Sommaire

Dossier : Un continent noir : le travail féminin —————————————————————————————

Danièle Kergoat
Introduction

Notice biographique

Sabine Masson
Travail en débat, travailleuses invisibles. Quelques enjeux sexués autour de la redéfinition du « travail »

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Didier Demazière
Les logiques de recherche d'emploi, entre activités professionnelles et activités domestiques

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame
Les rapports sociaux de sexe : un objet social masqué ? À propos de La Poste

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Katia Vladimirova
Femmes et marché du travail en Bulgarie

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Xavier Dunezat
Mouvements sociaux sexués : reproduction et changements

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Francisco Vargas
L'émergence du chômage au Brésil : reproduction et changement des rapports sociaux

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Geneviève Picot
Le rapport entre médecins et personnel infirmier à l'hôpital public : continuités et changements

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Emmanuelle Lada
Organisation du système d'emploi et débuts de vie active à la Compagnie française

Résumé   Abstract   Notice biographique

Hors-champ  ———————————————————————————————————————————————

Cynthia Cockburn
Cet espace entre nous

Abstract   Notice biographique 

Note de lecture  —————————————————————————————————————————————

— Claude Dubar et Pierre Tripier. Sociologie des professions (1998) (Geneviève Picot)

— Rian Voet . Feminism Citizenship (1998) ; Ruth Lister. Citizenship Feminist Perspectives (1997)

— Jane S. Jacquette, Sharon L. Wolchik (eds). Women and Democracy. Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe (1998)

———————————————————————— Résumés ———————————————————————

Sabine Masson — Travail en débat, travailleuses invisibles. Quelques enjeux sexués autour de la redéfinition du « travail »

Depuis quelques années, la notion de travail est l’objet d’un intense débat, qui suggère un nouveau point de vue sur les formes et les valeurs du travail. Les différentes hypothèses issues de cette réflexion partagent une même tendance, qui est d’oblitérer le travail des femmes et le rapport des femmes au travail. Un discours normatif sur le travail, qui ne s’énonce pas comme tel, fait ainsi l’impasse sur la problématisation de la différence des sexes et réifie les catégories de la division sexuelle du travail. Une telle connaissance sur le travail, qui procède par distorsion théorique en gommant les activités des femmes de la définition du « travail », comporte des enjeux sociaux : elle ne peut que renforcer l’exploitation du travail domestique et la dévalorisation des métiers féminins.

——————————————————————— Abstracts ———————————————————————

Sabine Masson — Talking about work, invisible working women. The gender stakes in the redefinition of " work "
 

During the last few years the notion of work has been the subject of an intense debate, which has suggested a new viewpoint on the forms and values of work. The different ideas that have emerged from this process share one common tendency, which is to obliterate women’s work and women’s relationship to work. A normative discourse on work, which does not state itself to be such, thus blocks the possibility of problematising sexual difference and reifies the categories of the sexual division of labour. Such a construct on the question of work, which proceeds through theoretical distortion by effacing women’s activities from the definition of "work", has clear social stakes : it can only reinforce the exploitation of domestic labour and the undervaluing of women’s jobs.

Didier Demazière — The logic of job-hunting, between professional and domestic activities

This article is devoted to an analysis of account of job-hunting collected from men, and women who became unemployed two years ago. The specificity of the women’s accounts is that they link job-hunting and managing domestic affairs, while the men’s accounts are exclusively focused on experiences connected within positioning in the labour market. This difference shows that the sexual division of labour continues in unemployment and that domestic constraints are many and varied. The study of the interviews with women brought out five typical ways of trying to reconcile the difficulties of job-hunting with the weight of domestic tasks. In all cases it seems that women’s employability is formed through a double confrontation : with the judgements made by the actors and institutions of the functioning a of the labour market and with the obligations of domestic work resulting from the structure of private life.

Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame — Gender relations : a hidden social object ? Concerning La Poste

In contrast to other socio-professional milieus, La Poste (the French Post Office) seems characterised by the mixed workforce and the non-gendered conception of its work. Nothing seems to differentiate a postwoman from a postman, at least at the beginning of their career. Is La Poste, a public service, the beginning of the end of male domination ? The study made through interviewing a hundred-odd established employees – in sorting offices, delivery and counter service – shows that it is not so simple but that, without denying a certain structural element, the weight of gender relations can change at different times and in different places. Particularly noted are a certain interchangeability of men’s and women’s positions and, to a certain extent, a suspension of the priority traditionally given to the professional career of the male partner.

Katia Vladimirova — Women and the labour market in Bulgaria

This article presents the results of a study on women’s place in the labour market in a country in transition. The study concerns both work and unemployment, as well as working time and women and men’s access to waged work. Bulgaria went very swiftly from guaranteed full-time work to very limited possibilities of work and employment, and, at the same time, an increase in redundancies and the number of unemployed. It is women who are the most affected by this new context, they remain unemployed for longer and find it more difficult to get jobs.

Xavier Dunezat — Gendered social movements : reproduction and changes

In the context of a study on the "gendered social movement" of the unemployed men and women of Morlaix and Rennes, the author presents different elements which contribute to illustrating how social relations are both reproduced and changed. The analysis in terms of reproduction – but also of changes – in relations between social classes clarifies the meaning that these men and women give to their participation in the unemployed movement and the splits there have been in this movement. The trend to reproduction of gender relations – through a study of the sexual division of labour and male violence – is underlined. Although initially challenged by certain changes which temporarily concern these gender relations, the traditional social order is rapidly restored as the movement lasts.

Francisco Vargas — Emergence of unemployment in Brazil : reproduction and changes of social relations
 

This article deals with the emergence of unemployment in Brazil, on the basis of an analysis of the historical conditions in which it appeared. A new statistical categorisation brings out the specificity of Brazilian unemployment, partly disguised by casualised work and partly by the phenomenon of discouragement. This brings out the evolution of class relations. The problem of the borders of unemployment, of casualised work and discouragement also emerge from an analysis of unemployment in the light of gender relations. Both approaches underline that the category of unemployment includes both an objective and a subjective dimension.

Geneviève Picot — Relations between doctors and nursing staff in the public hospital : continuity and changes
 

The relations between doctors and nursing staff in public hospitals have modified during the last thirty years by the changes in social relations of class and of sex. At the same time, there has been a restructuring of the different professional logics present in the institutional hospital context. The upheavals in the sexual division of labour and the developments of a new relationship to work in hospitals are analysed as real institutional changes, but also as elements of the reproduction of gender relations. Hierarchical relations continue between doctors and nursing staff. However, the new sexual division of labour is presented as a factor of change in the introduction of a new organisation of the work which encourages cooperation between the two teams.

Emmanuelle Lada — Organisation of the employment system and the start of working life in the Compagnie française
 

The purpose of this article is to study the reality of employment in a major French public sector enterprise from the point of view of the social and sexual division of labour, that is to say the fragmentation of different forms and status of employment at the start of the working life. We highlight the extent to which it is necessary to look at both the elements of change itself but also and at the same time at elements of the reproduction of the system, in order to grasp the real scope of the changes underway.

Cynthia Cockburn — The space between us

This text is the transcript of a lecture given by Cynthia Cockburn in November 1998 at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris, marking the opening of a photo exhibition and the publication of a book on the theme of women and war. Both works were the result of research carried by Cockburn in three regions of the world confronted with armed conflict – Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Israel/Palestine. Placing herself as a participating observer, the author followed the work of three projects bringing together women from antagonistic political standpoints who have chosen to form alliances, and thus work towards the development of a peace process. She was struck by the fact that, in their activity, far from hiding their differences these women affirm their respective identities. Considering the concept of identity, she underlines the importance of understanding it, as do the women she writes about it, as a category with changing borders and dependent on relations with others.

——————————————————————— Auteur-e-s ——————————————————————

— (1995). « Familial et résidentiel : un couple indissociable ». Sociologie et Sociétés, n° 2.
— (1999). « Professions, résidence et famille : analyse de quelques configurations résidentielles des indépendants ». In Bonvalet, Gotman, Grafmeyer (eds), [Proches et Parents ; l’aménagement des territoires], Travaux et Documents, INED, novembre.