Beyond the gender compromise: Paradoxien der weiblichen Arbeitsmarktintegration in den USA

Description

The inclusion of women into the labor market, entailing the erosion of both traditional role models and task allocations, constitutes one of the central characteristics of current social change and undoubtedly indicates new mechanisms regarding the distribution of life chances. More controversial than the fact that the rapidly increasing proportion of women in employment assumes a key role in the upheaval of family, economy, and welfare state, is the sociological interpretation of this trend. Employing the example of job market integration of women in the US, this thesis aims at historically retracing a process of dissolution of formerly separate gender spheres. This process will be analyzed and categorized within a context of social theory. The case of the US epitomizes a development characterized by paradoxes and ambivalence, to be construed as an indication of individualistic liberalism as well as exemplary for an overall shift toward neo-liberalism within the modern Western welfare state. The paramount question in this respect is: in which ways have the structural principles of social inequality in the US changed on account of the described shifts in gender relations – and whether at all a significance for the distribution of life chances can be attributed to gender anymore. On the basis of an empirical survey (Pt. I), a comparison and evaluation of two dominant models of interpretation (Pt. II), and a revision of current analytical instruments of feminist theory (Pt. III) the thesis comes to the conclusion that, without considering their interconnections with further layers of inequality, particularly the layer of social class, present-day gender relations in the US cannot be fully understood.