Full Citation

Title: Women's Response to Spousal Unemployment: Economic, Labor Force, and Family Constraints

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2004

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Abstract: Using data collected from 29 interviews with the wives of steelworkers who were forced into unemployment, I explore the conditions and factors that shape womens choices in response to their husbands job loss. Access to a unique and under-studied sample of women married to unemployed working-class men necessitates the use of grounded theory research techniques that allow me to give voice to working-class women.Rational economic perspectives, although frequently used in work-family analyses, are inadequate for exploring decision processes and fail to consider the powerful effects of gender on action. Although the work of gender theorists may help illuminate the results of a micro-level analysis, many theoretical gender analyses may notbe helpful in understanding the variety of labor force responses of women married to unemployed, working-class men. Nonetheless, I suggest that combining the work of gender scholars and new institutionalist theorists may be helpful in addressing both macro and micro-level processes that operate to constrain individual agency.The results of the analysis suggest that economic, labor force, and family constraints operate simultaneously to create a complex weave of factors and circumstances that shape womens decisions regarding work. The need for adequate health insurance, expenses associated with employment, low wages, a sluggish local economy, limited access to desirable and adequate jobs, a lack of educational experience and marketable work-related skills, the responsibility of caring for children, and an unequal division of domestic tasks are among the factors cited as influencing womens decisions regarding labor force participation.Womens strategies for maneuvering through spousal job loss and reemployment are based on taken-for-granted assumptions about gender, family, and work. But equally important in womens decision-making process, and often less addressed, are the effects of a gendered economy, labor force, and division of labor each of which create substantial barriers to sustaining employment. In the context of spousal unemployment, these systems of inequality create situations in which working-class women are unable to sufficiently aid in the financial relief of their families.

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Authors: Legerski, Elizabeth M.

Institution: Brigham Young University

Department: Sociology

Advisor: Marie Cornwall

Degree: Master of Science

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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