Women's Work – serie

The dominance of certain groups in policy-making and the silence around race and gender in economic policy-making is commonplace to the point of being unremarkable. This book makes what has been unremarkable into something very remarkable. Any analysis of economic governance that ignores gender and race is inherently partial and such exclusion is itself an act of power, one that stabilises dominant ideas and prevents their contestation. This book shows how to overcome such limited analysis, and highlights how an analysis that takes account of the roles played by gender and race enables a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of economic governance in the EU.By focusing on the constitutive nature of racialized and gendered ideas in the narratives and reforms of the late 2000s, Muireann O’Dwyer offers an original study of European economic governance. She shows how an intersectional analysis can be used to answer key questions, in particular through demonstrating how gender and race play essential roles in generating both legitimacy and coherence for individual economic policies and the overall economic governance system.The book draws upon empirical work focused on key policy documents and examines significant discourses of the regime of economic governance: that of the European economic sphere, that of expertise and knowledge, and that of a particular growth model that has to come to dominate European economic policy. It also connects this analysis to broader debates about European integration, and it serves as a practical demonstration of the application of intersectionality to economic policy.

Women across the world experience gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace. In the context of globalization and neoliberalism, work plays an important role in constructing and maintaining the economic, social and cultural systems of oppression that women face. Women in insecure, precarious employment and women not protected by trade unions are the most at risk of violence and as the #MeToo movement has shown, it stretches across societies rich and poor.In June 2019, the International Labour Organization adopted a ground-breaking global Treaty on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work. This historic vote was the result of more than a decade of campaigning and lobbying by women trade union leaders and their allies across the world. Chidi King, Robin Runge and Jane Pillinger played a key role in the campaign and the negotiation of the Convention. Combining both their activist and academic backgrounds, this book documents their unique insights into and experience of the campaign and its landmark achievement in international labour law, global policy and the cross-movement building of workers’ and women’s rights, which has reignited the role of trade unions, and particularly women in trade unions, in global advocacy.

When we think of a “woman entrepreneur”, what comes to mind? Women entrepreneurs hold a dominant presence in political, social, economic and development imaginaries, as a global class of workers typifying the contemporary, neoliberal era. Their enterprise is readily proffered as the evidence of a nation’s progress, inclusion and development. International institutions, development banks, states, civil society groups, corporations and international financial institutions promote women’s enterprise in nearly every corner of the globe. A powerful mythology has grown up around the idea of women as empowered, financial saviour-mothers who benefit the prosperity, inclusivity, and security of a nation and the global economy.In this book, Melissa Langworthy exposes these myths for what they are and in offering a political economy of women’s enterprise, she asks what value women’s enterprise gives, not to women, but to the institutions that have shaped them and placed them in the centre of the global imaginary.

Women across the world experience gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace. In the context of globalization and neoliberalism, work plays an important role in constructing and maintaining the economic, social and cultural systems of oppression that women face. Women in insecure, precarious employment and women not protected by trade unions are the most at risk of violence and as the #MeToo movement has shown, it stretches across societies rich and poor.In June 2019, the International Labour Organization adopted a ground-breaking global Treaty on eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work. This historic vote was the result of more than a decade of campaigning and lobbying by women trade union leaders and their allies across the world. Chidi King, Robin Runge and Jane Pillinger played a key role in the campaign and the negotiation of the Convention. Combining both their activist and academic backgrounds, this book documents their unique insights into and experience of the campaign and its landmark achievement in international labour law, global policy and the cross-movement building of workers’ and women’s rights, which has reignited the role of trade unions, and particularly women in trade unions, in global advocacy.