The New Economy, Class Condescension and Caring Labour: Changing Formations of Class and Gender

Abstract

An argument about the declining significance of class and gender as structural constraints in British society has become common in mainstream sociological theory. Mobility, reflexivity, and detraditionalization are seen as key characteristics of a post‐Fordist, post‐structural society. In feminist theory, however, debates about the reconstitution of class and gender, as well as the symbolic meaning of class, challenge assumptions about detraditionalization. I assess these arguments through an exploration of the consequences of women's changing labour market position and the contradictions between employment and caring responsibilities. I argue that emerging class differences and widening inequalities between women, as well as new class relationships in the home, should be explored further.

Acknowledgements

This is a revised and extended version of an argument that I have been developing recently in different contexts. It includes revised sections from papers in Environment and Planning A (McDowell et al. 2005b), Antipode (McDowell 2006a), and Home Cultures (McDowell 2007), although it brings class and gender together in a different way. I should like to acknowledge kind permission of the editors of those journals to include relevant material.