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Based on the results of a qualitative study conducted in several sites where the Belgian cleaning service providers operate, this article shows the importance of gender inequalities in the sector and decomposes the mechanisms related to the specific work regimes and to the specific modalities of work organization and manpower management. This study also brings to light that women's employment in such activity registers the effects of a double segregation: first of all, a segregation related to the particular conditions of subordination which characterize the cleaning work, performed more and more often within the framework of subcontracting relations and, then, a segregation ensuing from the tensions which affect particularly the women, on the one hand non-negotiable work regimes and working schedules - compulsory part-time work and segmented and shifted schedules - and on the other hand the constraints of the private life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces some of the work and sociological research of Pierre Naville (1904-1993) on employment and automation skills. On the basis of Naville's research, this paper aims to discuss critically the construction of the object characteristic of the classical Sociology of Work. It argues that sociologically relevant 'work' is one which refers to a general social mediation, similar to the concept of 'abstract work' in the late writings of Marx. It also defends that the sociology that could make good use of this 'abstract work' isn't a speciality 'but a systematic articulation of hypothesis designed to clarify as a contrast (by means of empirical research) the logics of the social, that is, a socio-logy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]