ABSTRACT
The extent to which data from any particular data set can generate general and widely applicable conclusion is open to question. However, this book has attempted to offer an original contribution to the sociology of gender generally, and the study of men and work via an analysis of the literature and the NCDS5 dataset. The importance of this contribution is that the research is based on the premise that empirically grounded (as well as theoretical) research on men should become an integral part of the gender-based enquiry. Further, that men should be studied in their own right, and that men do not have to be appended to, or studied by accident in, the study of women. Within this it was argued that (to date) an adequate analysis of men has been largely absent in empirical gender based sociology and that such a project could take place within a study of men and work. Given these broad objectives, four specific aims were developed. They were to:
establish that there is a real absence of an empirical understanding of men in British gender based sociological research;
explore the link between men and work by examining and using existing accounts of gender theory and feminism;
examine men’s recent experiences of the British labour market; and finally;
provide an empirical account of men’s work via an analysis of existing data. To do so using established hypotheses and notions of full-time and non-standard work to illustrate the analysis.
