Discussions about the reconciliation of work and family are often considered to be focussing on women and middle class people with safe employments. By identifying the differences among men in their capacities to engage in involved fatherhood that stem from their positions in the labour market, this article introduces the perspective of a deprivileged marginalised group in the labour market and critically reflects on the impact of labour flexibilisation on caring masculinity and gender equality. Men as employees have heterogeneous positions in the labour market, which impacts their access to social - including parental - rights and possibilities for balancing work and care. Given that the precarisation of the labour market is a salient problem in Slovenia, this qualitative study based on explorative in-depth semi-structured interviews with fathers in diverse forms of precarious employments analysed how insecure and flexible work arrangements shape fatherhood practices, impact the chances for involved fatherhood and structure gender relations. The fathers' experiences showed that precarious working conditions enable fathers to be intensely involved in children's care mainly when their employment approaches standard employment in terms of stability and predictability of working hours and guaranteed workload. When work is entirely flexible and unpredictable and the employee is faced with either taking such a job or losing it, the reconciliation of work and fatherhood is aggravated as the organisation of everyday life is fully subordinated to paid work. In conclusion, precarious working relations were indicated to foster the strengthening of the breadwinner model and retraditionalisation of gender relations.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1212781
Introduction into the thematic section First Sex: Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities brings the overview of the fundamental concepts of the in Slovenian context relatively unknown young research field within the gender studies. The article reflects specific understanding and deployment of the concept gender as was developed within the critical studies of men and masculinities; it elaborates on the concept of multiple masculinities and critically reflects the term alternative masculinities. The applications of the critical studies of men and masculinities’ theoretical apparatus in different research fields such as health, sport, labour market, violence and gender equality are presented as well as its potentials for critical reflection of contemporary social problems.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1191021
Child care and preschool education is a highly feminized field of work. This article aims to contribute to the analysis of gender segregation in the labor market by analyzing the situation of men who are working in female-dominated profession of preschool teacher. We are presenting an overview of literature and the results of recent empirical research done in Slovenia (101 surveys among parents of children attending kindergartens and 68 primary school male students and 18 interviews with female and male preschool teachers and kindergartens principals). We found that parents, teachers and principals express a positive attitude towards increase in the number of male preschool teachers in the Slovenian kindergartens. On the other hand, young boys are not interested in care professions because they consider them more appropriate for women. Based on the analysis, we estimate the possibilities for defeminization of teaching profession and present possible incentives that could contribute to a greater presence of men in early childcare and education. We would like to contribute to the discussion on possibilities and modes of reducing of horizontal gender segregation.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35024989