Gender and Recruitment: People and Places in the Labour Market

Abstract

This paper provides an account of the processes by which people were recruited to particular places in the labour market, and explores the implications of this account for conceptualisations of recruitment and of gender divisions in employment. On the basis of a survey of recruitment to 101 retail and clerical job vacancies in the North East of England, it is argued that the social and `tacit' skills required in the performance of such jobs are so inextricably linked with, and embedded in, gender that the jobs themselves may be seen as gendered. Gender itself thus has a direct influence on the separation of `men's jobs' and `women's jobs', which is distinct from the indirect effects of domestic responsibilities and the sexual division of labour in households.