How do the United States and France differ in laws and attitudes concerning discrimination at work? Franco-American scholar Marie Mercat-Bruns interviews prominent legal scholars to demonstrate how ...these two post-industrial democracies have adopted divergent strategies. Whereas employers in the United States and France rarely discriminate openly, deep systemic discrimination exists in both countries, each with a unique history of dealing with difference. Powerful and incisive, the book examines hot-button issues such as racial and religious bias, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and equality for LGBT individuals, highlighting comparisons that will further discussions on social equality and fundamental human rights across borders. “Mercat-Bruns makes original use of comparative law to shed new light on the issue of discrimination at work. In addition to reviewing the literature, she enters into a rich dialogue with American experts about their core findings. This book makes a fascinating and useful contribution to one of today’s most pressing issues.” -ANTOINE GARAPON, Secretary General, Director of the Comparative Law Program, Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la Justice (IHEJ) “A very interesting and innovative approach to examining nondiscrimination law.” -LISA WADDINGTON, Professor of International and European Law, Maastricht University “A dialogue among America’s most prominent contemporary theorists of discrimination, Discrimination at Work comprises a series of pluralistic, audacious, and critically considered reflections on discrimination in the workplace.” -ANTOINE LYON-CAEN, President of the International Institute for Comparative Studies (IIPEC), Professor Emeritus of French Labor Law, Paris West University Nanterre La Défense MARIE MERCAT-BRUNS is Affiliated Professor at Sciences Po Law School and Associate Professor in Labor and Employment Law at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. She is a member of the Research Institute LISE CNRS (Codirector of the program Gender, Categories and Policy) and also of the scientific committee of PRESAGE (Sciences Po/OFCE Research and Academic Program on Gender Thinking).
Precarious Asia Kalleberg, Arne L; Hewison, Kevin; Shin, Kwang-Yeong
12/2021
eBook
Precarious Asia assesses the role of global and
domestic factors in shaping precarious work and its outcomes in
Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia as they represent a range of
Asian political ...democracies and capitalist economies: Japan and
South Korea are now developed and mature economies, while Indonesia
remains a lower-middle income country.
With their established backgrounds in Asian studies, comparative
political economy, social stratification and inequality, and the
sociology of work, the authors yield compelling insights into the
extent and consequences of precarious work, examining the dynamics
underlying its rise. By linking macrostructural policies to both
the mesostructure of labor relations and the microstructure of
outcomes experienced by individual workers, they reveal the
interplay of forces that generate precarious work, and in doing so,
synthesize historical and institutional analyses with the political
economy of capitalism and class relations. This book reveals how
precarious work ultimately contributes to increasingly high levels
of inequality and condemns segments of the population to chronic
poverty and many more to livelihood and income vulnerability.
The first part of the report presents stylized facts of youth and labor markets in Africa. The second part discusses past youth employment interventions in the region. It argues for the need of an ...integrated approach should governments want to tackle youth employment issues in a sustainable manner. Indeed, in African countries, with large informal sectors and dominance of rural population, solely reforming labor market institutions and implementing active labor market policies are likely to have limited impact. It argues that the most needed and well-rounded approaches are: expanding job and education alternatives in the rural areas, where most youth live; promoting and encouraging mobility; creating a conducive business environment; encouraging the private sector; improving the access and quality of skills formation; taking care of demographic issues that more directly affects the youth; and reducing child labor.
The number of women in positions of power and authority in Japanese companies has remained small despite the increase in the number of educated women and the passage of legislation on gender ...equality. InToo Few Women at the Top, Kumiko Nemoto draws on theoretical insights regarding Japan's coordinated capitalism and institutional stasis to challenge claims that the surge in women's education and employment will logically lead to the decline of gender inequality and eventually improve women's status in the Japanese workplace.
Nemoto's interviews with diverse groups of workers at three Japanese financial companies and two cosmetics companies in Tokyo reveal the persistence of vertical sex segregation as a cost-saving measure by Japanese companies. Women's advancement is impeded by customs including seniority pay and promotion, track-based hiring of women, long working hours, and the absence of women leaders. Nemoto contends that an improvement in gender equality in the corporate system will require that Japan fundamentally depart from its postwar methods of business management. Only when the static labor market is revitalized through adoption of new systems of cost savings, employee hiring, and rewards will Japanese women advance in their chosen professions. Comparison with the situation in the United States makes the author's analysis of the Japanese case relevant for understanding the dynamics of the glass ceiling in U.S. workplaces as well.
2009 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIs job insecurity the new norm? With fewer and fewer people working in steady, long-term positions for one employer, has the dream of a secure job with full ...benefits and a decent salary become just that - a dream?In Nice Work If You Can Get It, Andrew Ross surveys the new topography of the global workplace and finds an emerging pattern of labor instability and uneven development on a massive scale. Combining detailed case studies with lucid analysis and graphic prose, he looks at what the new landscape of contingent employment means for workers across national, class, and racial lines - from the emerging creative class of high-wage professionals to the multitudes of temporary, migrant, or low-wage workers. Developing the idea of precarious livelihoods to describe this new world of work and life, Ross explores what it means in developed nations - comparing the creative industry policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, as well as developing countries - by examining the quickfire transformation of China's labor market. He also responds to the challenge of sustainability, assessing the promise of green jobs through restorative alliances between labor advocates and environmentalists.Ross argues that regardless of one's views on labor rights, globalization, and quality of life, this new precarious and indefinite life,and and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany it is likely here to stay and must be addressed in a systematic way. A more equitable kind of knowledge society emerges in these pages - less skewed toward flexploitation and the speculative beneficiaries of intellectual property, and more in tune with ideals and practices that are fair, just, and renewable.
Enacted nearly 50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act codified a new vision for American society by formally ending segregation and banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. But how much ...change did the legislation actually produce? As employers responded to the law, did new and more subtle forms of inequality emerge in the workplace? In an insightful analysis that combines history with a rigorous empirical analysis of newly available data, Equal Opportunity at Work? offers the most comprehensive account to date of what has happened to equal opportunity in America—and what more needs to be done in order to achieve a truly integrated workforce. Weaving strands of history, cognitive psychology, and demography, Equal Opportunity at Work? provides a compelling exploration of the ways legislation can affect employer behavior and produce change. Authors Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey use a remarkable historical record—data from more than six million workplaces collected by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since 1966—to present a sobering portrait of race and gender in the American workplace. Progress has been decidedly uneven: black men, black women, and white women have prospered in firms that rely on educational credentials when hiring, though white women have advanced more quickly. And white men have hardly fallen behind—they now hold more managerial positions than they did in 1964. The authors argue that the Civil Rights Act’s equal opportunity clauses have been most effective when accompanied by social movements demanding changes. EEOC data show that African-American men made rapid gains in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement. Similarly, white women gained access to more professional and managerial jobs in the 1970s as regulators and policymakers began to enact and enforce gender discrimination laws. By the 1980s, however, racial desegregation had stalled, reflecting the dimmed status of the civil rights agenda. Race and gender employment segregation remain high today, and alarmingly, many firms, particularly in high-wage industries, seem to be moving in the wrong direction and have shown signs of resegregating since the 1980s. To counter this worrying trend, the authors propose new methods to increase diversity by changing industry norms, holding human resources managers to account, and exerting renewed government pressure on large corporations to make equal employment opportunity a national priority. At a time of high unemployment and rising inequality, Equal Opportunity at Work? provides an incisive reexamination of America’s tortured pursuit of equal employment opportunity. This important new book will be an indispensable guide for those seeking to understand where America stands in fulfilling its promise of a workplace free from discrimination.
Globalisation, the shift from manufacturing to services as a source of employment, and the spread of information-based systems and technologies have given birth to a new economy, which emphasises ...flexibility in the labour market and in employment relations. These changes have led to the erosion of the standard (industrial) employment relationship and an increase in precarious work - work which is poorly paid and insecure. Women perform a disproportionate amount of precarious work. This collection of original essays by leading scholars on labour law and women's work explores the relationship between precarious work and gender, and evaluates the extent to which the growth and spread of precarious work challenges traditional norms of labour law and conventional forms of legal regulation.The book provides a comparative perspective by furnishing case studies from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Quebec, Sweden, the UK, and the US, as well as the international and supranational context through essays that focus on the IMF, the ILO, and the EU. Common themes and concepts thread throughout the essays, which grapple with the legal and public policy challenges posed by women's precarious work.
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