Eloisa Betti

The research analyses precarious work as a historical and gendered phenomenon that has characterized the whole history of industrial capitalism including, albeit not limited to, the past thirty years. By adopting a gendered historical approach, precarious work cannot be viewed as a distinguishing feature of post-industrial society, as the alleged stability of Fordist reflects a male employment model, i.e. that of the so-called male breadwinner, not accounting for the multiple forms of work performed by women or migrants.

By examining the implications of a historical and gender analysis of precarious work for both the historical and social sciences, this research will retrace the roots of the job precariousness debate across European historiography and historicize the debate on precarious work that has developed over the past three decades in the European social sciences as well as in the Feminist thinking.

The research will not just represent a historical study in gender and labour history but will also be a contribution to an interdisciplinary academic debate embracing all the fields of the humanities and the social sciences. A gendered historical perspective will help to compare the spread of precarious work during different historical periods and will cast light over the changes and continuities across time and space, revealing recurring patterns of gender discrimination, work-life imbalances, and enduring forms of gendered precarity traps.

Furthermore, the research will contribute to the writing of a conceptual history of labour precarity, thanks to the analysis of the changes that have occurred in the scholarly debate on precarious work in the past few decades in connection with historical phenomena such as the end of Cold War and state socialism, globalization and the recent global economic crisis.