Gender and Precarious Labor in a Historical Perspective: Italian Women and Precarious Work between Fordism and Post-Fordism

Abstract

This article investigates the historical relationship between gender and precarious labor by analyzing the case study of Italian women in the second half of the twentieth century. A gendered historical approach shows that different production modes and working conditions were simultaneously present in Fordist and post-Fordist societies, and women, as well as migrants, experienced a significant level of precariousness even in the so-called golden age of the twentieth century. Sexual division of labor and sex-based discrimination seem to lie at the very heart of the gendered nature of precarious work, a long dureé nexus that has characterized industrial and postindustrial societies, as the article shows, in regard to the Italian case. By approaching the question of job precariousness as a multifaceted phenomenon, it is claimed that the subsequent spread of precarious work in the second half of the twentieth century was directly affected by labor and women's movement struggles, on the one hand, and by the role of the state and politics in defining and redefining the labor law relationship, on the other.

Effects of Women’s Work-Family Multiple Role and Role Combination on Depressive Symptoms in Korea

“…Korean women have been facing the precarity of labor, such as low employment rates, high temporary worker rates, low wages, high gender wage differential, M-shaped curves of employment rates, and so on [22][23][24][25]. This gender-precarity nexus occurred in responsibilities in the reproductive sphere that women took on [26]. It was caused by the overlap between the disadvantages as women in the labor market and the drawback of performing maternal roles [27].…”

Clean rules and dirty clothes: institutional approach to ethics in fashion and apparel retail

“…precarious labor. This encompasses a range of characteristics that starts at poor working conditions, low wages and long hours, going to child labor and contemporary forms of slavery (Halem, 1999;Bales & Robbins, 2001;Kalleberg, 2009;Standing, 2014;Betti, 2016). Although more common to places with weaker legal institutions (Kretsos & Livanos, 2015;Mosoetsa, Stillerman & Tilly, 2016), because of the development of global supply chains and growth of international sourcing practices, firms from countries with stronger legal institutions also get involved in such cases in this industry (Distelhorst, Hainmueller & Locke, 2016).…”

“…Precarious labor is mostly studied as the type of employment relationship in which the "work that produces earnings or profits (…) is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker" (Kalleberg, 2009, p. 2). It is a type of job that is fragile and unstable by nature, to which we can relate temporary, casual and informal jobs, low wages, marginal workers, subcontracting and even modern representations such as crowdsourcing (Standing, 2014;Betti, 2016).…”

“…Regarding this theme, social scientists are divided into those who believe this is a recent postindustrial phenomenon, particularly seen after the 1980s, and those who argue this is a historical phenomenon, recurring since the beginning of industrial capitalism (Betti, 2016).…”

“…Precarious labor conditions, as we have seen in academic literature, are a common practice seen as a deviation in business ethics, but reinforced by business environment, depending on the reality of the country, sector, or supply chain. We adopted in this study a definition for precarious labor condition as a risky and unsafe type of job that is fragile and unstable by na-ture, related to temporary, casual and informal jobs, low wages, marginal workers and subcontracting (Kalleberg, 2009;Standing, 2014;Betti, 2016).…”