Table Of ContentThe Future of Work Series
Series Editor: Peter Nolan, Director of the ESRC Future of Work Programme and
the Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations at Leeds University
Business School in the UK.
Few subjects could be judged more vital to current policy and academic debates
than the prospects for work and employment. The Future of Work series provides the
much needed evidence and theoretical advances to enhance our understanding of
the critical developments most likely to impact on people’s working lives.
Titles include:
Chris Baldry, Peter Bain, Phil Taylor, Jeff Hyman, Dora Scholarios, Abigail
Marks, Aileen Watson, Kay Gilbert, Gregor Gall and Dirk Bunzel
THE MEANING OF WORK IN THE NEW ECONOMY
Harriet Bradley and Geraldine Healy
ETHNICITY AND GENDER AT WORK
Inequalities, Careers and Employment Relations
Julia Brannen, Peter Moss and Ann Mooney
WORKING AND CARING OVER THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Change and Continuity in Four Generation Families
Andy Danford, Mike Richardson, Paul Stewart, Stephanie Tailby
and Martin Upchurch
PARTNERSHIP AND THE HIGH PERFORMANCE WORKPLACE
Work and Employment Relations in the Aerospace Industry
Geraldine Healy, Edmund Heery, Phil Taylor and William Brown (editors)
THE FUTURE OF WORKER REPRESENTATION
Diane Houston (editor)
WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN THE 21st CENTURY
Theo Nichols and Surhan Cam
LABOUR IN A GLOBAL WORLD
Case Studies from the White Goods Industry in Africa, South America,
East Asia and Europe
Paul Stewart (editor)
EMPLOYMENT, TRADE UNION RENEWAL AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
The Experience of Work and Organisational Change
Clare Ungerson and Sue Yeandle (editors)
CASH FOR CARE IN DEVELOPED WELFARE STATES
Michael White, Stephen Hill, Colin Mills and Deborah Smeaton
MANAGING TO CHANGE?
British Workplaces and the Future of Work
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Ethnicity and Gender
at Work
Inequalities, Careers and Employment
Relations
Harriet Bradley
and
Geraldine Healy
© Harriet Bradley and Geraldine Healy 2008
Foreword © Peter Nolan 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-1-4039-9175-1
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables viii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbreviations xii
1 Introduction 1
Ethnicity and gender at work: the background
to this book 1
A note on terminology 4
Structure of the book 5
2 Ethnicity and Gender in the Labour Market 7
Flexibility 9
Feminisation 11
Migration 13
Ethnicity and gender in the British labour
market 16
Labour market participation 16
The European picture 34
Segregation in the United States 37
Conclusions 40
3 Gender, Ethnicity and Class – the Case for
Intersectional Analysis 42
An intersectional approach 43
History 46
Employment relations and inequalities in
organisations 49
Do black women ‘choose’ their careers? 54
Inequality regimes 57
Conclusion 60
4 Challenging Discrimination, Sexism and
Racism: the Role of the State 61
Initial state interventions: race relations and sex
discrimination legislation 62
v
vi Contents
The current legislative context 64
The role of the European Union 67
The limits of legislation 68
The way forward 72
Conclusion 74
5 Employers: Agents of Transformation? 76
Introduction 76
Shape and degree of inequalities in organisations 77
Employer action on equality and diversity 80
Towards managing diversity? 86
Employer policy and practice – case study examples 91
Concluding comments 97
6 Towards Transformation: Trade Union Strategies 100
Little acorns: racism and anti-racism in the
trade union movement 101
Big oaks: trade union initiatives and the
equality agenda 104
The case study unions 106
What is being done for BME women? 109
Conclusions 117
7 The Women and Their Stories 119
The research approach 119
The women 121
Union involvement and activism 123
Ginette’s story 126
Shahnaz’s story 128
Marsha’s story 131
Conclusion 134
8 Inclusion and Exclusion in the Workplace 137
Segregation and marginalisation in the workplace 138
The bad old days: imperialist racism and
patriarchal sexism 140
The not-so-good new days: an array of racisms 145
Practices of racism: condoning discrimination
and victimisation 150
Inclusion and the trade union 152
Struggles within the union: men, power and exclusion 155
Changing the union: networks, training and
intersectionality 157
Conclusion 159
Contents vii
9 Career and Career Development 161
Introduction 161
The context of work 163
Moving on up 166
Adapting work to circumstances 174
Future career strategies 175
Conclusions 177
10 Shaping Careers from a Trade Union Perspective 178
Routes into collectivism and union activism 179
The social justice route 183
Experience in the union 187
The career indeterminacy of union women 192
Rejecting the union career 194
Conclusions 196
11 Unions, Communities and Families in
Women’s Lives 198
Bella’s story 199
Working for the community 202
Contested communities 205
Family influences and values 207
Children and the future 210
Changing the union 212
Conclusion 214
12 Conclusions 216
Gender and ethnic employment gaps 216
The role of the key actors in equality and diversity 219
An intersectional analysis of BME women’s disadvantage 220
The indeterminacy of career 223
Inequality regimes 225
Moving forward or standing still? 227
Bibliography 229
Index 241
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
3.1 Diagrammatic representation of the key themes
and their intersections 43
3.2 The vicious and discriminatory circles of job
and organisation inequalities 51
Tables
2.1 Rates of unemployment in Britain by
ethnic group and sex, 2004 17
2.2 Initial participation rates in higher education
by ethnicity and sex 18
2.3 P ercentages of women and men in the workforce
working part-time and in self-employment, 2002,
by ethnic group 20
2.4 Employment in standard occupational categories
by sex and ethnicity 22
2.5 Percentages of women and men in the workforce
in the salariat, 2004, by ethnic group 23
2.6 Employment in selected industrial sectors by
gender and ethnic group 24
2.7 The five most concentrated occupations for women
by ethnic group, England and Wales 2001 25
2.8 Median hourly wages by ethnicity and sex for
employees aged 18 and over, 2004 27
2.9 US earning statistics for women 37
2.10 The five most concentrated industrial areas for
women by ethnic group, USA 2004 38
5.1 Equal opportunities and managing diversity compared 87
6.1 Representation, gender and ethnicity in the
case study unions 107
6.2 Equality structures in the case study unions 110
7.1 Demographic details of interviewees 122
7.2 Union membership 123
viii
Foreword
The segmentation of labour markets has long been a major focus of
concern for researchers on work and employment. The evidence base
reveals systematic tendencies in advanced capitalist economies that
reproduce the supply of relatively good and bad jobs. It is widely
accepted moreover that social groups bearing particular characteristics
are more likely to be crowded into bad jobs, while others gain access to
higher paid, more secure and more challenging paid work. Within this
broad area of study, explanations for the compartmentalisation of
labour markets continue to diverge, and there also remain many critical
issues that have been under-researched. One such issue is the labour
market position of women from minority ethnic backgrounds.
This important new book by Professor Harriet Bradley and Professor
Geraldine Healy, two distinguished specialists on work and employment,
advances in important ways knowledge of this vitally important social
and economic issue. The research on which it is based was conducted as
part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Future of Work
Programme, which commenced in 1998, and supported the work of more
than one hundred researchers and 27 projects. The Programme set-out to
generate new data, refine established concepts, and produce a theoreti-
cally grounded understanding of the changing world of work. Further
information on the Programme is available at: www.leeds.ac.uk/esrcfu-
tureofwork
Ethnicity and Gender at Work is the tenth research monograph in the
Palgrave Macmillan Future of Work Series. Timely and policy relevant,
it brings forward a searching account of the jobs that ethnic minority
women do, the extent to which they work full-time or in ‘non-standard’
jobs, and the degree to which they are clustered in particular occupa-
tions and labour market segments. It looks in detail at their pay, the
extent to which they are able to pursue careers, and the particular obsta-
cles they face, over and above the discriminatory practices that most
women have to contend with.
An especially novel and critically important aspect of Bradley and
Healy’s research design is its focus on the relationship between trade
unions and ethnic minority women. What, if any, assistance do unions
provide to such women? Have they sought to encourage the participation
ix
