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University of California Press

About the Book

In Crunch Time, Aliya Hamid Rao gets up close and personal with college-educated, unemployed men, women, and spouses to explain how comparable men and women have starkly different experiences of unemployment. Traditionally gendered understandings of work—that it’s a requirement for men and optional for women—loom large in this process, even for marriages that had been not organized in gender-traditional ways. These beliefs serve to make men’s unemployment an urgent problem, while women’s unemployment—cocooned within a narrative of staying at home—is almost a non-issue. Crunch Time reveals the minutiae of how gendered norms and behaviors are actively maintained by spouses at a time when they could be dismantled, and how gender is central to the ways couples react to and make sense of unemployment.

About the Author

Aliya Hamid Rao is Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics.

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Table of Contents

List of Tables
Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Tale of Two Unemployments

part i gender and space during unemployment
1. Men at Home
2. Idealizing the Home and Spurning the Workplace?

part ii gendered time in job searching
3. Dinner Table Diaries 
4. Can Women Be Ideal Job-Seekers?

part iii gendered time in housework
5. Why Don’t Unemployed Men Do More Housework?
6. Why Do Unemployed Women Do Even More Housework? 

Conclusion: Unemployment and Inequality in an Age of Uncertainty

Appendix A: Methodology
Appendix B: Interview Guide for Unemployed Professionals and Spouses
Notes
References
Index

Reviews

This is a must read for students and scholars interested in the gendered negotiations and gendered patterns of work for pay and housework. The book is well researched and situated in the relevant literature, but it is also accessible and could be used in any undergraduate course on gender, work, and the family. . . . Essential.
CHOICE
Crunch Time is a necessary addition to the sociological research on unemployment that has been surprisingly lacking in a gendered/work-family lens. . . . engagingly written and accessible to a wide audience.”
LSE Review of Books
"Rao joins the community of distinguished scholars who have carefully uncovered how economic pressures seep into family life, tracing the taken-for-granted cultural logics. . . people rely on to order their lives when confronting the challenge of economic instability.”
Contemporary Sociology

"Timely, important, and masterfully crafted."

American Journal of Sociology
"Rao persuasively shows how traditional gender norms shape the navigation of anxieties about social status, economic uncertainty, and job-searching demands. She further demonstrates how following these norms, in turn, advantages men's reemployment. The study offers crucial insights into the barriers to transforming gender relations while raising pressing questions about the prospects of gender egalitarian family life."
Gender & Society
Crunch Time is an example of qualitative sociological analysis at its best: Rao carefully scrutinizes the taken-for-granted to precisely articulate the social processes that generate everyday inequalities. . . . This book is an important addition to the scholarship on work and employment, marriage and family, and gender that will undoubtedly frame our conversations as families navigate the current labor market precarity of the COVID-19 pandemic era.”
Industrial and Labor Relations Review

"Crunch Time is an eye-opening book about the ways in which economic insecurity reverberates into family life. In gripping detail, Rao illuminates family dynamics of unemployed professional women and men. Her book shows the surprising ways that gender inequality persists. Highly recommended!"—Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania.

"In this deeply researched book, Rao takes us into the lives of professional couples dealing with unemployment and finds that even among these modern-day couples, traditional gender norms about breadwinning endure. A husband’s unemployment is experienced as a big problem that needs to be rectified, while a wife’s unemployment is experienced as an opportunity for her to spend more time at home—even when she is the primary earner. Rao’s insightful examination reveals that when job loss strikes, gender inequalities are reinforced by couples’ old-school responses to a new economy problem. This is an important book and a must-read."—Marianne Cooper, Stanford University, author of Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times


"Aliya Hamid Rao’s meticulously designed study takes us into the deeply uncertain lives of the affluent as they experience unemployment. Rao’s attention to the families profiled in this book is exacting and multifaceted, resisting any easy platitudes about privilege, unemployment, and especially gender. She illuminates how couples’ responses to unemployment are shaped by entrenched understandings of what husbands and wives ought to do. With analytical sophistication, she offers compelling explanations for variations in these gendered responses, expertly linking her findings to broader patterns of social inequalities. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the interface of  gender, the economy, and work-life balance."—Shelley Correll, Professor of Sociology at Stanford, and Director of Stanford VMWare Women's Leadership Innovation Lab

"Crunch Time is masterful. I picked up the book and could not put it down! Rao powerfully takes us into the private lives of middle-class American couples at their most vulnerable time: unemployment. A tale of two unemployments, Crunch Time details how unemployed men and women adopt the ideal job seeker norm in divergently gendered ways in the face of economic precarity. For unemployed men, seeking a new job becomes a full-time effort, while unemployed women retreat into the home and into intense carework as a vocation. A heart-wrenching, hopeful, and captivating book, this is a must-read. While ninety-two percent of the labor market will experience unemployment, Crunch Time forecasts us into an even bleaker future, as the rise of technology and artificial intelligence will surely threaten any form of economic security for all Americans."—Kimberly Kay Hoang, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago, and author of Dealing in Desire

"Dual career marriages signal increasing gender equality, but what happens when one member of the couple becomes unemployed? Aliya Rao’s surprising research finds that they revert to outdated gender norms. Unemployed husbands become diligent job seekers and unemployed wives become homemakers. Through intimate portraits of unemployed professionals, Rao deftly exposes how society pushes men and women into traditional gender roles."—Christine Williams, University of Texas at Austin

"This is a beautifully written, well-organized, and meticulously researched book that breaks new ground.”—Ofer Sharone, author of Flawed System/Flawed Self, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst

"The ideas are fresh, and an examination of unemployment and the different strategies between men and women and how their spouses react is welcome in the field."—Rosanna Hertz, Wellesley College, 1919 50th Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies

Awards

  • Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal (Women/Minorities in Business Category) 2021 2021, Axiom Business Book Awards

Media

Aliya Rao explains: Is Male Employment Still the Most Valued in a Family?