An Englishman's Home is his Castle? A Response to Paul Willis's ‘Unemployment: the final inequality‘

Abstract

This paper argues that Paul Willis's latest article is important in highlighting unemployment as a major form of inequality but that, just as in Learning to Labour, Willis's orientation is a male one and that this has the effect of marginalising and misrepresenting the interests of women. The paper further suggests that some of Willis's recommendations are somewhat anachronistic and also too class oriented. While we believe that class should be central to any analysis of unemployment, we would stress that gender and ‘race’ should also be central. Willis, we argue, has made an attempt to broaden his analysis but this has been largely unsuccessful. The paper concludes with a critique of some of Willis's terminology.