Women, Work and Pensions - Hardcover

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 033520595X ISBN 13: 9780335205950

Publisher: Open University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Population ageing has fuelled interest in pensions and intergenerational equity, leading to privatization of pensions. Yet the gender implications of such policies and the connections between the gender contract and the generational contract remain unexplored.

Women, Work and Pensions examines how women's paid and unpaid work, interacting with the gendered pension systems of six liberal welfare states - Britain, the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand - contributes to female poverty in later life. By comparing how these welfare states deal with women's employment, family roles and pension entitlement, the nature of the residual welfare model is better understood.

Changes over the past three decades in the gender contract and in women's employment suggest that family caring may have less impact on women's pensions in the future. Yet pension reforms which diminish the effectiveness of women-friendly features in state pensions through cuts and privatization point in the opposite direction. This issue, and how the pension penalties of caring vary with women's class, ethnicity and birth cohort, are major themes of the book.

About this title

Review:

"...an excellent book that is both extremely timely and highly relevant. It should be of interest to many colleagues; especially those concerned with issues of social policy, feminist studies and gerontology." - Christina Victor (2003-01-14)

About the Author:

Jay Ginn is employed on an ESRC Research Fellowship in the Sociology Department of the University of Surrey and is a Co-director of the Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender. She has published widely on gender differences in the economic and health resources of older people. With Sara Arber, she co-authored Gender and Later Life (Sage, 1991) and co-edited Connecting Gender and Ageing (Open University Press, 1995)

Debra Street is employed as a Research Scientist at the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy at Florida State University and researches pension and health policy issues. She has articles published in several leading North American sociology journals, and is co-editor of Ageing for the Twenty-first Century (St Martin's, 1996), a widely used social gerontology reader.

Sara Arber is Professor and Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey and a Co-director of the Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender. She is well known nationally and internationally for her work on ageing, caring and health. She co-authored Gender and Later Life (Sage, 1991) and co-edited Connecting Gender and Ageing (Open University Press, 1995), both with Jay Ginn, and Ageing, Independence and the Life Course (Jessica Kingsley, 1993, with Maria Evandrou) and The Myth of Generational Conflict (Routledge, 1999, with Claudine Attias-Donfut).

About this edition

• Publisher: Open University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 033520595X
• ISBN 13: 9780335205950
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208