This study, guided by a feminist framework, aims to disclose aspects of the lived experience of Chinese immigrant women in the Canadian labour market, to explore the factors affecting their job search and employment opportunities, and to identify the gaps between the experience of women and the existing policies and programs, so as to increase our knowledge in this area and to help inform the development of more effective and meaningful intervention strategies to improve their situation. Recognizing the importance of the words of women, this study adopts a qualitative design to generate rich information from the interviews held with eight Chinese immigrant women from Hong Kong, with different occupational backgrounds. The women's narratives reflect the disadvantaged position of Chinese immigrant women: their exclusion from the mainstream labour market and concentration in Chinatown. The findings refute what traditional theories and authorities have said: that racial minority immigrant women's personal shortcomings account for their employment problems; their unfulfilled high expectations, culture shock, lack of confidence, lack of language and job skills. Instead, the research findings reveal what has been omitted in most literature: that Chinese immigrant women have been historically discriminated against, that there are structural and systemic barriers perpetuating their employment difficulties. The findings reveal that employment inequality is rooted in unequal power relations and Chinese immigrant women are triply disadvantaged due to their multiple roles as women, as immigrants, and as racial minorities.

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This research project explores the motivations of women's voluntary career transitions at midlife. Participants for this study consisted of 14 women who at the time of their transition were between 40 and 51 years of age. All women had maintained an active career throughout their adult life and were either negotiating or had already experienced a career transition. This voluntary transition was initiated for reasons other than an upward mobility within the same occupation. The data were analysed and reported using the six step phenomenological approach described by Moustakas (1994). Themes important to transition that emerged from the data were: self-actualization, generativity, authenticity, self-care, timing, and the changing role of work.

This case study examines the meanings and perceptions of women with regard to their experience in a transition-to-work program. A qualitative methodology was used to analyse 123 personal documents written between the years 1986 and 1991 by women at or near the end of an intensive bridging program. Analysis of the data revealed that, if provided with a supportive learning environment, women can make significant progress not only towards identifying their goals but in self-development. The study highlights the value of such programs as vehicles for personal and social change. The results of this study also demonstrate the need for continued support for transition programs and an acknowledgement of the untapped capabilities of women.

This thesis utilizes flow analyses of the labour market in order to examine two key issues. First, to asses the effectiveness of active labour market policies in Britain, Ireland and Poland. Secondly, it allows us to characterize and quantify movements between labour market states which have been occurring on an unprecedented scale in economies undergoing transition. Chapters 1 and 2 investigate whether active labour market policies in Britain and Ireland have been instrumental in curing or preventing partial hysteresis due to long-term unemployment. In models of the determination of overall and duration-specific outflow rates from unemployment, the predictive power of active measures variables is tested. Chapter 3 uses the 'lista 500' panel data set to test the hypothesis that after the decentralizing reforms of the early eighties simple models of profit maximization can explain labour adjustment by large Polish enterprises. Chapter 4 traces the build up of unemployment in Poland by characterizing the composition and determinants of flows between various labour market states. Traditional flow analysis is amended by dividing the state employment into the sub-states, private and state sector employment, and by emphasizing the institutional framework unique to the Polish labour market in its first stage of transition. In Chapter 5 a unique panel data set is used to quantify labour market transitions in Eastern Germany in the first year after unification. Multinomial logit regressions are employed to highlight the determinants of the estimated transition rates. The applicability of standard models of labour market transitions to labour markets in transforming economies is also tested. Chapter 6 uses Voivodship-level aggregate panel data to evaluate passive and active labour market policies in Poland which took shape in 1991 and 1992. We also test for the existence of a well behaved matching technology in the Polish labour market. The methodology of Chapters 1 and 2 is modified to account for the panel nature of the data.

Based on data collected in Juarez, northern Mexico, this thesis argues that the incorporation of low-income women into modern forms of industrial employment, i.e. assembly industries or as called locally 'maquilas', alters patriarchal forms of domination at the household level. As women enter maquila employment the focus of patriarchal control shifts from the private sphere of the home to the public sphere of the workplace. That is, the thesis argues that women's incorporation in maquilas prompted a shift from a private form of patriarchy to a public one, or else a capitalist patriarchy. This said, capitalist patriarchy shaped respondents' lives and their households in varying ways according to respondents' stage in the life course, their households and individual characteristics. Indeed, the complex interrelation between women's life course, and their households, as they intersect with the particular patterns and characteristics of the maquiladora industry and individual workers' characteristics illuminated the heterogeneity of workers' responses to emerging forms of capitalist patriarchy. While the thesis is grounded on life course analysis with special reference to low- income maquila workers' households, the study is comparative at two different levels. At one level it is inter-generational in that it looks at three different 'industrial generations' of women in Juarez; at a second level it is comparative in that it looks at the case of women maquila workers with respect to non-maquila workers, including the case of low-income housewives. Finally, the thesis analyses women workers' responses to the pace of changes. Contrary to other studies carried out in Juarez on maquila workers, the data collection for this thesis was not conducted in factory premises but in the low-income settlements. Interviews conducted combined structured and semi-structured interviews and life and work histories. 82 households located in 25 settlements spread across the northern, central and southern parts of low-income Juarez were visited and from those, 33 life and work histories and 6 inter-generational meetings with maquila mothers and maquila daughters formed the core bulk of data. Whilst the main findings point to an emerging form of patriarchal control in women maquila workers' lives, this thesis highlights the heterogeneity among the various generations of maquila workers that form the labour pool related to the changing nature of maquilas in the city over time.

This thesis analyses the impact on productivity, employment, overtime, earnings and costs of shorter working hours with particular reference to the 1989/91 campaign by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU). The events leading up to the CSEU campaign and the reasons for its success are investigated. One result of this union success was the end of national bargaining. The changing role of national bargaining, including why it became a casualty of reduced hours, is also examined. Research on earlier reductions in hours has tended to suggest that productivity rises as a result of reduced hours. A review of this research concludes that the productivity effect of reduced hours has been overstated. It also raises some important methodological issues. The thesis presents research on 20 engineering plants where the 37-hour week was introduced as a result of the CSEU campaign. A variety of managers and union representatives were interviewed. In addition there was a survey of engineering plants. This included plants with unchanged hours. Finally, the effect of unions on working hours in the whole economy is explored using a large data set. The research finds that when engineering hours were reduced hourly earnings typically rose so that weekly pay was unaffected, at least in the short-term. While measures to increase productivity were a feature of collective agreements on reduced hours, there is little evidence that productivity has been permanently increased by reduced hours. The productivity-increasing measures would in general have been agreed without reduced hours, albeit somewhat later in many cases. There is even less evidence that reduced hours have affected output and overtime than there is of a productivity effect. So, increased employment is left as the major consequence of reduced hours. The recession, which was at its most serious when reduced hours were implemented, had a much larger effect on employment. This makes the employment effect of reduced hours hard to observe as it mainly took the form of job retention. Increased costs may well mean that the employment effect of reduced hours is a little less than it would otherwise have been.