dual responsibilities of paid and unpaid work.

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