Showing papers on "Women's work published in 1996"

Research, Teaching, and Service: Why Shouldn't Women's Work Count?.

Abstract: (1996) Research, Teaching, and Service: Why Shouldn't Women's Work Count? The Journal of Higher Education: Vol 67, No 1, pp 46-84

Key Issues in Women's Work: Female Heterogeneity and the Polarisation of Women's Employment

Abstract: Explaining Women's Subordination Marginal Employment, Voluntary Work, Unpaid Household Work Feminisation of the Workforce Work Values, Work Plans and Social Interaction in the Workplace Labour Mobility and Women's Employment Profiles Occupational Segregation and the Pay Gap Social Engineering: the Role of Law Conclusions: Female Diversity and Workforce Polarisation.

Lesbian Lifestyles: Women's Work and the Politics of Sexuality

Abstract: Lesbian Lifestyles graphically illustrates the importance of taking sexuality into account in order to deepen our understanding of the constraining and liberating influences on women's domestic and working lives. Charting the lives of 60 women from childhood, through school, to their paid work and home lives as adults, the book explores their experiences of gendering in childhood and their changing feelings about society's prevalent culture of 'romantic heterosexuality'. In particular, it documents the impact of 'coming out' on their adult lives - most importantly on their approach to intimate relationships and paid work. Casting new light on how sexuality is socially constructed, the book argues that the capacity to evaluate the taken-for-grantedness of heterosexuality is linked with empowerment and it offers a vision of what working life and domestic arrangements can look like when gender difference as a structuring principle is absent.

Shaping Women's Work: Gender, Employment and Information Technology

Abstract: Introduction - the terrain of this book. Perspectives on women's work and technology gender relations in the shaping of technologies information technologies and the shaping of women's employment secretaries and seamstresses, clerks and cashiers - information technologies and women's labour processes women in systems design - values, methods and artefacts the lessons of feminist research on women's work and IT.

Women’s Work, Autonomy, and Birth Control: Evidence From Two South Indian Villages

Abstract: In this study we contrast two South Indian villages which offer women very different employment opportunities. Many women in Village I roll beedis, which are crude hand-rolled cigarettes. The structure of beedi work was designed to meet the needs of the beedi contractor, but inadvertently it has provided women with substantial autonomy. In Village II very few women work for pay. We argue that these different employment opportunities affect women's autonomy, which in turn influences important demographic outcomes. More precisely, we argue that greater autonomy will increase contraceptive use among women who want no more children. We find strong support for this hypothesis. But, because there are few competing employment opportunities in Village II, women in that Village have received substantially more education than those in Village I. This higher level of education is also associated with greater contraceptive use. Thus, overall, the level of contraceptive use does not vary greatly between villages. More...

No Time for a Rest?: An Exploration of women's Work, Engendered Leisure and Holidays

Abstract: This article explores the idea that women in western societies, including those with male partners and/or children, may perceive and use their leisure, including holidays, to disrupt intensified li...

Tanganyikan Nationalism as ‘Women's Work’: Life Histories, Collective Biography and Changing Historiography

Abstract: Although nationalism in Tanzania, as elsewhere in Africa, has been criticized for its shortcomings, and a ‘Dar es Salaam School’ has been charged with succumbing to its ideological biases, few historians have revisited or questioned Tanzania's dominant nationalist narrative – a narrative created over 25 years ago. Biographies written in aid of this narrative depict nationalism in the former Trust Territory of Tanganyika as primarily the work of a few good men, including ‘proto-nationalists’ whose anti-colonial actions set the stage and provided historical continuity for the later western-oriented ideological work of nationalist modernizers.The life history narratives of women who became activists in the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in the 1950s disrupt this view of progressive stages toward an emerging nationalist consciousness which reflected and borrowed heavily from western forms and ideals. They suggest that Tanganyikan nationalism was also and significantly the work of thousands of women, whose lives and associations reflected trans-tribal ties and affiliations, and whose work for TANU served to both construct and perform what nationalism came to signify for many Tanzanian women and men. Women activists did not simply respond to TANU's nationalist rhetoric; they shaped, informed and spread a nationalist consciousness for which TANU was the vehicle.Neither ‘extraordinary’ individuals (the usual subjects of male biography) nor ‘representative’ of ‘ordinary people’ (often the subjects of life histories), TANU women activists' lives reveal the severe limitations of the dichotomous characterizations of traditional biographical forms. Together, their narratives constitute a collective biographical narrative of great significance for our understanding of nationalism and nationalist movement in the former Tanganyika.

Caregiving as Women's Work: Women's Experiences of Powerfulness and Powerlessness as Caregivers

Abstract: In this study, two groups of women caregivers, older family caregivers, and women who do "double duty" caregiving (paid health care professionals who simultaneously are unpaid elder caregivers in their 'off' time), participated in daylong research workshops in which they first identified dimensions of an "ideal" caregiving situation and then, using a critical incident technique, explored the meaning of "power"-feeling powerful and powerless-for them as caregivers. This article is devoted to examining the ways in which women understand the notion of "powerfulness" and "powerlessness" in their work as caregivers. Themes emerging from caregivers' critical incidents are discussed and considered in light of previous literature. The article concludes by drawing implications from the project's findings for policy, practice, advocacy, and conceptual development.

Women's work and women's worth: the leisure implications of women's changing employment patterns.

Abstract: This paper reviews the interrelationship of work and leisure in British women's lives. It focuses in particular on the practical and ideological significance of changes in women's patterns of labour market involvement. While women's gross employment levels have risen substantially over the last three decades, the scale and pattern of female employment is strongly differentiated across social groups. Most women's work involvement continues to be primarily shaped by the requirements of their family role, and to be strongly differentiated from male employment patterns. Among women with higher status jobs, however, a contrasting pattern is emerging. This paper considers whether the ‘advances’ of professional women are indicative of a general tide of change which can be expected to permeate to other sectors of the female population, and highlights structural factors in both work and family domains which are likely to inhibit this. It concludes that current trends in women's employment patterns both represent i...

Field, Forest, And Family: Women's Work And Power In Rural Laos

Abstract: After the Vietnam War, socialist governments ascended to power in all the countries of the former Indochina. In Laos, more than a decade of socialist reorganization was followed by economic liberalization in the late 1980s. Laotian women had traditionally sustained the household and local economy with their work in field, forest, and family, but political and economic changes markedly affected the context of rural women's prevailing sources of power and subordination. Socialist policies, for example, curtailed women's commercial activities while recognizing women's work in agriculture and child care.In this richly detailed volume, Carol Ireson draws on ten years of fieldwork and research to explore this metamorphosis among Laotian women. Throughout, she poses questions such as: What has happened to women's traditional sources of control over their own and others' activities since the 1975 socialist revolution? Have their traditional sources of power or autonomy expanded or contracted as changing conditions have allowed other groups to appropriate women's traditional resources and roles? Have the dramatic changes had different effects on rural women of differing ethnic backgrounds and varying economic means?Focusing on women from three major ethnic groups?the lowland Lao, the Khmu, and the Hmong?Ireson examines the different ways they have responded to political and economic changes. She shows us that the Laotian experience reveals in microcosm the processes of change toward specialization and integration of women's work into national and global economies and explains how this shift deeply affects women's lives.

Not Only The Dangerous Trades: Women's Work And Health In Britain 1880-1914

Abstract: Using original research and focusing on occupational ill-health in relation to women workers, this book presents a perspective for the analysis of both gender and work and work and ill-health The author gives a critique of traditional theoretical accounts of gender relations, state intervention and industrial ill-health The chapters examine the extent to which feminist activists got involved in debates about health and industrial work, and show how activists went beyond the concerns of suffrage; The book presents a historical period which was marked by a change in the role of the state with respect to intervention in industrial conditions, and analyses the coincidence of this with three other significant developments: the growth of expertise in industrial disease; the employment of women in the factory to take on responsibilities in relation to other women; and changes in the direction of feminist activism In light of this analysis, the author suggests that some theoretical approaches to both gender relations and health and safety requirements require modification

The Domestication of Women's Work: A Comparison of Chinese and Portuguese Immigrant Women Homeworkers

Abstract: Changes in the Canadian political economy, including trade liberalization, economic recession, the shift to postfordist forms of production, and monetarist economic policies, have intensified two processes which define the nature of women's work in the 1990s: informalization and domestication.

Total fertility rate, women's education, and women's work: What are the relationships?

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a statistical study, using cross-national data, on the relationships between total fertility rate and women's level of education and women's labor participation. Aggregate data on seventy-one countries were collected from numerous sources. Eight variables related to women's fertility, mortality, economic status, labor participation, and education are analyzed using multivariate linear regression analyses. Two models are considered. The first model regresses five variables on total fertility rate: per capita Cross National Product (GNP), percentage of women ages 15 to 19 who are married, female life expectancy at birth, calories available as a percentage of need, and percentage of married couples using contraception. The second model includes two additional regressors: the average number of years of schooling for women, and the percentage of women in the labor force. These seven variables are regressed on total fertility rate. Although the data are crude, the results of the analyses suggest that the model which incorporates women's level of education and women's labor participation captures the data better than the smaller model. The full model suggests that the percentage of women in the labor force is directly related to total fertility rate, whereas the average number of years of education for women is indirectly related to total fertility rate.

"No one asked, no one told me" : the impact of incest on women's work and career.

Abstract: NO ONE ASKED, NO ONE TOLD ME:" THE IMPACT OF INCEST ON WOMEN'S WORK AND CAREER FEBRUARY 1996 LESLIEBETH BERGER, B.A., CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY M.A., OHIO UNIVERSITY M.S.S., BRYN MAWR COLLEGE Ed.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Dr. Maurianne Adams The impact of incest on women's work performance and career development was studied in 41 female incest survivors and 15 nonabused women from a diverse population. The methodology was a content analysis of in-person qualitative, semi-structured interviews. Incest surviors participants reported having difficulties in academic and peer relations and difficulties in secondary schooling and more negative work experiences, including peer relations, difficulty in managing posttraumatic stress symptoms, remaining at a job, and advancing in a career. In addition to these difficulties incest survivors fell into different work group profiles: disabled, dabblers, drones, sprinters, v balancer/achievers, and drivers. Childhood experiences of incest contributed to an overall negative self-schema, especially regarding work and career capabilities.

The Gendering of Dangerous Trades: Government Regulation of Women's Work in the White Lead Trade in England, 1892-1898

Abstract: / / /Concern for a woman's existing or potential offspring historically V^ has been the excuse for denying women equal employment opportunities,\" Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in March of 1991.1 He was one of five judges whose votes overturned a \"fetal protection\" policy enacted by Johnson Controls, Inc., the nation's largest manufacturer of automobile batteries, thereby reversing the historical trend.2 This important case raised fundamental questions about gender, work, sex discrimination, reproductive rights, and intervention in women's lives. It also bore a striking resemblance to the regulation of women's work in another hazardous trade—the white lead trade—which is the subject of this article. In June of 1898, the English government banned women from working in the most dangerous but also the highest paying portions of the white lead trade as a means of protecting their potential offspring. This monumental step in protective labor legislation followed a heated public and governmental debate about women's work in the trade. The debate was fueled by sensational newspaper accounts of death and infant mortality and the medical opinion that women were more susceptible to lead poisoning than men. Together, the press and medical men created a powerful discourse of danger which claimed that certain work was especially dangerous to women and their offspring. This discourse served to initiate and justify radical government intervention. This article examines the politics of state intervention in women's work in the white lead trade to illustrate that the politics of gender was the decisive factor in the making of social policy. Disturbed with women's work outside the home and possessing deeply embedded ideas about sexual difference, Home Office officials, medical men, manufacturers, and various reform groups participated in the creation of dangerous trade regulations. Their opinions and predisposition towards state action were buttressed by medical knowledge and pressing social concerns and fears. The regulation of women's work became directly tied to the national, or rather, imperial concern over motherhood, infant mortality, and the fitness of women for certain jobs. Apart from making protection an almost prede-

Women's work environment and health: clerical workers in Brazil.

Abstract: Although women are participating more in the formal workforce, the majority are employed primarily in low-income and low-status occupations. While work roles may provide women with some rewards, employment may also create many stressful demands on their daily lives. As part of an international study, 60 female Brazilian clerical workers responded to a self-administered questionnaire describing what they liked, disliked, and found stressful about the structural, physical, and social aspects of their work environment. Participants also identified strategies they used to cope with stress in the work environment. Dimensions of healthy environments identified in the data included utility, challenge, participation, safety, pleasing workplace, valuation, clarity of roles, and empowerment. Unhealthy environments were characterized by hazards, bureaucracy, devaluation, and economic constraints. Participants described their concerns about the effect of the environment on their physical and mental health, but tended to adopt a passive, resigned coping style rather than a proactive approach to co-creating a healthier work environment. The results and their relationship to healthy work environments are discussed within the context of the larger sociopolitical environment of Brazil.

Liberty, Protection, and Women's Work: Investigating the Boundaries between Public and Private

Abstract: During the Progressive Era, the U. S. state and federal courts considered constitutional challenges to protective labor legislation. While courts often struck down generalized protective legislation, they frequently upheld such legislation for women. I explore the reasoning in the cases decided between 1897 and 1923, showing that the courts developed understandings of liberty for women that differed from those for men. In opposition to traditional separate spheres reasoning, I show that the courts viewed men's exercise of liberty as depending on their private capacities to be free, while women's labor was subject to public control due to state interest in their reproductive capacities. I suggest that constitutional theorists who are studying substantive due process should place more emphasis on courts'conceptions of the subjects of due process guarantees rather than considering solely the challenged statutes' restriction of liberty. I develop a dynamic and complex understanding of liberty to capture this aspect of the relationship between constitutional theory and gender.

Women's Work and Family Patterns in a Caring Profession

Abstract: This article analyses the employment histories of social workers who qualified in Adelaide from the late 1930s to the end of the 1960s, from time of qualification to 1980. It compares the career patterns of women and men, it traces changes in the workforce participation of successive cohorts of women and it examines the total contribution of women and men to the welfare workforce. It reveals dramatic contrasts between women and men social workers in terms of career patterns and the relationship between work and family. Changes are evident over the decades in the balance of women's professional and family commitments, but a continuing theme was career interruption and compromise. Nevertheless, the evidence clearly shows that women contributed the greater part of the expanding trained workforce which was needed for the rapid development of welfare and related services in South Australia from the late 1930s up to 1980.

Women's work in colonial India

Abstract: Dr. Haimabati Sen, a medical doctor in charge of the women's hospital in Chinsurah, described her daily routine in 1895: I would get up every day at four in the morning, prepare a breakfast for my husband and the children, and go downstairs with hot water and edibles for the patients. I would first help the patients wash… I would finish this chore of helping them wash and give them a piece of batasa or candied sugar as their snack… Where there were children staying with the mother I would make some halua [semolina sweet] and give them small quantities of it. It would take me a little over an hour to attend to the patients and come back. I would go back home, have a wash, wake up the children, dress them, give them breakfast, arrange for my husband's meal, get dressed, have something to eat and then go back to the hospital. This was my daily routine. The labor of women like Dr. Haimabati Sen, as a medical professional and wife and mother, has largely been hidden from history. Memoirs rarely offer such rich detail about women's work. Unfortunately, our sources on women's work in the nineteenth and even much of the twentieth century are vague and unanalytical. The dearth of reliable data presents a serious challenge for historians attempting to probe the consequences of colonial rule for laboring women.