Men's work and male lives : exploring men and employment in the national child development study

The thesis begins by arguing that there is a real absence of an empirical understanding of men in British 'gender based sociology'. This is established by exploring current debate within gender based sociology and by examining the extent to which the feminist critique of sociology has marginalised men in gender based research.;The thesis then explores how men's lives and work are linked by examining gender theory and feminism. It is argued and concluded that men's identification with work has become a function of a social sex-ordered division resulting from both capitalist and patriarchal relationships. Such relationships are established and supported by men (actively as well as passively) and socialising agents such as family, church, state, professions, guilds and unions develop to protect men's position in paid public work.;Men's recent experiences of the British labour market are then considered. It is concluded that two main trends are important in male employment. They are the general decline in male labour market participation and the overall decline in male full-time employment; and second, the growth in male non-standard employment forms such as part-time working.;Finally, an empirical account of men's employment is provided by offering a secondary analysis of the National Child Development Study (1991). The data suggest that men's lives are far more complex (and less homogeneous) than originally thought. For example, men do experience different working forms, they do experience differing levels of education and training, men do have varied attitudes towards work and home, and experience health differently when compared to other men.;The thesis concludes that men's experiences of work and employment need to be documented and brought back to the attention of the sociological researchers. What sociologists need to do now is further document the change in men's lives and the impact changes in working life has on men

Men, Gender and Work in Dublin: Initial Findings on Work and Class.

One of the most important events in the development of sociology was the feminist critique of the ‘male’ sociological othorodoxy, and as we approach the millennium, the need for such a radical ‘sociology of gender’ remains. However, for the gender debate to be truly radical, sociology has to fully encompass the view that men need to be considered both empirically as well as theoretically. Indeed, whilst there have been great strides forward in the theoretical considerations of men, a comprehensive ‘empirical’ analysis of men is still required. This paper presents evidence on men’s lives in the Republic of Ireland. In the 1990s, the Republic of Ireland has experienced one of the most dramatic economic transformations in Western Europe. However, regardless of the size and longevity of such economic change, a sizeable part of the Irish population has not benefited from this economic success. Unemployment remains at around 11 per cent, of which seventy three per cent are men. Using data collected from 170 Irish men, during 1997 and 1998, this paper will contribute to the gender debate by outlining why an empirical consideration of men is important and by documenting and exploring how men experience working life and economic change in Ireland. An initial analysis of the data suggests that paid ‘formal’ employment is not important to Irish working class me

Dad Was A Terrible Hard Worker: The Influence of Family and School on Dublin Men’s Working Lives - Preliminary Findings

This paper aims to explore the roles that home, family and school play in influencing Irish men’s approach to work and experiences of working life. The paper begins by reflecting on the transition process from home and school to work as part of men’s socialisation process. However, whilst a number of works have touched upon this process in the past very little of the existing literature examines men’s qualitative experience of this process. The need to carry out such work and explore this process for men is then linked to a broader set of research aims. The paper then moves on to outline the methodology. Using data from 156 questionnaires and ten in-depth interviews with Irish men from North County Dublin, the impact of home and family on the transition to work process is explored. After the methodology, the themes and findings are explored. The paper concludes that in terms of family influence, the men’s fathers did have some impact on attitudes to work. In terms of school, despite the recent increase in the demand for skilled labour, most of the respondents considered school to be of little value or help in determining future careers

Continuity and change in the experiences of transition from school to work

Using previously unanalysed data from Norbert Elias’s lost study of young workers in Leicester —the Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles (1962–1964), and data from a subsequent restudy of the same respondents in 2003–2005, this paper focuses on three main themes. First, we critically examine the concept of transition as it is currently used in education and youth research. We argue that the vast majority of what is written about the transition process focuses upon how the process has changed over time. However such approaches, whilst clearly documenting important aspects of social change, ignore and underestimate continuities and similarities in the young people’s experiences of transition, regardless of their spatial and temporal location. For example, despite significant labour market changes in the UK, young people still have to make the transition from full‐time education to whatever follows next, be it employment, unemployment or further and higher education. Second, we examine the young workers’ experiences and perceptions of the transition process in the 1960s. Building upon analyses offered elsewhere the data suggests that the young person’s experiences of school to work transitions in the 1960s had many similarities to the transitional experience today – namely that, as now, the transition process was characterised by complexity, uncertainty and risk. Finally, the impact of these early transition experiences on subsequent careers are also examined as revealed in the life history interviews of the restudy. Despite a drastically changing local labour market, and the fact that most of the workers were no longer working in the industries of their youth, the analysis reveals the sample retained a strong sense of occupational identity based on their initial transition experiences. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the findings of this particular data set. The data is unique because it provides a rare insight of the outcomes of decisions made by school leavers some forty years ago on their experiences of the labour market. As such it provides an invaluable glimpse of the lasting impact of the school to work transition on individual working lives

Work and the diaspora: locating Irish workers in the British labour market

Work and the diaspora: locating Irish workers in the British labour marke

Locating Irish Workers in the British Labour Force Survey

Irish migrant workers still make a significant contribution to the UK labour force, but this contribution is confined to particular occupation and industry groups. This paper begins with a brief review of the literature on Irish workers employment and an argument is developed that the work of Irish-born people in Britain is still both racialised and gendered. Then, using data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), the work experiences of over one thousand Irish-born people in the UK are explored as a group and in comparison to UK-born workers. Findings suggest both Irish-born men and women still work in the stereotyped occupations of the past. For example, most women work in public administration and health while twenty six per cent of men work in construction. The majority of Irish-born men work in manual skilled or unskilled jobs. The paper concludes that historically there has been no real qualitative change in the way that Irish-born workers experience employment in the UK

Revisiting Norbert Elias's Sociology of Community: Learning from the Young Worker Project

Since 2001 we have been engaged in a re-study of three linked Leicester projects: The Employment of Married Women in a Leicester Factory (1959–1962), The Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles (1962–1964) and The Established and the Outsiders (1965). The three projects contain a number of striking overlaps, not least Elias's formulation of communities as figurations through which communal behavioural standards are established, learned and maintained. Whether in the different Zones of Winston Parva, or in the large hosiery factories of Leicester, people learned the self-control of drives and affects ‘according to the pattern and extent of socially given drive and affect regulation’ of that time and that community. In this paper we outline the background to the three re-studies and link them to Elias's work on community and the broader canon of community studies. We then consider methodological lessons learnt from our re-studies – in particular, the practical process of re-studies, the definitional problems of what constitutes a re-study, and the value of visual images and walking the field. We conclude by reflecting upon the analytical promise of community re-studies

She wants to be like her Mum: Girls' transition to work in the 1960's

In the early 1960s researchers at the University of Leicester carried out a unique survey into the school to work transition experiences of nearly nine hundred young adults. The survey documented most aspects of the schoolleavers’ lives, however, the majority of the data from this 'Young Worker Project' has remained unanalysed and unpublished for nearly forty years. Recently 851 of the original interview schedules were uncovered and, as part of a broader ESRC funded project, re-analysis has commenced. Little is known about the transition to work at this time and what research does exist has focused on the experience of boys. Using data from the original survey, which included interviews with 260 girls, this paper examines the female experience of the transition from school to work, concluding that gender played a significant role in influencing the way in which the school to work transition was experienced

Through the Interviewer's Lens: Representations of 1960s Households and Families in a Lost Sociological Study

In this paper we aim to use the interviewer notes from a lost sociological project to answer two broad, interrelated, questions: i) how was family life documented and represented by the researchers in their interviewer notes and ii) what does analysing interviewer notes in this way add to our understanding of families and households? The answers to these questions are considered in the context of a further question – why did the young worker research contain so much data on families and households when the research was concerned with young workers’ early workplace experiences? In answering these questions we offer some insight into family life in the 1960s as documented by the researchers and locate Elias’s young worker research within the context of the other large sociology research projects being undertaken at the time

'They Had Horrible Wallpaper': Representation of Respondents and the Interview Process in Interviewer Notes

The role and content of interviewer notes in social research has traditionally received little attention. This, in the main, is due to the fact that the interviewer notes were often written by the researchers themselves for their own use and have not become available for secondary analysis. However, a secondary analysis of interviewer notes can provide a great deal of insight into the research process and the attitudes, experiences and expectations of those working in the field. Using interviewer notes from a little known research project on youth transitions carried out in 1960s Leicester, this paper aims to explore the interviewers' experiences of the research process and considers how the interviewers own perceptions and experiences are documented in the interviewer notes