Diane Perrons

The New Economy and the Work–Life Balance: Conceptual Explorations and a Case Study of New Media

Given the varied claims made about the new economy and its implications for the organization of work and life, this article critically evaluates some conceptualizations of the new economy and then explores how the new media sector has materialized and been experienced by people working in Brighton and Hove, a new media hub. New technologies and patterns of working allow the temporal and spatial boundaries of paid work to be extended, potentially allowing more people, especially those with caring responsibilities, to become involved, possibly leading to a reduction in gender inequality. This article, based on 55 in-depth interviews with new media owners, managers and some employees in small and micro enterprises, evaluates this claim. Reference is made to the gender-differentiated patterns of ownership and earnings; flexible working patterns, long hours and homeworking and considers whether these working patterns are compatible with a work‐life balance. The results indicate that while new media creates new opportunities for people to combine interesting paid work with caring responsibilities, a marked gender imbalance remains.

Women's paid work and moral economies of care

Female labour force participation has been increasing in recent decades, in part encouraged by state policies to raise the employment rate to encourage economic competitiveness and combat social exclusion. Social provision for care, however, has lagged behind this increase, creating practical and moral dilemmas for individuals and for society, facing parents with complex choices about how to combine work and care. In this paper, we draw on a qualitative study in London to explore the extent to which the large-scale entry of women into waged work is altering womens understandings of their duties and responsibilities to care for others. We conclude that their decisions are influenced by class position, entrenched gender inequalities in the labour market, varying abilities to pay for care and complex gendered understandings of caring responsibilities.

Empowerment Through Participation? Conceptual Explorations and A Case Study

Economic inequalities have been increasing between and within nations, regions and cities, but questions of redistribution have to some extent been displaced by those of recognition, empowerment and diversity in urban and regional inquiry and policy. A conceptual framework drawing upon Nancy Frasers and Iris Marion Youngs ideas about economic and cultural injustice is proposed for evaluating local empowerment initiatives, which is then drawn upon to explore the nature and effectiveness of participation with reference to one specific New Deal For Communities partnership scheme in the London Borough of Hackney, Shoreditch - Our Way, concerned with regeneration. Our findings suggest that while participation is certainly a necessary condition for moving towards a more egalitarian society, current policies are valuable but limited in terms of the degree of representation and the extent of control. They are part of an affirmative agenda - that is, they tackle symptoms but not causes of deprivation. We conclude that if long-term remedies are desired, then transformative solutions which address both economic and political injustice are necessary. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2003.

The contradictions and intersections of class and gender in a global city: Placing working women's lives on the research agenda

In this paper we examine the relationships between class and gender in the context of current debates about economic change in Greater London. It is a common contention of the global city thesis that new patterns of inequality and class polarisation are apparent as the expansion of high-status employment brings in its wake rising employment in low-status, poorly paid ‘servicing’ occupations. Whereas urban theorists tend to ignore gender divisions, feminist scholars have argued that new class and income inequalities are opening up between women as growing numbers of highly credentialised women enter full-time, permanent employment and others are restricted to casualised, low-paid work. However, it is also argued that working womens interests coincide because of their continued responsibility for domestic obligations and still-evident gender discrimination in the labour market. In this paper we counterpose these debates, assessing the consequences for income inequality, for patterns of childcare and for work–life balance policies of rising rates of labour-market participation among women in Greater London. We conclude by outlining a new research agenda.

Understanding social and spatial divisions in the new economy: new media clusters and the digital divide

Abstract Economic inequality is increasing but has been sidelined in some of the recent debates in urban and regional studies. This article outlines a holistic framework for economic geography, which focuses on understanding social and spatial divisions, by drawing on economists’ ideas about the new economy and feminist perspectives on social reproduction. The framework is illustrated with reference to the emerging new media cluster in Brighton and Hove, which, as a consequence, emerges less as a new technology cluster and more as a reflection of increasing social divisions in the new economy.

Flexible Working Patterns and Equal Opportunities in the European Union

Within the European Union policy discourse, ̄exible employment represents a means of reducing unemployment, increasing economic and social cohesion, maintaining economic competitiveness and enhancing equal opportunities between women and men. These issues, together with economic integration, are key objectives of the European Commission. They are to be achieved, however, without undermining the overall growth strategy (European Commission, 1996a). The main purpose of this article is to consider whether one of the key employment strategies ( ̄exible working) is compatible with one of these policy objectives ± equal opportunities ± both conceptually and in practice. The article begins by discussing the role of ̄exible working in EU policy-making. Flexible working is said to facilitate the reconciliation of paid work and family life and by so doing, contributes to equal opportunities. To evaluate this claim the meanings of the two main concepts, ̄exible working and equal opportunities, are explored in the ®rst section. The second section explores the scale, dimensions and gender balance of numerical ̄exibility in EU labour markets. In the third section, which forms the main part of the article, a case study of ̄exible working in the retail sector in six European countries is presented. The purpose of the

Migration and uneven development within an enlarged European Union: Fathering, gender divisions and male migrant domestic services:

Drawing mainly on qualitative evidence gathered from interviews with migrant handymen and with labour-using households in the UK, this paper analyses how this migration typifies economic and social divisions within Europe and embodies conflicting tensions between economic and social policies at an interpersonal level. By supplying household services, migrant handymen enable labour-using households to alleviate time pressures and conflicts in time priorities arising from tensions between economic expectations regarding working hours and work commitment, and social expectations regarding contemporary ideas of active parenting. Similarly to the outsourcing of feminized domestic labour and care, these tensions are in part resolved for labour-using households by extending class divisions across national boundaries while leaving gender divisions changed but not transformed and in some instances exacerbating work/ life tensions among the migrants. These broad findings are complicated by differential desires and capabilities around fathering practices among fathers in labour-using households and among the migrants, and economic differentiation among the migrant population. Although we cannot tell from our study whether such movement reinforces or redresses uneven development, what we can say is that existing cohesion policies are insufficient to redress uneven development, and individual responses including migration can reinforce existing social divisions. Further, existing social policies for promoting gender equality fail to recognize or redress the deeply embedded gendered norms.

Towards a More Holistic Framework for Economic Geography

The central argument of this paper is that current tendencies in the new economic geographies and work on regeneration are not contributing as much as they might to understanding the consequences of current economic change for regional inequality and development. These perspectives have tended to focus on the minutia of change; either the linkages between firms in economic clusters or on the processes of discursive inclusion in regeneration schemes. The wider consequences in terms of the well-being of people in places have been rather neglected. To overcome the partial nature of the approaches criticised a more holistic framework for understanding regional development, which draws upon contemporary economic and social theories in relation to production, social reproduction, recognition and redistribution is advocated. She is Associate Editor of Regional Studies and a member of the Womens Budget Group. She recently coordinated a comparative study of flexible working and the reconciliation of work and family life for the European Union and is currently working on the gendered nature and spatial form of the new economy.

Deregulation and Women's Employment: The Diverse Experiences of Women in Britain

In recent years employers in Britain have taken up equal opportunity policies more widely and structural changes in the economy have generally favored women. Against this, the pursuit of labor market deregulation is generally thought to impact adversely on women. This paper considers the changing British policy framework of the last ten to fifteen years and the effects on womens employment, highlighting differences amongst women. Deregulation and flexibilization are argued to have affected the conditions of part-time employment for women rather than its scale and pattern of expansion. The changing gender wage gap in Britain and the growth of pay inequalities amongst women are analyzed using a shift-share approach. The limited convergence in earnings between men and women is largely confined to full-time workers and has two distinct aspects. Full-time female employees have made some inroads into higher-paid occupations, but at the bottom end of the market the narrowing of the gender wage gap reflects little more than the deterioration in the position of low-paid men, relative to the median. The British case shows the limitations of an equal opportunities agenda pursued within a wider regime of burgeoning labor market inequalities.

Care, Paid Work, and Leisure: Rounding the Triangle

The current distribution of paid work and caring work is inequitable. Some people are combining very long hours of paid work with caring responsibilities, while others with no caring responsibilities are also excluded from paid work. Nancy Frasers (1996) concept of gender equity, is drawn upon as a normative standard against which to evaluate different models of work and child care in France and the U.K. In practice, distinctions between work, care and leisure are blurred. Correspondingly, all citizens could spread their time more evenly between these activities in order to obtain a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of social reproduction.