How have hopes raised by the UN1995 Beijing plan for global gender equality and empowerment been addressed in policy frameworks, academic theorising, grassroots mobilisation, and women’s everyday experience? To answer this question, the article starts with contextual snapshots, focusing on Australian, Indian, and Latin American/Caribbean examples, to draw out issues of occupational segregation, formal and informal economy work, paid and unpaid work, and migration. Two international approaches to addressing these issues were the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal and its International Labour Organisation (ILO) Decent Work agenda. While intersectional and decolonial theories critique the UN’s weak and depoliticised human rights framework, there seem to be limited alternatives right now to the work being done within this frame and to extend it. Sources of hope lie in recent Latin American and Caribbean gender mobilisations, and an emerging Care Society agenda addressing gender inequities of value, time, and voice in unpaid work. Reviewing the seven new research articles on gender and work in ELRR 36(3), this article shifts from structure to agency, identifying how constraints are reproduced and navigated. In Australia, men’s interventions in apprenticeship training structures helped perpetuate occupational segregation. Three articles document daily experiences of restricted agency or outright oppression in work/family relationships in India, where tradition and neoliberalism intersect. Argentinian communal kitchens have reduced domestic labour time and increased voice, though in Mexico, expanded community childcare provision may not shift the gender division of care.

This paper describes and analyses the ways in which women are disadvantaged in the Australian apprenticeship system. While women make up 47.9% of the Australian workforce, only 28.0% of apprentices and trainees are women.

‘Traditional trade’ apprenticeships are still predominantly undertaken by men. The newer ‘traineeships’, introduced in the 1980s to provide apprenticed training to more occupations and to allow equal access to women, receive less funding and fewer training resources. The paper traces the developments by analysing government reports, participation data by gender in the apprenticeship system, and apprentice/trainee funding rates for the main occupations. The paper also shows how post-COVID developments in the economy have been harnessed to favour male-dominated occupations in the apprenticeship system. The paper argues that the encouragement of women into trade apprenticeships has moved from an ‘equity’ argument to a ‘national interest’ argument, paralleling the conscription of women to fill the gaps left by men during the Second World War.

The discussion shows that the disadvantaged status of women is largely consistent with existing theories on gender and work, but there are some points of departure. The paper argues that more research into traineeships is needed to inform developments. It would provide a voice for feminised occupations and would assist in countering the monopolisation of the debate by masculinised interest groups.

While the data are Australian, the issues potentially apply to all countries which have apprenticeship systems, but have the most relevance for women in countries where male-dominated occupations are privileged in apprenticeship policy.

This article examines the agency of women in a state programme which, although its original aim was not focused on improving the situation of women, has had the effect of helping women from poor sectors along a gender path. The analysis uses the concept of agency to explore contradictions between gender roles, the sexual division of labour, and women’s emancipation. While the programme reinforced some traditional gender roles, it also enabled women to develop a certain level of autonomy through emancipatory strategies, such as creating new spaces where they can discuss gender issues and share their experiences. Key findings relate to the role of community activities in building alternatives to current living conditions. The programme helped women save time and money and provided opportunities to step out of their private spaces. In its final year, the programme came to incorporate a feminist perspective, thanks to the efforts of both the feminist movement and the women beneficiaries of the programme. Analysis of the text of interviews and a final focus group provides an assessment of the programme’s outcomes and allows an evaluation of the level of agency achieved.

This study examines paid and unpaid childcare distribution connected to gender relations and inequalities. We ask: what are the gender consequences of childcare distribution in Mexico? To answer this enquiry, we apply Razavi’s diamond model, examining the social dimensions of the family/household, the State, the Market, and not-for-profit (NFP) sectors. We utilise national statistics and representative surveys from the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), complemented with published studies on Latin America and Mexico.

The article is structured as follows. First, we provide a literature review on the model related to welfare and care provision. Second, we summarise important aspects of the Mexican context. Our analysis is structured in subsections following each dimension of the diamond. We discuss our findings through a graphic representation of the model applied to Mexico, and conclude with final remarks.

Our concrete application of the model shows how the distribution of – paid and unpaid – childcare has consequences in (re)producing and strengthening gender inequalities in a myriad of spaces, dynamics, and arrangements. Key findings indicate a reduction in public childcare provision, transferring responsibilities to the household and the NFP dimensions, enhancing gendered expectations. Additionally, there is an increased protagonism of market relations within the domestic sphere and unequal conditions for those with resources.

We contribute to current studies on gender inequalities connected to welfare systems – and the lack thereof – by offering conceptual elements to develop research pathways sensitive to context-specificities, closely aligned with countries and societies within the Global South.

In rural India, a large portion of the population continues to struggle with poverty, limited access to resources and education, and few job opportunities. This leads to many individuals, including men, women, and children, having to take on daily wage labouring jobs to make ends meet. Women from marginalised communities often find themselves working in fields, brick kilns, construction sites, small factories, or as domestic workers in higher caste households. Unfortunately, the wages earned from these informal jobs are often insufficient for survival, and these women also face discrimination based on caste, class, religion, and gender in the workplace. This creates an undignified and oppressive environment for these women, particularly when they take on paid domestic work, which is often exploitative and rife with abuse in rural areas.

This paper seeks to explore the intertwined experiences of paid domestic workers in rural India. It is based on primary research conducted through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 25 domestic workers during and after the pandemic in the Chandauli district of Uttar Pradesh, representing a rural area. The paper contends that domestic work in rural India remains deeply rooted in caste-based servitude. The organisation of paid domestic work in rural India is influenced by a complex interplay of caste, class, gender, and religious identities. There exists not only a division of labour but also a hierarchy of labourers within domestic work. They not only encounter caste discrimination but also perpetuate discrimination against fellow workers ranked lower in the caste hierarchy.

The decision to work is an important yet understudied facet of women’s economic empowerment. This study explores the relationship between married women’s agency over the decision to work, workforce participation, and control over financial resources, using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2022 in India’s three most populous states: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Employing logistic regression, inverse probability weighting, and partial identification approaches, we demonstrate that married women in all three states are significantly more likely to engage in paid work when they alone have the final say over the decision to work, compared to when their spouse is the primary decision-maker. We also find that sole decision-making about paid work is positively related to married women’s control over money in Bihar and Maharashtra, and with savings and remittances in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, women who jointly decide about employment with their spouse are also more likely to work than women whose husbands are the sole decision-makers. Joint decision-making is positively associated with women’s control over money in all three states. Our study highlights work-related agency as an important pathway to married women’s economic opportunities and inclusion in India, and is among the first to empirically examine the relationship between women’s work-related decision-making and economic outcomes. These results align with existing evidence on the positive relationship between women’s household bargaining power and health and human capital outcomes, and offer support for designing programmes to promote women’s participation in the workforce.

The present study examines the influence of non-economic factors on women’s labour market participation in low-income neighbourhoods of urban areas in India. For this purpose, we conducted a survey in two slum areas of Kolkata city in West Bengal – one, located in a residential neighbourhood, and another, situated in the dock area of the city and surrounded by factories. Our survey of 384 ever-married working-age women makes three noteworthy observations. First, the location of slums crucially affects the type of paid work that is available and accessible to women. Secondly, although women’s entry into the labour market maybe crisis-driven, the women workers develop an intrinsic valuation of paid work as their right, and as a means of livelihood in the process. Finally, social and community norms explain both the non-participation and the temporary withdrawal of women from the labour force. Thus, the inability and/or the unwillingness of slum women to participate in the labour market primarily stem from the strict adherence to patriarchal norms in general, and community norms in particular, either imposed on them directly by their spouses or indirectly by the community they reside in. Therefore, our analysis highlights the need for tailor-made policies that meet locality-specific needs.

The incorporation of technology, and more recently AI [Artificial Intelligence], into our everyday lives has been progressing at an unprecedented pace. Siri, Alexa, Cortana and various other digital assistants and chatbots populate our everyday interactions for most service-related matters. Acknowledging that technology, work, and social relations are deeply entangled with each other, this paper combines a literature review of anthropomorphisation of AI and emerging technology with a focus on gender and work, and empirical examples drawn from real-world applications and chatbots in the service industry in India, to critically analyse the gendering of technology. We unpack the tendency to ascribe a feminine identity to assistive technology and argue that gendering of emergent assistive technology is performative and relational. It materialises through particularistic manifestations drawing from the sociocultural context. Furthermore, this gendering of technology is co-constituted by the sexual division of labour and gendered norms of work.

Drawing on primary and secondary data, the article illustrates that whilst the health system in Australian certainly dissipates the social determinants of health and lessens health inequality, there remain significant inequalities in life expectancy, health access, utilisation and outcomes. The key argument is that class, gender, racial and spatial inequalities are mirrored in the health system. With respect to class, the weakening of bulk billing, where the full cost of the medical consultation is borne by the government, means that a proportion of low-income individuals defer visiting their GP. The problem is far more acute with respect to specialist, dental and mental health consultations where the out-of-pocket costs are greater. Again it is far more likely to result in low-income people deferring or avoiding necessary consultations. ‘Medical misogyny’ - the argument that the medical concerns of women are taken less seriously than those of men, is shown to be a major issue. The Indigenous - non-Indigenous health divide is acute; the life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is eight years less than non-Indigenous Australians. Spatial inequality is also significant; the health outcomes of people in rural and remote areas are shown to be poorer than those of people in the metropolitan areas.

Scholars who have deliberated on trade union density decline have paid scant attention to the diminished importance of organised labour’s capacity to stabilise markets by harmonising wage growth and total factor productivity. We underscore the significance of this omission by documenting how interwar US scientific management theorists and practitioners enhanced unions’ ability to stabilise markets in an era of high productivity growth, and in so doing helped build union numbers and influence. We argue, moreover, that once the productivity wave ended, employers and the US state came to view unions as a source of stagflation, conflict, and inefficiency. This development was particularly pronounced in nations with adversarial pluralist industrial relations regimes rather than the democratic corporatist agenda advocated by Frederick Taylor and his acolytes. We conclude that in an era characterised by revitalised support for knowledge-intensive reindustrialisation, revisiting the scientific managers’ agenda might assist trade union renewal.

Emerging labour crises highlight the detrimental impact of overtime work cultures, such as the 996 working system, which violates the Labour Law of China and mirrors modern labour slavery. Simultaneously, despite China’s Three-Children Policy aimed at increasing national labour force growth, the national fertility rate has remained persistently low over the past decade. Workers require family time and financial security to plan for having children. Changes in family structures and fertility expectations, shaped by social pressures and the government’s advocacy, heavily impact labourers’ household financial behaviour. In response to a high-pressure overwork environment, labourers adopt conservative financial strategies to safeguard their families’ well-being and birth plans. This cautious approach often involves avoiding digital financial tools associated with riskier investments. This study examines the intersection of labour overwork, fertility, and the adoption of digital finance in shaping Chinese families’ investments. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study analyses the panel data from 7,582 family observations in China between 2018 and 2020. The findings reveal that although digital finance positively influences household financial investment, the 996 work system acts as a moderator to shape this relationship negatively. Moreover, fertility in households further weakens this relationship. These findings provide critical theoretical insights into the dynamics of labour history by portraying a modern slavery picture of overworked labourers and their families in China: too exhausted and financially strained to have babies. It offers practical insights for policymakers aiming to improve labour policies, fertility rates, and household financial resilience.

Both skill-biased and routine-biased technological changes risk disrupting employment in Australia, particularly through persistent effects after an economic downturn. Soft skills are considered valuable for employees to reduce unemployment risk from these technological biases, as these skills contribute to employment in skilled and non-routine jobs that are difficult to automate. We investigate how soft skills affected the risk of unemployment from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) longitudinal dataset to understand whether these skills could reduce unemployment risk and similar negative employment outcomes for workers during economic disruptions, including the following years during the recovery. We find that the soft skill measures of social capital and low task repetitiveness are associated with lower unemployment, overskilling, and underutilisation risk. The association between social capital and underemployment also strengthened after the downturn. This did not begin immediately after the GFC but instead from 2013 onwards, after the end of the mining boom that had supported Australia during the GFC.

Global crises have wreaked havoc on the world economy, causing severe instability and retrenchment of employees in many countries. This necessitates interrogating the retrenchment laws that seek to resolve issues and encourage fruitful outcomes throughout the work ecosystem. This article explores stakeholders’ perceptions of Zimbabwe’s retrenchment laws. The research utilised a qualitative approach with 68 participants, including employers, employees, trade unionists, legal practitioners, and labour consultants. The study revealed that employers were not utilising available special measures to avoid retrenchment. Stakeholders faced challenges such as difficulties in interpreting the retrenchment sections in the Labour Act, distance, processes which are lengthy and costly, and compliance. Further, this study underscores the tension between organisational survival and employee rights, framed through proximity justice and organisational justice theories. The primary recommendation is that retrenchments should be carefully planned, well-thought-out, and purposefully carried out in order to prevent legal disputes. Employers should exercise patience to carry out a thorough analysis of the problems before retrenching employees. Although this research sought to increase knowledge of retrenchment laws, such findings call for additional research using longitudinal and cross-sectional field surveys.