Showing papers on "Women's work published in 1979"

Pink collar workers : inside the world of women's work

Abstract: adds little to Wool's overall argument and is excess baggage for an already hefty tome; the reader could simply ignore it without any loss. The final chapter presents a number of public policy implications -and a few recommendations -of Wool's findings. Assuming that the labor market is a tight one, and that there will be drying up of persons willing to move into lowstatus jobs, Wool is able to make several predictions. Clearly, a major source of problems though the author gives this rather limited attention -will be a \"crowding\" of overeducated and excessively trained persons into the whitecollar, higher status occupations. While the market can cope with such movements, the problem and the market solution leave considerable dislocation in their wake. Employers with needs for workers to fill the low-status occupations can expect to have to increase wages rapidly, improve working conditions, and find alternatives in the production process. Consumers may have to forego certain services as we have in the past (doormen, domestic maids) and depend more upon imported goods. Regrettably, Wool dismisses with virtually no rationale the most attractive policy alternative: to scuttle the current immigration laws and replace them with less exclusionary ones. Although this may appear threatening to the labor movement in the short run, it could accomplish a number of economic and humanitarian goals that this country has set for itself. I find it troublesome that he totally neglected to argue or analyze this matter. Although many readers will find room to quarrel with Wool on his work, the contribution is a significant one and the warning for the future is serious. The message is pertinent and deserves to be studied by researchers and planners. Peter S. Barth Professor Department of Economics University of Connecticut

Agriculture and Women's Work: Directions of Change in the West, 1700-1900:

Abstract: Europe has been rather different from that in other cultural periods and areas. This experience has been the result of changes in a number of demographic and social traits, such as age at marriage, labor force participation, household organization, and property relations. In social history these traits have mostly been described and discussed separately, but it may be argued that in reality they are but bits and pieces of the same general pattern. It is not the purpose of this paper to make a full and systematic analysis of this European pattern, but rather to focus on that part of the female life course which ranges from late childhood and dependence to early social maturity. In this way I will try to shed some light on the specific issues involved in women’s work during the transition from a feudal to a capitalist mode of production within agriculture, and from rural to urban-industrial patterns of life.

Capitalist organization of production through non‐capitalist relations: women's role in a pilot resettlement in Upper Volta

Abstract: In Upper Volta, pilot resettlement schemes for the Volta Valley Authority, designed as models for some multi‐million dollar projects financed by the World Bank and others, have been found to be nearly intolerable to the women because of the lack of basic facilities, such as market places, land to grow the family food, village wells, grain mills and other facilities regarded as essentials in their home village. Many women have insisted on leaving. Getting to see the invisible women’, The Economist,April 1979). In examining why there should be the reported resistance by women, this analysis of one pilot scheme in Upper Volta shows how it is essentially a capital‐enterprise that utilises not wage labour but scheme ‘members’. The scheme's profitability is thus premised upon a certain, ‘nuclear’ family structure, which in turn presupposes a much greater burden on women than is customary in Voltaic society.

Women's Work in the Family Economy: a Study of Depression Hardship in Women's Lives:

Abstract: ogy Department of Bryn Mawr College and is engaged in research on the idealization of motherhood and women’s fertility since 1950. Glen H. Elder, Jr. is a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Youth Development in Boys Town, Nebraska. He has been a contributor to earlier issues of the Journal of Family History. Intergenerational ties between populations in diverse historical periods present a major challenge in the study of social change, yet generational relations are typically divorced from the realities of historical time and place. Generational studies have told us little about historical factors in people’s lives or about the transmission of their imprint from parent to offspring (Elder, 1975). Specific generational connections between historical contexts are sometimes assumed or inferred without empirical foundation, as in speculation concerning the Depression experience and the values of adults.

Poverty work and the financing of single women in Kampala.

Abstract: This paper examines the financial position of all-female households in a poor area of Kampala Uganda. The intention is to indicate the relative standards of living of households of various composition and to decide whether the practice of soliciting money from lovers is better viewed as a preferred alternative to employment or as an essential supplementing of inadequate incomes. If lovers are necessary to the maintenance of single women and their children in African cities analyses of extra-marital sexual behaviour which rely only on arguments about marriage rules and roles and personal values are rendered inadequate. Securing a paying lover may be indispensable to a woman who wishes to live and bring up children in town and the practice may tell us more about her wish to educate her children or her dislike of rural life than it does about her sexual and marital preferences. Love affairs in short may be more appropriately considered under the heading of domestic finance than as an adjunct to a discussion of marriage. The data which I present here do not reduce a lovers importance to a woman to that of a charitable institution or welfare state: women who are prosperous have love affairs and sexual pleasure is celebrated. They do indicate however the difficulties faced by a woman anxious to remain in town if she is not prepared to take lovers and to select them at least in part according to financial considerations. I hope too that the method which I use for working out standards of living available to households may prove useful as a means of establishing comparability between living standards in different cities. (excerpt)

The Changing Nature of Farm Women's Work Roles Under The Industrialization of Agricultural Production

Abstract: This study is an exploration of the relation of farm women to agricultural production. Data were collected on the work of sixty farm women from Bruce County, Ontario, with the aim of determining whether Canadian farm women are losing their role in agricultural production within family farm enterprises. Older and younger women from large and small beef and dairy farms were included in the sample. Data were collected on both housework and farm work. Three central findings emerged concerning the performance of housework. First, the nature of housework more closely approximates its urban equivalent as household technology is adopted. Second, there is evidence of a decline in the performance of domestic production activities over time, with that decline most pronounced for the younger women. Third, the division of household labour by sex has remained relatively constant over time. Women continue to assume the primary responsibility for housework with younger husbands and husbands of employed women assuming an only slighly greater portion of the overall work load. Wom~n's role in farm work has declined over the last two to four decades. The younger women are now involved in farm work to a lesser extent than older women now, and their r= , participation level is even smaller in relation to that of women twenty or more years ago. Women from small farms continue to

Household Values, Women's Work, and Economic Growth, 1800–1930

Abstract: This essay explores the state of economic knowledge regarding the development of household economic life in the United States since early industrialization by examining explanations for the low labor-force participation of middle-class married women prevailing until the 1940s. These explanations, including those emerging from fertility studies and resting on market forces, imprecisely specify the domestic roles of housewives. Interdisciplinary specification of these roles, drawing on social and cultural historians, and rigorous measurement of time allocation within the household would help resolve the various interpretations and assist in estimating the contribution of household work to social product.

Women's work

Abstract: The growth and development of the feminist movement in Australia and overseas has encouraged the search for the origins of women's history: the discovery of the unwritten history of women's lives.