Regular employment relationship and the order of the sexes

Abstract

"Production and reproduction in a society, their labour and social order as well as overall social arrangements in the family and employment are based on a more or less explicitly formulated 'social contract'. The particular social contract generally has two components: a 'gender contract' and an 'employment contract'. In the Federal Republic of Germany the gender contract and the employment contract are usually characterised by two catchphrases: 'male breadwinner' or 'breadwinner/housewife marriage' and 'regular employment relationship'. Both constructs involve the fact that the regular employment relationship for women, especially for mothers, should not be valid. This article looks into the question as to the extent to which these social constructs still correspond to the reality on the labour markets and in families, whether changes in patterns, such as the breadwinner marriage with additional income earned by wives who work in employment relationships outside the regular employment relationship, will develop stably as new arrangements. In addition the consequences of the restricted integration of women into the employment system are illustrated from marginal employment, which has expanded greatly and, like part-time work in general, has 'modernised' the traditional gender relationship. At the end of the article it is pointed out that the fact that women appear to be the ideal workers for flexible and deregulated employment relationships does not mean that the new employment relationships could promote egalitarian gender contracts. No redefinition of the regular employment relationship which shows solidarity for both genders arises from a possible erosion of the regular employment relationship for men - what is necessary is a conscious rearrangement of the relationships in occupation and family towards dual earner/dual breadwinner with egalitarian distribution of gainful employment and work in the home." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Holst, E. & Maier, F. (1998): Normalarbeitsverhältnis und Geschlechterordnung. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 31, No. 3, p. 506-518.