Jude Browne

Explaining gender segregation

Occupational gender segregation--the tendency for women and men to work in different occupations--is an important feature of all societies, and particularly the wealthy industrialized ones. To understand this segregation, and to explain its significance, we need to distinguish between vertical segregation entailing inequality and horizontal segregation representing difference without inequality, with overall segregation being the resultant of these components. Three major theoretical approaches to understanding occupational gender segregation are examined: human capital/rational choice, patriarchy, and preference theories. All are found to be inadequate; they tend to confuse overall segregation with its vertical component, and each entails a number of other faults. It is generally assumed or implied that greater empowerment of women would reduce gender segregation. This is the reverse of what actually happens; in countries where the degree of womens empowerment is greater, the level of gender segregation is also greater. An alternative theoretical approach based on processes of social reproduction is shown to be more useful.

Capabilities, resources, and systematic injustice: A case of gender inequality

Focusing on the debate between resource egalitarians and capability theorists, with particular attention to gender equality, this article rejects the prevailing assumption that the ‘capability approach’ to equality, as outlined by Amartya Sen, is better able to respond to important empirically identifiable inequalities than its resource egalitarian alternative, as developed by Ronald Dworkin. Developing and expanding upon the often overlooked Dworkinian ‘principle of independence’, the article contends that resource egalitarianism is capable of identifying and responding to a complex set of structural inequalities that remain outside the purview of the capability approach.

The Critical Mass Marker Approach: Female Quotas and Social Justice

In this article I explore the theoretical and policy implications of direct state intervention into the constitution of corporate boards as a means to addressing institutional gender injustice. I consider the work of three prominent thinkers on affirmative action and institutional injustice, Ronald Dworkin, Anne Phillips and Iris Marion Young, and present an argument in favour of a specific form of state-administered female quota model which I shall call the Critical Mass Marker approach. I argue that this is a more refined and effective approach to institutional gender injustice than current affirmative action models.

The Default Model: Gender Equality, Fatherhood, and Structural Constraint

What does a political commitment to gender equality mean in the context of fatherhood? In what ways should the state support or compel fathers so as to affect greater gender equality? If there is any consensus on these questions in the gender literature, then it is that existing family leave policy—even the most progressive—has fallen short of a satisfactory answer. Typically, this failure is understood either in economic terms—that policy provision is simply inadequate in scale—or in terms of individual preferences that should be encouraged to change. Indeed, both of these approaches intend to incentivize men to take up more caring duties, a theme that has become central to the politics of gender equality (Gornick and Meyers 2008; Haas and Rostgaard 2011; Hobson 2002; Kamerman and Moss 2009).

Resolving Gender Pay Inequality? Rationales, Enforcement and Policy

It is increasingly argued that models of Corporate Governance can be seen as an effective substitute for conventional state-centred social policy. This article examines the extent to which these contemporary business-led approaches are successful in remedying the gendered pay gap in the British labour market, using the latest Cabinet Office review on womens employment and pay in Britain: the Kingsmill Review, as its central example. The article outlines Kingsmills recommendations and then analyses their efficacy by means of a ‘snap-shot’ case study of a large employing organisation which was identified as a ‘model employer’ by the Review and which has adopted many exemplary employment practices: the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The article employs analysis of a major original new data set to establish both the successes and limitations of these recommendations in overcoming the gender pay gap within the BBC.

Dialogue, politics and gender

Introduction: dialogue, politics and gender Jude Browne 1. Women and the standpoint of concrete others: from the criticism of discourse ethics to feminist social criticism James Gordon Finlayson 2. Gender, discourse and non-essentialism Barbara Fultner 3. Universalism in feminist international ethics: gender and the difficult labour of translation Kimberly Hutchings 4. Language, gender, dialogue, ethics: universalism and consensus after gender trouble Terrell Carver 5. Between consensus and deconstruction: a feminist reading of dialogue Martin Leet and Roland Bleiker 6. Trapped in a family portrait? Gender and family in Nietzsches refiguring of authority Verity Smith and Tracy B. Strong 7. Gender, gesture and garments: encountering embodied interlocutors Diana Coole 8. What kind of dialogue do we need? Gender, deliberation and comprehensive values Clare Chambers and Phil Parvin 9. Deliberation, domination and decision-making Judith Squires.