Gender and labour in new times: an introduction

This special issue is concerned with Gender and labour in new times. It confronts transformations to the economy—especially financialised post-Fordist economies—and how such transformations are entangled in rearrangements and reconfigurations of labour, particularly (although not exclusively) of women's labour. It is therefore concerned with the gender order of post-Fordist labour. In addressing this order, Gender and labour in new times necessarily confronts the ongoing dismantling of the Fordist sexual contract (Pateman Citation1988) and the still unfolding contours of the post-Fordist sexual contract (McDowell Citation1991; McRobbie Citation2007; Adkins Citation2008). In so doing, it also necessarily confronts the key process driving contemporary capitalist accumulation: namely, the ongoing financialisation of the economy. Indeed, we maintain that any consideration of the post-Fordist sexual contract must place this process at its core, not least because—as analyses offered by the contributors here elaborate—financialisation is hardwired (and not incidental) to reconfigurations of the contours of labour and life in the contemporary present, including to reconfigurations of women's labour.