Careers in process : the explanation of female entry to the profession of pharmacy

• Main Author: Bottero, Wendy
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1993
• Subjects: 610.7343
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.641807

The thesis is about the social organisation of employment. This is analysed through an examination of women's professional careers, specifically in a single profession - that of pharmacy. Standard theories of women's employment place the social divisions of employment at the forefront of analysis, and this is particularly so in accounts of professional employment, where the highly structured nature of professional careers is the object of explanation. Nonetheless, such explanations are deficient in the way in which they locate gender in employment processes. It will be argued that the standard accounts retain a theoretical division between social and employment structures which contributes to the reification of job structure, and to a narrow view of the social relations of employment. Theorists have stressed the gender construction of employment, and processes of de-skilling and segregation to explain women's careers. This has led to problems in dealing with the complexity and substance of professional women's employment and, particularly, to difficulties accounting for processes of change as increasing numbers of women enter male-dominated professions. The social organisation of employment has been analysed as a particular influence on jobs rather than as a general statement of employment relations. Labour markets have been seen as rigid and constraining structures somehow distinct from the social relations that produce them. In the profession of pharmacy, for example, the increasing entry of women can only be understood as a unified process of changing employment and social relations, in which the movement of groups through the career structure is the same process generating that structure. It will be argued that employment divisions in pharmacy reflect the structuring of employment in relation to household finance. The generation of such divisions is seen as the product of integrated social and employment relations, in which, if it is to be routinely reproduced, job organisation must accommodate the requirements of incumbents.