Gender, Work, and Care in the New Economy
As jobs become more precarious, intimate relationships more fragile, and work-family boundaries more porous, Americans of all stripes face new conflicts between earning a living and caring for others. How is the rise of insecurity in jobs and relationships reshaping people’s strategies for addressing the rising conflicts between work and caretaking? What are the implications for gender and class inequality? And how do these new realities influence the prospects for creating more egalitarian work and family options? Drawing on extensive interviews with a broad cross-section of adults residing in the Silicon Valley and New York areas, I offer an overview and roadmap for understanding the strategies today’s workers and parents are pursuing as they endeavor – with varying degrees of success – to build work ties, sustain intimate relationships, and care for children and other dependents in increasingly uncertain times.
gender strategies & discontents in the new economy
“Different Ways of Not Having It All: Work, Care, and Shifting Gender Arrangements in the New Economy.” In Beyond the Cubicle: Job Insecurity, Intimacy, and the Flexible Self, edited by Allison Pugh. New York: Oxford (2017).
Juggling work & care without a safety net
“The Logics of Work, Care, and Gender Change in the New Economy: A View from the U.S.” Pp. 19-35 in “Work-Family Dynamics and the Competing Logics of Regulation, Economy, and Morals, edited by Berit Brandth, Sigtona Halrynjo, and Elin Kvande. London and New York: Routledge.
whither the gender revolution in an age of insecurity
“There’s No Such Thing as Having It All: Gender, Work, & Care in an Age of Insecurity.” In Gender in the 21st Century: The Stalled Revolution and the Road to Equality, edited by Shannon N. Davis, Sarah Winslow, and David J. Maume. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press (2017).
Covid and Care: Work and Caregiving During the Pandemic and Beyond
With a team of researchers (Jennifer Glass, University Texas, Austin; Jerry Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania; Barbara Risman, University of Illinois, Chicago; and a group of research assistants), we’re conducting depth interviews with a national sample of Americans who have shouldered some form of caregiving responsibility for children or dependent adults before and during the pandemic. Our aim is to discover how pandemic-induced changes in parents’ and other caregivers’ work situation, childcare supports, and schooling arrangements have influenced their work participation, domestic division of labor, intimate relationships, and personal morale.