ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that gendered citizenship provides a useful framework for evaluating flexible employment and uncovering its negative implications. It argues that there is a need to place research on the gendered nature of flexible employment directly within a gendered citizenship framework in order to understand fully the implications of the growth of this employment. The chapter focuses on the gap between formal employment rights and their realisation in practice. It concentrates specifically on the structural barriers that homeworkers in manufacturing and part-time workers in the retail sector experience in utilising their rights and influencing their development. The chapter focuses on one particular aspect of flexible employment, namely, numerical flexibility. Homework and part-time work constitute ideal test cases and have been selected because they are characteristic of numerical flexibility in respect of type of contract, hours and job insecurity. The chapter concerns specifically with two types of numerical flexibility: contractual flexibility and place of work flexibility.
