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Just 4% women prisoners find work on release - Russell Webster

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Report from Prison Reform Trust and Working Chance, finds just 4% women were in employment six weeks after release from prison, compared to 11% men.

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Women's work is, and has always been seen as a form of altruistic collaboration, that is voluntary, generous, and absolute in comparison with male labor (Folbre 1988).

From: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

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This article reviews the last two decades of research on men's and women's work networks and proposes a social structural perspective to integrate findings about differences in network characteristic and their consequences. The evidence suggests that three broad sets of factors moderate the relationship between gender and work-related networks: sex stratification, interaction dynamics, and gender beliefs and identities. As well, different network configurations appear to be effective in promoting the careers of men and women. Macrostructural demographic and job stratification patterns interact with the micro dynamics of interpersonal exchange and identity construction to reinforce gender differences in networks as well as in the types of networks that each need in order to further their attainment.

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Women as Mothers and Workers

It is not possible to understand women's position as mothers without also understanding their position as workers. Women's work options influence their family decisions and, for many, their family options. For most analysts, the point of departure in understanding women's attachment to the labor market has been the persistence of a gender wage gap and the shape of occupational segregation ( Charles & Grusky, 2004; Kilbourne et al., 1994; Reskin & Roos, 1990). The persistence of what Charles and Grusky (2004) call "occupational ghettoes" reduces women's access to better paid work, to important job networks, and ultimately to the economic resources and work opportunities that influence their options as mothers. While work experience accounts for some of the gender wage gap, most of the gap emerges from the gendered type of occupation. Once occupations become "feminized" (with women constituting over 60% of workers), both pay and opportunity decline (Kilbourne et al., 1994).

Despite a continuing pay and opportunity gap, the influx of women into the workplace has loosened the stigma of women at work, contributed to growing workplace acceptance, and eroded male workers' (and unions') resistance to women's presence (Kanter, 1977; Reskin & Roos, 1990). With the rise of women's participation, the gender wage gap decreased from 60% in the late 1960s to 75% in the mid-1990s, when it plateaued (Blau & Kahn, 2000). Today, it is clear that women have made notable inroads into some male careers, but these inroads are not as remarkable as they once appeared. As important, they have not led to overall economic gains for women as a group. While some women can claim demonstrable gains in their earning power, not all have benefited. To the contrary, a focus on average earnings obscures the increasing variation among women, where 80% still earn less than the median male worker (Bernhardt et al., 1995). These differences in women's work opportunities have consequences for their mothering options as well.

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4.3 Feminine Work as Complementary 'Help'

The paid work of women is governed by very different notions; it is seen as complementary help. Women's work is, and has always been seen as a form of altruistic collaboration, that is voluntary, generous, and absolute in comparison with male labor (Folbre 1988). That a woman is hardworking and that her efforts indeed 'help' and 'complement' the family income speaks well of her in moral and marital terms, but may limit her cash contribution to the family. In this gendered process, women's paid work, as 'complementary help,' is devalued. The efforts of women are socially recognized, but they are not seen as important work and are assigned an inferior status relative to men's work (Dwyer and Bruce 1988, Safilios-Rothschild 1988).

To speak of work as 'complementary' because it is female is a way of downgrading and devaluing, a priori, the contribution of women to household resources. Moreover, as Dwyer and Bruce (1988) and Ward (1993) have pointed out, in many societies it is socially accepted that men can retain a part of their earnings for themselves (and often the family never knows exactly what proportion of male earnings are retained). In contrast, wives and daughters are expected to hand over to the family all resources obtained outside the household (Mencher 1988). Thus, women's earnings may be a resource families count on more than men's. Thus, seeing women's work as secondary 'complementary help' is a social construction rather than an accurate portrayal of the situation.

Seeing female labor as 'help' makes it socially manageable by the family. But, the notion of women's work as 'help' limits it several ways. First, it reaffirms that the female priority remains reproduction and domestic responsibilities; if the work of the woman is only 'help,' it is by definition insufficiently important to require renegotiation of the distribution of roles and tasks within the household. Second, the notion of female paid labor as 'help' assures that it remains of lower value, and in this way, that the woman is always available to leave it to resume her function in the family if needed. Third, viewing female labor as 'help' guarantees that in the face of family economic crises, the woman can (and must) enter the market to work and to accept conditions and wages that men are not expected to take, but that once the immediate crisis passes, she will return to her fundamental priority of the family (Hareven 1982). Finally, the notion of female work as 'help' is a key mechanism to avoid discrediting socially or maritally the work and earnings of men. Facing transitional labor markets that have shifted the balance of work opportunities between the sexes, the notion of 'help' contributes to the maintenance of traditional obligations and rights within the family, in obvious detriment to the position of the women themselves.

Thus, the conceptualization of female work as 'help' of a 'complementary' nature can be seen, in the end, as a porous category in which the social devaluation occurring in the labor market intersects with the social hierarchies of gender within the household. This intersection is what permits employers continued access to sources of low-cost labor, on the one hand, and the perpetuation of female work as subordinate to family obligations, on the other.

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3 Work and Gender

The relation between work and gender is a field of scholarship in which the reciprocities between the concept and practice of work, between work as economic activity and as culture, can be seen with particular clarity. Early studies of women's work conducted up into the 1970s almost exclusively treated gainful employment on the part of the women. Initial interest was focused upon factory labor, and then increasingly on 'specifically feminine' occupations like maid, governess, midwife, teacher, secretary, and salesgirl. The aim of this research was to reintegrate women into the male-defined world of paid labor. Beginning in the 1970s, feminist historians increasingly criticized the prevailing modern concept of work. Housework became the subject of theoretical discussions and of empirical investigations. Increasingly, studies on the history of women's work focused both on gainful employment and domestic activities (Tilly and Scott 1978, Simonton 1998).

The issue of the division of labor between the sexes has become a much-favored field of interdisciplinary research. Anthropologists, historians, and sociologists have shed a great deal of light on the variability of the division of labor. One and the same activity can be a typical man's job in one culture and woman's work in another. Which work is done by men and women does not depend on the 'nature' of their respective sex, but upon socially constructed gender roles. Recent theoretical approaches oppose biological or 'biosocial' as well as cultural determinism. Emphasis is in the variety of options taken in the sexual division of labor and the contesting definition and redefinition of norms.

In European history of the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, the economic significance and the symbolic meaning of the respective activities assumed decisive explanatory power. One research approach emphasizes the exclusion of women from market-oriented activities in agriculture, crafts, and trades. Work that promised to yield profits, was learned and practiced according to formalized rules, coalesced into formalized occupations and had organized politically along occupational lines became the domain of men. Early 'classical' studies of women's work and some recent research proceed under the assumption that up to the beginning of the modern period women also took part in artisanal market production and were organized in guilds-either in exclusive women's guilds or mixed guilds (Wiesner 1989). According to this perspective, it was not until later that there occurred a gradual exclusion of women, be that as a consequence of 'male bonding,' the spread of capitalism, or the Industrial Revolution. Other historians have stressed the continuities of the gender-based division of labor since the twelfth century, which placed women in the domestic sphere or in low-skilled, low-status and low-paying occupations (Bennett 1988). Most historians emphasize the fluctuating boundaries between men's and women's work, which are continuously redefined and renegotiated (Honeyman and Goodman 1998).

Another research approach emphasizes the cooperation between men and women. In this perspective, the 'working couple' formed the economic backbone of the agrarian and the artisanal economy (Pahl 1984, Wunder 1992). This can be seen even more clearly in the 'family economy' of the lower classes. Women played a central role in efforts to exploit and combine as many of the available income opportunities as possible. The 'industrious revolution' which preceded the industrial one in the view of many historians, was based on the cooperation of men and women in the family economy (de Vries 1994). Conflict and cooperation are not necessarily antagonistic but rather complementary perspectives on the gender-specific division of labor in pre-industrial Europe.

With respect to the nineteenth century, the focus of research has been on the 'male breadwinner model' and the emergence of 'separate spheres,' which made paid labor the exclusive domain of the male and, conversely, explained domesticity and care of children as being appropriate to the female nature (Janssens 1998, Hausen 1981). This was an effective model, even if there are diverging assessments of its effective range and the extent to which it actually did determine practice. Indeed, it was a short-lived model. The proportion of women pursuing paid labor began to climb again in the 1960s, including highly qualified professional work and lifelong careers. The history of the division of labor between the sexes shows that 'the division of labor is an effect of the social hierarchy, not its cause.' (Godelier 1980, p. 170).

The feminist critique of the concept of work in modern society has considerably widened the boundaries of the history of work. Since generally applicable definitional criteria are not in sight, they have to be developed from case to case. 'In this widest sense' the English historian Penelope J. Corfield wrote, "'work" is whatever people consider as work (...) the boundaries between "work" and "non-work" are in practice very often obscure' (Corfield and Keene 1990, p. 208).

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2 Women and Work

Women are part of the labor force in every country, but many aspects of the work they do are very different from men. These differences include type of work, place of work, hours of work, and even attitude towards work. Because of these differences, the work done by women is often not recognized as work, and sometimes women are undercounted in official labor force statistics. In the 1990s there was a concerted attempt from women's organizations and academics to move towards a wider definition of work which would include much of the work that women do.

Women work in fields, in factories, in offices, in mines, on waterways, much as men do, but unlike men, the household is also a major center for economic activity for women. Home-based workers, such as garment workers or leather makers, work within their homes, as do subsistence farmers and animal tenders. Women often undertake unpaid production of goods for the market as part of the family business. In addition, women usually do unpaid household work like cleaning and cooking. Government enumerators and even the women themselves often do not understand that other than unpaid housework, all other types of work should be counted as part of the market economy according to the official definitions of the 'labor force' stipulated by governments and international agencies. Because of this wide variety of work, and because of the differing perceptions of what constitutes work, women's active participation in the economy tends to remain undercounted.

The total number of economically active women in 1990 was estimated to be 828 million. However, women's share of the labor force, as counted in the population censuses, varies widely from region to region, as Table 3 shows.

Women's share of the labor force is higher in those countries where the majority of the labor force is in the formal wage sector. In agricultural societies and where the informal sector is a high proportion of the labor force, women's work tends to be around the household and the family farm and hence undercounted.

It is not easy in a population or household survey to decide whether a person is working or not, and what people are working at, particularly women in developing regions. Terms such as employment, job, work and main activity mean different things to different people. Interviewers also contribute to bias when they assume that women or children are not economically active. Persons who work for a wage or a salary are usually enumerated as economically active regardless of how the questions are phrased. The complications arise as one moves from wage and salary employment to self employment-especially in the informal sector-and to unpaid labor in a family farm or business: that is from more male-dominated to more female-dominated forms of economic activity. For example, a methodological survey in India found that 13 percent of adult women were wage or salary earners. When market oriented production was included-for example, family business, self-employment, crafts and agricultural activities-the figure rose to 32 percent. When the new ILO (International Labour Organization) standard was fully applied, 88 percent of women were found to be economically active (United Nations 1995).

Even women in the formal wage economy generally are segregated in different occupations from men. A recent cross-national study (Anker 1998) found that occupational segregation by sex is extensive in every country. Approximately one half of the workers in the world are in an occupation where one sex dominates to such an extent that the occupation could be considered a 'male' or 'female' one (an extent of more than 80 percent). In every country, female occupations generally are seen as less 'valuable' with lower pay, lower status, and fewer advancement opportunities. For example, 88 percent of managers, legislative officials, and government administrators are men. Occupations open to women are consistent with stereotypes of women. However, levels of occupational segregation vary across regions with the Asia/Pacific region having the lowest level and the Middle East/North Africa region, the highest.

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2.2 Time Pressures of Women's Double Day

In order to purchase needed commodities or pay school fees, women are pushed to earn income as well as carry out domestic production. The dual responsibilities of women tend to limit their income opportunities and have generally resulted in women earning less than men in most of the world. Statistics on women's work, along with a discussion of problems of the definition of work and the imprecision of much data, are frequently published by the UN's Statistical Division (United Nations 1995). Time-use studies underscore the fact that women work longer hours than men in a large number of countries (see 1987). Others deplore the labor-intensive poverty programs since heavy physical work, called for in such poverty alleviation projects as road building, reduce the already limited nutritional reserves of poor women (UNRISD Time-use and Gender). This has led feminist scholars to promote appropriate technology to reduce women's work burdens (Tinker 1999). Government cost reduction programs that cut social spending generally add to women's time pressures as they increase hours of care-giving to children and relatives and often sacrifice income activities in the process (Moser 1996).

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1.3 Sociostructural Level

Gender stereotypes and role obligations influence career choice and commitment to the occupational sphere. In consequence, there is a high gender segregation of the workforce. The proportion of women is over 90 percent in some fields (e.g., secretary, receptionist, kindergarten-teacher) and less than 5 percent in others (e.g., mechanic, airplane pilot). Jobs that are considered women's work tend to offer fewer opportunities for advancement, less prestige, and lower pay than jobs occupied primarily by men. Worldwide the gender gap in average wage is 30-40 percent and it shows little sign of closing. Top positions in economy, politics, and sciences are almost exclusively filled by men, and part-time working is almost exclusively a female phenomenon. Both men and women tend to hold negative attitudes towards females in authority. Women entering male occupations are critically scrutinized, males entering female occupations (e.g., nursing) in contrast easily win acceptance and promotion.

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4.1 Social Policies for Work and Family

Work and family have long been seen as quintessentially opposites: work is public while family is private. But work and family are no longer seen as naturally occurring or organized in light of the historical analysis of gender. The language of 'natural' gender roles remains strong with respect to work and family, but the linking of the terms as historically inseparable has been combined with the imbrication of family and work issues in the welfare state. Even in the domain of social policy, understandings of gender as historically specific and constituted in cultural terms can inform policy development.

Gender history has focused on the cultural determination of work and family in Western Europe. Examinations of tax records and census documents reveal that the gendering of work does not follow the expectation that men will do heavy work while women do the less physically demanding jobs. In fact, work has long been assigned to men and women along culturally determined lines which were a function of the household as the unit of production for much of Western European history. Efforts to understand the historical relationship between work and family led to the emergence of two important paradigms. First, historians of women posited that women enjoyed a relatively positive working experience-with greater opportunity and higher wages-before industrial capitalism. Some even referred to early modern women's work as a 'golden age' in Western Europe. Second, historians argued whether continuity in the face of patriarchy or change in conjunction with larger historical trends best defined the history of women's work (Sharpe 1995). The controversy has produced efforts to historicize the workings of patriarchy so that the components of continuity are understood for their flexibility. This has enhanced present-day understandings of the persistence of gendered workplaces, occupational structures, and wage scales. At the same time, concerns about seeing the history of women's work as always the same produced a critique that emphasizes the interactive nature of gender in the workplace. Men's and women's roles shift in relation to each other and to larger economic changes such as the rise of industrial capitalism.

The gendering of occupations outside the home seems to follow shifts in competition between men and women for jobs. The chronology and geography of these shifts remains under exploration, as does the direction of change. Do changes in the family enable changes in workplace gender configurations or does the gendering of work force changes in the family (Berg 1993)? The question remains an open one, but is relevant to Western European controversies over the welfare state and gender patterns in employment. The present trends toward the separation of sex from marriage, increased divorce rates compared to earlier historical periods, child-rearing increasingly handled outside the family, and adjustments in the gendering of labor, signal significant transformation in work and family organization. The male breadwinner model persists, but along with it is increased pressure on men to participate in the emotional life of the family. If men are to be more involved in the family, the recognition of women's unemployment suggests that women are no longer automatically considered to be wives and mothers with paid employment as a secondary identity.

The points of articulation between policy and cultural expressions are the subject of recent analysis. Diane Sainsbury (1999) has argued that different and competing models of the welfare state are actually both the result of gender and familial ideologies. The deficiencies in much welfare state analysis are a result of the failure to recognize gender as a crucial organizing framework in policy. Language and culture once again are the loci in which gender and history provide the bases for analysis.

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11.5.2 Minnesota's first tourist? Giacomo Costantino Beltrami's 'transatlantic promenades' of 1823 (by Tilly Laskey): Conclusion

Beltrami's Pilgrimage is a classic Enlightenment work, where he set out to classify, know, explore and order the world, documenting it for future visitors. Although Pilgrimage contains difficult 19th-century language and is vehemently against organized religions, Beltrami's writing is tempered with humanistic and feminist perspectives, and a postmodern viewpoint of cultures. Beltrami noted distinctions between Native Nations, named individual people, and respected Indigenously named places by recording them in Ojibwe and Dakota languages. He scrutinized gender roles, discussed women's work, their appearance, clothing and activities more so than most 20th-century ethnologists did.

Beltrami's Pilgrimage was not well received by Americans. He expected to be celebrated, but instead he was heavily criticized. Pilgrimage refuted ideas of Indians as dangerous people and illustrated a place full of vibrant and sophisticated civilizations, which opposed American propaganda extolling a disappearing Indian and empty frontier.

Beltrami returned to Italy 16 years after his American adventure, but the affronts to his honour and claims that he fabricated his journey plagued him to his dying day. He spent his last years sequestered in one room of his palazzo, requesting to be buried in an unmarked grave. Against his wishes the people of Filottrano interned him in a tomb, of all places, inside the local Catholic church.

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3 Gender, Environment, and Development

Critiques of mainstream economic development and modernization theory at the international scale revealed how women were invisible in modernization initiatives and within development theory and policy more generally. For example, the majority of women in sub-Saharan Africa are food producers who are responsible for provisioning their households. However, throughout Africa and elsewhere, women were, and still are, unable to gain access to the social, financial, technical, and natural resources that would enable them to provide adequately for their households. As women were incorporated slowly and unevenly into the modernist project through economic development programs aimed at their inclusion, subsequent research revealed how gender bias in development and nesting patriarchal ideologies could exacerbate as well as alleviate their particular vulnerabilities. In addition, this research demonstrated how technology transfer deskilled or did away with working class women's work, and how modernization and development policy and practices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America transformed rural environments and indigenous social and cultural networks, often reproducing or reinforcing gender stereotypes and inequalities. These critiques of mainstream development theory and practice drew from structuralism and Marxian political economy. Studies of the nexus of capitalism, development, populations, and ecologies stressed how oppression and injustice are linked to environmental transformation and change, the industrial geographies of resource extraction and capitalism's creations of surplus (Di Leonardo 1991, Seager 1993).

Examining diverse dimensions of women's work and access to natural resources was critical in revealing the ways in which women were largely disadvantaged by mainstream modernization efforts and policies. Intersections of imperial and indigenous forms of patriarchal power and control could constrict access to land, credit, technology, and education and shape human reproduction. Environmental justice movements and feminist research linked poverty and environmental degradation such as tropical deforestation, irrigation, and pesticide poisoning to gendered relations within the colonialism and to development-induced scarcity. Household vulnerability, changing individual, household, regional and national entitlements, and a lack of democracy are linked to the persistence of poverty and to environmental degradation. Gendered identities and relations crosscut racism, class, age, marital status, ethnicity, and nationality.

Alternatives to mainstream development explore indigenous agroecologies and ecological knowledge, the organization and endurance of social movements linked to environmental concerns, and examine popular struggles and resistance by women and by marginalized and indigenous peoples. The ecofeminist project is one of inclusion and interconnectedness. Feminist political ecology refuses to accept binary dualisms linking gender relations and activities to nature and valuing women and/or nature as inferior or unequal (Plumwood 1993). Thus, ecofeminism and feminist political ecology concern struggles for liberation.

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This article reviews the last two decades of research on men's and women's work networks and proposes a social structural perspective to integrate findings about differences in network characteristic and their consequences. The evidence suggests that three broad sets of factors moderate the relationship between gender and work-related networks: sex stratification, interaction dynamics, and gender beliefs and identities.

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Women in American society have life experiences that differ from men’s in important ways. Many of these-- sexual assault, domestic violence, poverty and discrimination-- hurt women’s mental and physical health (American Psychological Association)

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To do this, Black Thrive is partnering with community members, statutory bodies and local organisations to achieve justice for the Black community through radical change. We will use our £300,000 fund to pilot projects that consider the lived experience of Black people with long-term conditions and have the potential to create systemic change.

The grant funding is available for projects on a full-cost recovery basis. We will fund projects led by individuals, groups, coalitions and organisations that have the potential to shift the dial on employment outcomes and improve the evidence base around what works for Black people in Lambeth with long-term conditions.

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Black Thrive - Grants are available for between £1,000 and £50,000 to deliver projects for up to 18 months

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
To do this, Black Thrive is partnering with community members, statutory bodies and local organisations to achieve justice for the Black community through radical change. We will use our £300,000 fund to pilot projects that consider the lived experience of Black people with long-term conditions and have the potential to create systemic change.