Alison MacEwen Scott – författare

Despite profound economic and social changes in Britain during the 1980s, men and women remain highly segregated at work; a segregation strongly related to inequalities in pay, career prospects, and employment protection. This book analyses the nature and significance of gender segregation within the context of labour market change. The analysis has many novel features. These include a combination of economic and sociological approaches; the integration of demand and supply explanations; systematic comparisons between 'male' and 'female' jobs; the incorporation of work history and life cycle variables; and the investigation of 'sexist attitudes' and the sex-labelling of jobs. The effects of social change are analysed through employer, industry, and locality case studies. The results show that the sex ratio of a job is an important aspect of labour market structure, whether or not gender is the focus of the study, and that desegregation is still a long way off.Contributors: Brendan Burchell, Rosemary Crompton, Sara Horrell, John Lovering, Alison MacEwen Scott, Ann Martin, Roger Penn, Jill Rubery, Kay Sanderson, Hilda Scattergood, Peter Sloane, Carolyn Vogler

Traditionally, class analysis has exaggerated the role of economic differentiation, particularly that of the informal economy, and has underestimated the degree of common consciousness amongst the `labouring class'. In Divisions and Solidarities, Alison MacEwen Scott examines class analysis and the inter-relationship between gender and class which creates a shared interest between men and women in some contexts and a divergence of interest in others. Using case studies of the urban population in Latin America, she presents a major critique of existing class theories and presents a new theoretical treatment on class formation, the orthodoxy of the informal economy, class consciousness and political participation.