So Nina Power has some good things to say:
In the UK, unlike many other European countries, female participation in the labor market has been high for a long time, and women, particularly young, single women, are a key factor in the proliferation and success of job agencies, turning precarity into a virtue. One does not need to be an essentialist about traditionally ‘female’ traits (for example, loquacity, caring, rationality, empathy) to think there is something notable going on here. Young women are encouraged to regard themselves as good communicators, the kind of person who ‘d be ‘ideal’ for agency or call-centre work. The professional woman needs no specific skills as she is simply professional, that is to say, perfect for the kind of work that deals with communication in its purest sense.
There is a curiously existential aspect to this now intimate link between women and labor. [ . . . ] Female pragmatism, the supposed sensibleness of women, finds itself translated neatly into the language of skill-acquisition and advancement. [ . . . ] Employment agencies often have girly names and pink-tinged logos, like ‘Office Angels’ and ‘Capability Jane’, enticing young women into secretarial work that will be extremely unlikely to last more than 13 weeks at any given location (at which point the employer would be legally obliged to give the worker some paid time off). Agency work is sold as a type of liberation, the good kind of ‘flexibility’, with the added advantage for the agency and the firm that the worker will never know who her ‘colleagues’ are. Organising among agency workers is structurally impossible, and the enforced atomization of the agency worker is rephrased as ‘individual choice’, ‘your freedom’.
Power, 2009, pp.18-19
Power talks about a load of fascinating topics, from the concept of Sarah Palin, to the hijab, to pornography. She also underlines the important issue of the confusion and contradictions surrounding the word ‘feminism’. The chapter this section is taken from is called, ‘The Feminization of Labor’, and provides some solace, if – like me – you have ever spent (wasted?) time doing temporary work for agencies or similar, where you have been expected to respond enthusiastically to the tasks of cold-calling and endless filing, where you must have an excellent knowledge of Microsoft Excel and exemplary customer service skills, where you never get to know anybody and so remain in a constant state of mild awkwardness, doomed never to escape the constipated limbo of polite conversation, and where you must be GRATEFUL for the opportunity of such useful work experience and the £6.00 an hour. Nina Power gave a free lecture tonight at Senate House in central London, but I couldn’t go because it started at 5.30, which makes it impossible for anyone who works office hours – ah, the irony!
Nina Power's short book - definitely worth a read.
I’ve just received Amy King’s new book in the post. I’m going to review it (though not sure where yet) and I’m very impatient to read it, but I’m about to go to Chris Goode’s reading at Toynbee Studios tonight. He’s been described by the Guardian as “one of the most exciting talents working in Britain today” – the Guardian mostly knows bollocks-all about exciting poetry, but I think they’re right this time. Caroline Bergvall is also performing – so, interesting reading (practically) guaranteed.
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