Women's Work and Informal Activities in Southern Europe

In Southern European countries, much of women's work lies out of the realm of ‘wage labour’ in forms of work which include agricultural labour in family farms, homeworking, unpaid domestic and caring labour, family helpers, and/or informal work in tourism, industry, or personal services. The importance of these forms of work is very likely to increase and several regions in Southern Europe present ‘ideal conditions’ for their proliferation. The bulk of women's work cannot be adequately grasped by looking exclusively at employment categories of economic and statistical surveys. These relegate to ‘nonwork’ many forms of women's labour in society. The authors discuss these ‘other’ forms of labour, focusing mainly on three issues: (a) the meaning and content of work for women in Southern Europe; (b) the connotations associated with terms such as ‘atypical’, ‘irregular’, ‘informal’, and so on, usually used to describe such activities and forms of work; (c) the effects of women's overrepresentation in such forms of work on gender divisions and on their own work prospects.