Gender division of labour and the male-breadwinner norm

One set of social norms of importance for the organization of labour markets is related to gender. To a greater or lesser extent, all societies have been characterized by a division of labour between men and women, with some tasks typed as ‘male’, others as ‘female’.³² The gender division of labour has not only been horizontal but also vertical, meaning that men generally have held superior positions even when working in fields numerically dominated by women. A wide variety of factors – ranging from ideology and economy, and from biology to culture – have been referred to when trying to explain the origins and maintenance of gender-typing and gender segregation.³³ Some authors have blamed male-dominated unions for trying to exclude women.³⁴ Others have pointed to the wish of employers to stratify the work force into a core of skilled workers and a labour reserve to hire in upturns and fire in downturns.³⁵ These economic explanations cannot be the whole story, however, since gender-typing and segregation are not confined to capitalist societies. Biological explanations, such as differences in physical strength, dexterity and women’s childbearing, are also unconvincing since the gender division of labour has not been constant over time and space. It is hard to find examples of tasks that have always been performed by women, and vice versa. It is much easier to find examples of tasks

31 Doeringer & Piore 1971, p 25.

32 Bradley 1989; Padavic & Reskin 2002, pp 7-10.

33 Bradley 1989.

34 Rose 1988.

35 This idea has inspired a lot of empirical research on aggregated data such as industrial statistics or unemployment figures. Milkman 1976; Humphries 1976; Löfström 1978; Bruegel 1979; Bouillaguet-Bernard & Gauvin 1988; Humphries 1988; Ruberry & Tarling 1988; Mutari 1996; Lane 2004. Apart from showing that women generally have been employed in industries less sensitive to business cycles, such as manufacturing of foodstuffs and textile products, it is hard to draw general conclusions from studies of the female labour reserve hypothesis. In some crises, women have been more vulnerable, in others less. Furthermore, this strain of research may give a rough idea of what the employment security looked like, on average, for women and men but it cannot distinguish the possible effects of experience, age and skills from direct employer discrimination.

that have changed gender.³⁶ Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos have applied and developed Thurow’s queue theory as an analytical framework for explaining the changing gender composition of occupations.³⁷ While they observe that employers sometimes rank women ahead of men because of the lower costs associated with female labour, they argue that employers in general have tended to prefer male workers. Customs, subjective preferences, perceptions about women’s lower productivity, the reluctance of men to work alongside with women and other reasons have made employers willing to choose men, in spite of having to pay a premium for their choice. This has particularly been the case where labour costs constitute a small fraction of total costs, where companies enjoy high profit levels or do not have to make profits at all. Nevertheless, there are plenty of examples where women have made inroads into male occupations.

Such feminization processes are, according to Reskin and Roos, caused by external pressure. Employers have not abandoned their preferences for male workers, but have been forced to pick workers further back in the labour queues.

Women are simply hired in times of rapid growth or when men are not willing to do the jobs offered. Although feminization processes are more common historically, examples of the reverse are also found, indicating the stubbornness of employers’ rankings. During wars, for example, women often got the opportunity to do jobs previously reserved for men, only to be released when the men returned from military service.

The existence of a gender division of labour and gender queues has potential implications for the topic of this thesis. If the Tobacco Monopoly had strong preferences for male workers, we would expect it to release women and transfer men to female jobs. Such a policy could, however, be obstructed by deeply rooted ideas about men’s and women’s work and the company’s goal to minimize costs. Furthermore, it is not only the gender division of labour at the workplaces that may have implications for how personnel reductions take shape, but also perceptions about the responsibilities of men and women within the family.

36 Cigar production is a case as good as any to illustrate this point. Oakeshott 1900, p 563; Abbott 1907; Cooper 1987; Bradley 1989, pp 160-164; Rossland 1995; Gálvez Muñoz 2003; Gálvez Muñoz 2006.

37 Reskin & Roos 1990.

A popular idea in the first decades of the twentieth century is known as the male-breadwinner norm.³⁸ According to this norm, which is thought to have been endorsed initially by the middle class and later spread to the working class,³⁹ the husband should provide the household with cash incomes whereas the wife should have the responsibility of unpaid domestic work, such as cleaning, cooking and doing laundry. The wife should also have the prime responsibility for raising children and caring for other dependents.

To the extent that it is applied in practice and not only an ideal, the norm has several implications. On a macro level, we expect lower labour market attachment among women in general and married women in particular. Women may be allowed to participate in gainful work in their youth, but as soon as they form a family of their own they are expected to withdraw from the labour market. We also expect women to have lower wages than men since the norm prescribes that men should earn enough money to support a family – a ‘family wage’.

In practice, one may expect to find stronger and weaker manifestations of the male-breadwinner norm. With regard to women in the labour market, there may, for example be opportunities for married women to return to gainful employment when the children are old enough to make it on their own. With regard to remuneration, the family wage does not necessarily have to apply to all men but could be limited to those men who are actually married. Consequently, what to expect from the male-breadwinner norm when studying personnel reductions is not obvious.⁴⁰ Basically, the model may be used as an argument for why men should be protected from unemployment, but should that apply to all men or only those who are married? Layoffs of married men will have adverse impacts on their families, whereas layoffs of unmarried men will prevent them from forming families. Correspondingly, will all women face higher risks of

38 A variety of similar expressions, often used interchangeably by the same author, are encountered in the literature, for example: ‘male-breadwinner model’, ‘male-breadwinner family’, ‘male-breadwinner system’, ‘male-breadwinner ideal’. Vanhaute 2002, p 62.

39 The rise of the male-breadwinner norm is a highly contested issue. Some researchers argue that the withdrawal of married women from paid work was a strategy by the working class to reduce the overall supply of labour, while others see the process as caused by male workers’ attempts to defend not only their jobs but also their identity as old craft traditions were threatened by industrialization.

For reviews of the debate, see: Janssens 1998 and Creighton 1996.

40 Similar problems are encountered when studying the male-breadwinner norm in relation to welfare states. As pointed out by Jane Lewis the treatment of lone-mother families is particularly hard to predict in societies where the male-breadwinner norm is pronounced. Lewis 1992, pp 169-170.

being laid off, or only those women who not live up to the norm – that is, the married ones? And what about married women whose husbands are unemployed?

Indirectly, the male-breadwinner norm may have a negative impact on men’s employment security. To the extent that men get wage premiums for being married or for being able to marry, employers will have incentives to substitute women for men. These incentives are likely to be particularly strong in recessions when the employer’s financial position is weak. Apart from being cheaper, women also have other potential advantages for employers. They are less inclined to join unions and probably less reluctant to accept changes in the organization of work. For example, in the Swedish tobacco industry, women had weaker ties to old craft traditions and were thus easier to transfer between jobs and from manual work to machine work.

Empirically, the importance of a male-breadwinner norm has been studied from different perspectives. Some studies have focused on the labour-market participation of women at various points in time by using survey and census data.⁴¹ Other studies have dealt with the design of welfare institutions. Some welfare states have been built on the premise that married women are not employed in gainful work, whereas others, Sweden for example, have facilitated female labour market participation.⁴² Yet another orientation of research has been to investigate the political discourse, or the public opinion as expressed in newspapers.⁴³ These studies have shown that demands for imposing marriage bars were raised in many countries faced with high unemployment during the inter-war period.

Marriage bars, fairly often discussed in empirical research, may take at least two forms; either female workers are fired upon marriage or married female workers are not hired.⁴⁴ The Swedish inquiry into the gainful employment of married women, which published its final report in 1938, showed that marriage bars were found only in a minority of the investigated firms, covered a minority of the workers and employees in these firms, and were more common in the service sector than in manufacturing.⁴⁵ This pattern had its rationale.⁴⁶ Whereas piece-work was common in the manufacturing sector,

41 Lane 2004; Stanfors 2007; Roberts 2007.

42 Lewis 1992; Sommestad 1997.

43 Frangeur 1998; Neunsinger 2001; Roberts 2007.

44 Goldin 1991.

45 Betänkande angående gift kvinnas förvärvsarbete m.m. Avgivet av Kvinnoarbetskommittén 1938.

46 Svensson 1995.

remuneration in the service sector was often related to seniority. At some point the wage came to exceed productivity and at that point the workers were no longer profitable for the employer. Marriage bars thus provided employers with a justification for releasing old workers.

Though we have a fairly clear picture of how common marriage bars were in Sweden during the 1930s, we do not know much about what employers’

policies looked like in the preceding decade. Neither do we know much about how employers and workers responded in situations with shortage of work. Even though many firms did not impose formal marriage bars it is still possible that married women were particularly vulnerable in personnel reductions. That issue has never been investigated with regard to the Swedish context.