Getting by in hard times: gendered labour at home and on the job

Abstract

Meg Luxton and June CormanToronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001; 326 pp.Reviewed by Linda Christiansen-RuffmanDepartment of Sociology/ Women's StudiesSaint Mary's UniversityHalifax, Nova ScotiaMeg Luxton and June Corman's valuable monograph, Getting By in Hard Times, depicts the working lives of and men from Hamilton, Ontario. It is based on a major collaborative (SSHRC-sponsored) research project on working-class Steelworkers at Stelco from 1980 to 1996. Many quotations introduce us to the family lives of these white working-class heterosexual men and their wives and also to the lives of the whose employment in 'men's jobs' [at Stelco] challenged the gender divide basic to that family form (p. 5). The book carefully details the centrality of class, gender and race relationships while also revealing the perceived ordinary nature of this group's lived experiences.But this book is not about ordinary times. We are introduced to the strikes, insecurities and layoffs which characterized the restructuring of this Canadian steel mill. And these changes are placed within the context of global and provincial restructuring as well as the restructuring of relationships between family and employment. A strength of the book is its many insights into the everyday lives of and their families as they cope with changes -- and make changes -- which affect their lives. Readers familiar with the abundant research on the impact of structural adjustment programs on in the south will recognize similarities with the finding that women are bearing a disproportionate share of the cuts, and are working longer and for inadequate compensation, both at home and in the paid labour force (pp. 5-6).The authors combine theoretical insights from women's studies with a political economy perspective. For example, the concept reserve army, originally applied to paid labour by Marxist feminists, is applied to increased unpaid domestic labour. Women are shown to be absorbing more unpaid work in the home when public services are not available or the costs of paying for services are too high (p. 184) or when labour changes affect a family member's income because of a strike, job-loss or salary roll-back.The book is based on a wealth of empirical data -- surveys and in-depth interviews from 10 samples of steelworkers (male and female) and their families from 1983 to 1996 as well as public and company statistical and documentary sources. Another strength is the contradictions which the book draws out and reveals in social processes. For example, one page alone (p. 220) describes two sets of contradictory relationships -- both between domestic labour and and between shift work and family relationships. The text elaborates how these social relationships both create and at the same undermine one another. Domestic labour, with its flexibility, fosters the creation of what might be called free time while its very flexible and unlimited demands also undermine time; the shift work at Stelco both encourages an economic and social orientation to family while simultaneously undermining the available for family relationships. Here, as the multifaceted and multi-levelled data are woven into a complex interplay of empirically and theoretically grounded insights, we see examples of contemporary social science at its best. …