Book Review: Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment

Abstract

For both its empirical and its theoretical content, this book is an essential addition to the libraries of scholars of gender, of work/life balance, and of what the editors prefer to call ‘precariousness in employment’ (p. 1). Originating in workshop contributions to the Comparative Perspectives component of the Toronto-based Gender and Work Database (www.genderwork.ca), the book consists of eleven country case study chapters, followed by four chapters providing multidisciplinary theorisations of some spatial, longitudinal and sectoral dimensions of gendered work insecurity. In the introductory conceptual chapter (pp. 1–25), the editors define the book’s coordinating theme as the relationship between precariousness and the security provided by the standard employment relationship (SER). Both security and its absence are ‘ ... established through a diffuse set of institutional constraints, comprising systems such as labour law and policy, social security, family policy, taxation and employment policy’ (p. 10). The editors argue that precariousness extends beyond job tenure and income to include limited social benefits and entitlements, and high risks of ill-health (p. 2). It has at least four facets: Temporal (limited duration or high termination risk); • Social (lack of rights and protections through industrial instruments, leg• islation, or custom and practice); Economic (income close to the poverty line; limited social security access); • and Work-organisational/industrial (lack of control over working conditions, • work intensity and wages).