Symposium: New Social Inequalities and the Future of Work

Presented by the School of Social Science and School of Political Science and International Studies, UQ and the QUT Work/Industry Futures Research Program, 19-20 June, 2018​.

Convened by Dr Michelle Brady (UQ), Professor Gillian Whitehouse (UQ), Professor Paula McDonald (QUT) and Professor Greg Marston (UQ).

The impact of changing technology on employment is one of the biggest challenges societies will face in the 21st Century. While technological change is not new and there is no consensus among analysts about the ways in which current developments will impact on particular jobs and occupations, there is general agreement that robots, advanced AI and new employment platforms are significantly changing the nature of work and will continue to do so into the future. These major transformations offer opportunities for individuals and companies but also pose major social risks, including increased precarity, unequal wealth distribution and associated economic insecurity. Such risks need to be appropriately governed. Current social divisions and trends, including changing gender roles and demographic shifts such as an aging population, will also shape the patterns of risks and benefits. This symposium brings together major national and international social researchers (UK, USA, Sweden) to systematically examine how employment rights, risks and rewards are being redistributed and to reflect on the most appropriate systems of social support to protect against new and emerging risks.

3. Gendered Social Relations and the Future of Work

Synopsis

Current social divisions and trends, including changing gender roles will shape how new paid work is created and distributed between men and women. In this session Professors Jill Rubery, Christine Williams, Marian Baird and Rae Cooper outline current gendered trends, experiences and expectations around the future of work to systematically examine how employment rights, risks and rewards are being redistributed.

Speakers

Professor Jill RuberyBias in, bias out: gender equality and the fourth industrial revolution

Presenter: Professor Jill Rubery

As the consequences of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4.0) and associated automation capture the attention of academics, policymakers and commentators, much of the debate is infused with dramatic predictions and speculation about the future world of work.  Given the segregated nature of the workforce, there are risks that automation may build on rather than reduce existing gender inequalities, exacerbating economic differences in the labour market.  Technologies are not neutral but mirror our society, reinforcing and often legitimising current socioeconomic forms, which includes gender inequality. Given men and women lead unequal lives, debates on IR4.0 present a timely opportunity to propose a rethink of the structures of employment and the forms of work. To trace the likely patterns of these effects, this paper begins by outlining some potential outcomes, if we assume that employment regulation, social protection and gender equality arrangements remain largely unchanged.

Presentation notes (PDF, 530KB)

See also a Conversation article on this topic.

 

 

Professor Christine WilliamsGendered Organizations in the New Economy

Presenter: Professor Christine Williams

Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades.  Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees.  In this paper, I investigate what the increasing precariousness of professional careers reveals about the mechanisms that reproduce gender inequality in the new economy.  Drawing on a case study of scientists and engineers in the oil and gas industry, I found three organizational practices that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs:  teamwork, career maps, and networking.  I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with portraits of STEM professionals who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices.  Their narratives, collected over a three year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry.  The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.

Professor Williams' article on layoffs as the secret to male domination in science careers

 

Professor Marian BairdProfessor Rae CooperAustralian Women’s Work Futures – embedded inequalities and options for change

Presenters: Professor Marian Baird and Professor Rae Cooper

In the extensive debate about the future of work there has been little specific attention to women’s work or of the gendered implications of work and labour market change. To address this omission, the authors and colleagues at the University of Sydney conducted the first Australian Women’s Working Futures (AWWF) study, undertaken in 2017. The AWWF project is a multi-method study that targets the experiences and aspirations of young (16-40 yo) Australian women in terms of their present situation at work and their expectations of their own work and family futures.  The main sample of 2,109 working women aged 40 and under was drawn from across Australia, boosted by a survey of 53 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander working women aged 40 and under.  In addition, a booster national sample of 502 working men aged 40 and under was included for comparative purposes only. We report here on four key themes in relation to current experiences and future expectations: i. job security and insecurity, aspirations vs experiences; ii. flexibility and work and family; iii. skill formation and career progression; and iv. equality, inequality and discrimination. The results generate some unanticipated findings about future work challenges, and are examined in light of embedded inequalities and options for change.

Presentation notes (PDF, 989KB)