Synopsis
"This book challenges existing research, such as it is, and provides new empirical evidence on the gendered and racialised nature of homeworking. Moreover, it is distinctive in that it also offers an agenda for action to improve the appalling conditions that many homeworkers were found to be experiencing. Homeworking Women is committed research at its best: scientifically sound but with clear policy implications drawn out."
--Teresa Rees in Housing Studies, Vol 11
Homeworking Women provides an up-to-date overview of all types of home-based work. The authors argue that homeworking replicates wider divisions in the labor force and that its potential for improving women′s employment opportunities is therefore limited. Drawing on original research, they outline the advantages and disadvantages, the pay and conditions, and family situations for contemporary women homeworkers. Gender, racism, and ethnicity are shown to be key factors in constructing the homeworking labor force. The authors acknowledge the shared position that homeworkers occupy as women, as well
as the clear differences experienced by clerical, manufacturing, and professional homeworkers, and question whether new technology in itself can be the way forward to a better paid, less onerous form of homeworking.
About the Author
Carol Wolkowitz is a Reader in the Department of Sociology. Her research has involved a number of different areas of gender studies. She has a long-standing interest in gender in Indian history and politics, stemming from her doctoral research on women politicians′ careers in South India. Since then much of her work has focused on gender and employment. She is co-author of two books on homeworking and home-located work, Homeworking Women: Gender, Class and Racism at Work (1995) and Homeworking: Myths and Realities (1987). In 2006 she published Bodies at Work (Sage), exploring ′body work′ and the relation between embodiment, gender and the labour process. Her other publications include the Glossary of Feminist Theory (1997), with Terry Lovell and Sonya Andermahr, and several articles exploring the use of personal narratives to understand women′s roles in the American communities established by the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. She was also co-editor of Of Marriage and the Market: Women′s Subordination in International Perspective (1981 and 1985). Besides supervising PhD theses on a wide range of topics, she teaches a postgraduate module on Sex, Gender and Power and the visual methods component of the MA qualitative methods module. At undergraduate level she convenes Sexuality and Society and co-teaches Visual Sociology
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