CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Vajda, Dorina |
|---|---|
| Title | The Distinct Routes of Public Work - The role of Public Work in Womens' Employment-Trajectories in Rural Hungary |
| Summary | This thesis examines the roles public work played in the employment-trajectories of the former female participants. Throughout analyzing the biographical interviews which I have conducted in a Hungarian village, in Somogy-county, I reveal the functions of public work in womens’ lives in the context of their trajectories which led into the local public work program and their distinct ways of re-entering the labour market. I present the importance of labour market discrimination (in this case, age and gender, including the so-called “motherhood penalty”), and the tension between productive and reproductive work which had crucial roles in getting employed in the local public work program for women. I argue that while these structural conditions which determined the trajectories of former participants into the program were relatively similar, the role public work played in their lives were diverse based on the resources women could mobilize in order to rejoin the labour market. For women with higher education and more advantageous social relations and who became employed in the program due to their caring responsibilities which were hard to reconcile with wage-work, public work was rather a safety net by providing informal help such as being a flexible workplace which contributed to fulfill care work until they could find jobs in the labour market which they were satisfied with. However, for lower-educated, elderly people, with less advantageous social relations, public work could contribute to the maintenance of precarious employment or it could be a means of downward mobility. |
| Supervisor | Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/vajda_dorina.pdf |
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