Jennifer Olmsted

Skills, Flexible Manufacturing Technology, and Work Organization

This study employs a national survey of over 3000 U.S. manufacturing establishments to explore associations between worker skill requirements and use of production and telecommunications technologies, work organization, and other management practices. Ordered probit equations show an empirical link between increases in each of six types of skill requirements, as reported by plant managers, and the use of flexible technologies and work organization practices. Technology use is most strongly linked to computer skill requirements. Work organization practices were strongly associated with problem-solving and interpersonal skill increases, suggesting that new work organization practices are broadening the set of skills sought by manufacturers. Traditional academic skills (e.g., math and reading) also were linked to the use of flexible technologies and work organization practices, but increases in these skill requirements were reported less frequently than were requirements for computer, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills.

Gender, Aging, and the Evolving Arab Patriarchal Contract

Within Arab societies, a strong patriarchal contract has given elderly women a claim to economic resources, power within the household and community, and access to the public sphere. But in most communities, few alternatives to the patriarchal contract exist, placing women in a vulnerable situation. In the absence of strong state-sponsored social safety nets, elderly women without male kin or whose kin do not or cannot fulfill this contract are vulnerable to poverty and neglect. Using secondary data sources and previous studies, I describe the factors contributing to the patriarchal contract in the Arab world and the general conditions facing the elderly. Drawing on earlier field work, I then discuss in more detail how the Palestinian elderly are faring, particularly in light of recent Israeli policies. Finally, I argue that Arab cultures and economies are in transition, which raises questions about how future cohorts of elderly women will fare.

Telling Palestinian Women's Economic Stories

How can theoretical criticisms to economics introduced by feminist economists be addressed empirically? Feminist scholars outside economics have spent considerable time debating appropriate methods and have often argued that interactive, situated research is more appropriate for answering feminist concerns. By telling the stories of three Palestinian women, I provide examples where qualitative research can enhance and even challenge quantitative research. I argue that our understanding of concepts such as power, individualism and preference formation will be enhanced by the use of qualitative methods and that feminist economists should be among those questioning the narrow definition of acceptable evidence articulated by mainstream economists.

Choice and Constraint in paid work: Women from low-income households in Tehran

ABSTRACT Based on interviews and participant observation conducted in 2009–10 in Tehran among women living in low-income communities, this contribution examines the complex ways in which women experience paid work. Most low-income Iranian women interviewed had conflicted views about paid employment. Some held up the male breadwinner as ideal, occasionally invoking Islam to limit their engagement in work they viewed as socially stigmatizing, physically difficult, or low paying. Others, particularly younger and unmarried women, had more positive views of work. Class, age, type of employment, and marital status all played roles in shaping womens experiences; but among women with similar characteristics, considerable differences were also apparent. Building off previous work that rejects simplistic dualisms such as choice versus constraint or exploitation versus empowerment, this contribution argues for more nuanced categories that allow for an emphasis on the conflicted ways women experience paid work.

Induced Wage Effects of Changes in Food Prices in Egypt

The trend in real agricultural wages in Egypt over the two decades since the mid-1970s is well described by an inverted U-shaped curve with a peak around 1985. But the rise and fall of real wages masks a complex dynamic process by which nominal wages adjust in response to changes in food prices. We use governorate-level panel data for 1976–93 to explore the nature of this adjustment process. Our results indicate that nominal wages adjust slowly. There is a significant negative initial impact of rising food prices on real wages, though wages do catch up in the long run.

Politics, economics and (virtual) water: A discursive analysis of water policies in the Middle East and North Africa

MENA is among the most water-challenged regions globally. While ‘outsiders” advising policy makers have become increasingly strident in their demands that the region adopt economic/market principles in managing water, policy makers in the region have been able to resist these suggestions. We take an interdisciplinary approach, arguing that the existence of a sanctioned discourse that defines water as a social, rather than an economic, resource contributes to this outcome. At the same time, policy makers have been able to avoid addressing water deficits, because of the availability of cheap virtual water, primarily in the form of grain imports.

Women "manufacture" economic spaces in Bethlehem

Abstract Education is an important factor in womens economic development. For Palestinian women, who may be denied access to wage labor because of societal conceptions of gender roles, education has added importance, since it increases womens ability to challenge these roles. This paper looks at differences in education and employment patterns between two groups of Palestinian women, refugees and nonrefugees, in the Bethlehem area, with the conclusion that while refugee women have made considerable gains in their education and employment options, nonrefugee women have lagged behind, and as a result have become relatively less economically powerful. A combination of social, economic and institutional factors have led to current education and employment patterns.

Gender and Economics in Muslim Communities: A Critical Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis

ABSTRACT This contribution seeks to delineate the broad contours of a transnational, anti-imperial feminist perspective on gender and economics in Muslim communities by bringing together feminist analyses of Orientalist tropes, development discourses and policies, and macro- and microeconomic trends. The goal is to facilitate conversations among scholars who have tended to work within their respective disciplinary and methodological silos despite shared interests. This approach pays special attention to intersectionality, historicity, and structural constraints by focusing on the diversity of the experiences of women and men by religion, location, citizenship, class, age, ethnicity, race, marital status, and other factors. It recognizes the complex relationships between the economic, political, cultural, and religious spheres and the role of local and transnational histories, economies, and politics in shaping peoples lives. Finally, it emphasizes that openness to different methodological approaches can shed clearer light on the question of how various structural factors shape womens economic realities.

Norms, economic conditions and household formation: A case study of the Arab world

Very little work has examined the question of household structure in the Arab region, despite the fact that there has been speculation that changes in household patterns have been occurring in recent years due to modernization, urbanization and changing marriage patterns. Using a number of primary data sources, including household surveys from Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Egypt, as well as analysis by historians that uses archival sources, this paper compares household structure patterns across time and space, to answer the question—how have household patterns changed and do observed changes provide insights into the impact norms and/or structural factors have and will play in shaping household patterns? The data suggest that while often perceived as being the dominant household structure, extended family households are not the norm in the Arab world, nor have they necessarily predominated since the 1800s. In addition, patterns vary considerably across communities, with extended family households occurring more frequently in Syria and Yemen. Some trends that provide insight into the future, as well as being suggestive of possible changes in norms, include: the rising age of marriage; the increasing likelihood that women in particular will never marry; and the increasing ease, despite high levels of youth unemployment, for young people, including young women, to set up their own households. These trends also raise numerous questions about how much changes that are occurring are a function of individual choice or are shaped by cultural or economic pressures. Patterns currently being observed also provide insights into changes that are likely to occur in the future, since current trends suggest that future household patterns may be quite different in the coming years, and that youth, and in particular young women, may be in the process of gaining more autonomy in a number of countries.

Men's work/women's work: Employment, wages and occupational segregation in Bethlehem

In this paper I examine differences in labor patterns in the Bethlehem area by sex. I find that there is considerable occupational segregation, as well as a wage gap between men and women, particularly among less educated women. This wage gap is accentuated by mens and womens differential opportunities vis a vis the Israeli economy. Men working in the Israeli sector, primarily in the construction sector, receive a wage premium, while women, who work primarily as subcontractors to Israeli textile and garment producers, do not and are among the lowest paid workers in the economy.