Gendered Labour Markets and Political Action

Abstract

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Michael W. McCann Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994, £51.95, paper £15.25. xiii+358 pp.

Deborah Figart and Peggy Kahn Contesting the Market: Pay Equity and the Politics of Economic Restructuring, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997, paper £17.95, 225 pp.

As global economic competition undermines the ability of individual states to pursue independent economic strategies, there has been an apparent convergence in labour market policies across a number of countries. In response to economic recession, fiscal deficits and structural unemployment, an increasing number of governments have embraced neo-liberal solutions to these difficulties. Policies designed to improve the terms and conditions of employment have fallen into disfavour and been replaced by deregulatory measures aimed at creating more flexible and casualised labour markets. In the past two decades, many countries have experienced falling trade union membership, the decentralisation of payment systems and a declining public sector through privatisation. These developments are invariably presented by the politicians responsible for introducing them as both inevitable and beneficial. Yet despite global pressures, individual labour markets are shaped by a unique blend of historical, cultural and institutional factors which would seem to belie the imposition of uniform solutions.