Coming Up Short: Working‐Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, by Jennifer M. Silva . Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, 208 pp., ISBN: 978 0 19 993146 0, £19.99, hardback.
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12067 |
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
the gendered impact of economic recessions. Their detailed empirical evidence chal-
lenges the widespread conviction that men, with their concentration in export-
dependent production jobs, are more heavily affected by economic recessions than
women. When both changes in employment levels and policy responses are consid-
ered, women’s assumed labour market advantage within the economic crisis actually
diminishes. The conclusion of this chapter — and the book’s general message — is
therefore rather pessimistic. Governments’ austerity measures and efforts to address
the negative consequences of the economic crisis have actually ignored the long-term
problems of gender inequality and segregation on the labour market rather than
making the promotion of gender equality a solution to the economic crisis.
Overall, the book is a valuable source providing an up-to-date overview of the
current state of gender inequality in Europe. It provides detailed data and policy
information for all the European member states, which are of great interest to a broad
audience while simultaneously helping researchers to get an overview of existing
indicators of gender equality. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is Plantenga’s
and Remery’s discussion of the various summary indicators of gender equality
(chapter 3), their elaborations on flexible working hours (chapter 5), and Bettio’s and
Verashchagina’s overview of national income taxation systems (chapter 9).
A couple of shortcomings, however, should also be noted. Although the editors
claim to present ‘state-of-the-art research on women’s and men’s current positions in
the European labour market’, the book actually focuses mostly on women. This is
short-sighted given that men have a great impact on women’s labour market partici-
pation and working hours, particularly in their role as partners and fathers. Closely
related to this issue is the lack of a differentiated consideration of women as
a heterogeneous group. Social class differences, differences in parenthood and
migration status, and variations across countries have all been shown to considerably
impact women’s labour market positions. Particularly given declining public funding,
these differentiations are of great importance in the quest to efficiently target public
policies to those in greatest need and to those most relevant to initiate change.
I can nonetheless recommend this book to policymakers and scholars who are
interested in gender issues and who value practical advice and empirical knowledge. It
is an easy and interesting read that provides a lot of detail and inspiration for further
research and policies relevant for fostering gender equality.
LENA HIPP
WZB Social Science Center Berlin
Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, by Jennifer
M. Silva. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, 208 pp., ISBN:
978 0 19 993146 0, £19.99, hardback.
Jennifer M. Silva set out to interview 100 working-class young Americans about their
experiences of becoming adults, their ‘coming of age stories’. In doing so, she wanted
to find out the markers of adulthood and rites of passage that mattered as these young
people made their transitions to adulthood. Importantly, there was no assumption
that the highly gendered stages that marked the lives of their parents (leaving home,
meeting a partner, getting married, having children and living as an independent
family unit) would be relevant or desirable. The stories are striking for how much they
vary from those previous patterns. Inevitably with such a large number of participants
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396 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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