Books Reviews

• Published date: 01 September 2006
• Date: 01 September 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2006.tb00020.x

International Labour Review

, Vol. 145 (2006), No. 3

Copyright © International Labour Organization 2006

BOOKS

Reviews

Precarious work, women, and the new economy: The challenge to legal norms.

Edited by Judy FUDGE and Rosemary OWENS. Oxford, Hart Publishing,

2006. xxx + 401 pp. References, index. ISBN 1-84113-616-6.

As globalization and flexibilization operate to diversify the global workforce,

the segmentation of labour markets into secure, protected and highly paid work

and insecure low-quality jobs and informal work has become a focus of

scholarship across a range of disciplines. One approach that animates this

research consists in identifying and exploring the axes of this diversification,

including its gender dimension. This concern is central to

Precarious work,

women, and the new economy

, a collection of essays edited by Judy Fudge and

Rosemary Owens that explores the legal dimensions of these trends, focusing on

their harsh impact on women, and makes a significant contribution to the

literature on the impact of current economic and policy trends on working life.

The book is a collection of fifteen essays by leading labour law scholars.

All address precarious work, which the editors define at the outset as low-wage

“non-standard” or “atypical” forms of work, capturing a range of working

relationships that diverge from the “standard” model of full-time permanent

bilateral employment, including part-time, fixed-term, agency and casual

work and self-employment. The contributions examine the role of legal

instruments and discourses in generating and perpetuating these forms of work,

determining their quality and influencing their impact on women. They also

address the legal measures crafted to respond to concerns about non-standard

forms of work, in the shape of initiatives to improve their quality or tailor them

to the needs of workers.

The book incorporates an analysis of international and supranational

trends, which are addressed in Kerry Rittich’s essay on the influence on the work

of the International Labour Organization of the vision of labour regulation being

promoted by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank,

1

Leah F.

Vosko’s examination of the treatment of precarious work under the international

labour standards,

2

and a contribution by Diamond Ashiagbor on the place of

non-standard work in the legal instruments and employment policy documents of

1

“Rights, risk, and reward: Governance norms in the international order and the problem

of precarious work”, pp. 31-52.

2

“Gender, precarious work, and the International Labour Code: The ghost in the ILO

closet”, pp. 53-75.