Women's Jobs do Make a Difference: A Reply to Goldthorpe

Abstract

This paper uses fresh data to confirm and extend our original findings (Britten and Heath, 1983) which were criticized by Goldthorpe ( Sociology, November 1983). Given that the manual/non manual divide has little relevance for women's jobs, we demonstrate that office work and sales work entail very different conditions of employment for women, although the market situation of both groups is inferior to that of men in manual work. The career paths for women across three distinct labour markets (semi-professional, office and unskilled) demonstrate women's attachments to particular kinds of work in spite of interrupted employment histories. It is concluded that the intermittent nature of women's employment does not detract from our approach. In fact we show that women's qualifications have a more significant association with their careers than do their husbands' class positions. Using a new class schema, we confirm the importance of women's jobs in explaining their voting and fertility behaviour.

Women's socio‐economic status and self assessed health: identifying some disadvantaged groups

“…In addition, there is increasing evidence that household resources are not always equally shared (Graham 1984, Brannen andWilson 1987). The occupation of the head of household is not an entirely reliable guide to the sodal position and health of his dependants Heath 1983, Heath andBritten 1984). Wife's occupation has been shown also to have an impact on husband's health (Arber 1989).…”

“…To allow for the constraints of motherhood, last fulltime rather than present occupation may be a better indicator of occupational/life-time class, since after childbearing women typically enter part-time employment and in many instances suffer occupational downgrading (Martin and Roberts 1984, Joshi and Newell 1987, Arber, 1989. Other altematives whereby some joint classification of husbands and wives jobs is achieved have also been suggested (eg Erikson 1984, Valkonnen 1983, Britten and Heath 1984.…”

Comparative Intergenerational Stratification Research: Three Generations and Beyond

“…Heath (1981) suggested, and provided support for, the hypothesis that in communist and 3For reasons that will be elaborated below, most of the analysis to date of intergenerational status transmission has been limited to men. www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews social-democratic nations the effect of father's occupation on son's occupation tends to be smaller and the effect of son's education on son's occupation to be larger than in politically conservative countries.…”

“…Although Sorokin's (1959Sorokin's ( [ 1927) Social Mobility is generally acknowledged as the starting point of (comparative) social stratification and mobility research in modem sociology (Heath 1981), only after the Second World War did systematic national studies begin to appear. A monograph by Glass (1954) on 1949 data for England and Wales was the impetus for the establishment of the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Social Mobility of the International Sociological Association, which since its founding has been a major locus of scientific exchange, data sharing, and international collaboration.…”

“…This latter assumption has become more and more questionable, if it was ever applicable. In recent years, the relation between the effect of husband's and wife's status on the family's social characteristics has stirred a hot debate in Britain (Goldthorpe 1983, Erikson 1984, Heath & Britten 1984, Stanworth 1984, Goldthorpe & Payne 1986.…”