Homeworking women

by Annie Phizacklea

Homeworking Women provides an up-to-date overview of all types of home-based work, arguing that homeworking replicates wider divisions in the labour force. Consequently, its potential for improving women's employment opportunities is limited. Using original research, the book outlines the advantages and disadvantages, the pay and conditions, and the family situations for contemporary women homeworkers. The authors show that gender, class, racism and ethnicity are key factors in constructing the homeworking labour force. They acknowledge the shared position homeworkers occupy as women, as well as the differences experienced by clerical, manufacturing and professional homeworkers, and they question whether new technology in itself can be the way forward to a better paid, less onerous form of homeworking. . This book is an important contribution to sociological and policy debates on home-based work, and is essential reading for academics and students of the sociology of work, industrial r