top of page

Emeritus Professor Diane Elson

Paid and Unpaid Work

My early research, in collaboration with Ruth Pearson, focussed on the emergence of new jobs for women in the context of expert-oriented industrialisation in Asia and Latin America. We debunked the idea that young women are ‘naturally’ suited to low paid assembly line jobs and argued that old forms of gender disadvantage are decomposed but new forms are recomposed, so that no simple narrative of progress is possible. Much depends on how far women are able to collectively organise to improve wages and conditions of employment.

(with R. Pearson) ‘Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers: An Analysis of Women’s Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing’, Feminist Review, Spring 1981.

Also published in Japanese translation in Study of Economy and Labour, No. 7, Tokyo, 1987 and in K. Hiroo (ed.) An Anthology of Feminist Geography, Kokon-shoin, Tokyo, 2002; in Danish translation ‘Fingerhemme kvinder ev. Billig arbejdskraft’, Kulubladet, No. 9-10, Copenhagen, 1981; and in Arabic translation in H. Sholkamy (ed.) Reader on Gender and the Social Sciences, Women and Memory Forum, Cairo, 2007.

(with R. Pearson) ‘The Subordination of Women and the Internationalisation of Factory Production’ in K. Young, C. Wolkowitz and R. McCullagh (eds.) Of Marriage and the Market, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1984.

Reprinted in N. Visanathan, L.Duggan, N. Wiegersma and L Nisonoff (eds.) The Women, Gender and Development Reader, Zed Books, London, 2011

I subsequently extended my research to take into account new developments and to analyse labour markets as gendered institutions. I also examined the links between women’s employment and macroeconomic policy.

‘Appraising Recent Developments in the World Market for Nimble Fingers: Accumulation, Regulation, Organisation’ in A. Chhachhi and R. Pittin (eds.) Confronting State, Capital, and Patriarchy: Women Organising in the Process of Industrialisation, Macmillan, London, 1996.

1-s2.0-S0305750X24X00108-cov150h.gif

‘Labour markets as gendered institutions: equality, efficiency and empowerment issues’, World Development, 27(3) 1999.

‘The Changing Economic and Political Participation of Women and the New Challenges of Globalisation’ in I. Lenz, C. Ullrich and B. Fersch (eds.) Gender Orders Unbound, Barbara Budrich Publishers, Opladen and Farmington Hills, 2007.

‘Macroeconomic policy, employment, unemployment and gender equality’ in J.A. Ocampo and K.S. Jomo (eds.) Towards Full and Decent Employment, Zed Books and Orient Longman, London, 2007.

‘Macroeconomic Policy and Employment Generation: Gender Dimensions’in C. Bauhardt, and G. Caglar (eds.) Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiebaden, 2009.

‘Transforming Gendered Labour Markets to End Discrimination’ in A. Deshpande (ed.) Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action, Springer, Singapore, 2023.

Women’s experience of paid work is intimately linked to their experience of unpaid work. In a UNDP Seminar in 2008 I put forward the idea that to reduce gender inequality, economic and social policy must Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute Unpaid Care and Domestic Work. This idea was adopted by UNDP (see Anna Falth and Mark Blackden, Unpaid Care Work, Policy Brief No. 1, Gender Equality and Poverty Reduction, 2009.)

The 3 Rs framework has subsequently been used by many policy analysts and
researchers. I applied this framework myself in two articles.

(with M. Fontana) ‘Public policies on water provision and early childhood education and care (ECEC): do they reduce and redistribute unpaid work?’, Gender and Development, 22(3) 2014.

‘Recognize, Reduce, and Redistribute Unpaid Care Work: How to Close the Gender Gap’, New Labor Forum, 26(2) 2017.

I also co-edited (with Caren Grown and Maria Floro) two Special Issues of Feminist Economics on Unpaid Work, Time Use, Poverty and Public Policy.

bottom of page