Working lives in a regional town: Intersections of regulation, space & gender

This paper explores how different scales of employment regulation intersect in the working lives of employees in three banks in a regional town. Drawing on a spatial perspective, we argue that ‗place' and ‗space', in the location and organisation of these banking worksites and in the social organisation of family and market work, create a distinct and gendered pattern of opportunities and constraints for banking employees. We focus on the ways these working spaces are shaped through external and internal regulation and then in turn shape the working time arrangements of workers within them. Their lived experiences of negotiating, accommodating and resisting inadequate staffing, sales targets and, in one bank, the unilateral imposition of new working time arrangements show the dynamic and contradictory practice of employment regulation, both formal and informal, at the local and individual scales and the ways it intersects with space and gender to shape working lives.