Women's work

About: Women's work is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1625 publications have been published within this topic receiving 33754 citations. The topic is also known as: woman's work.

Women's Work: Degraded and Devalued

Abstract: This explicitly feminist look at women and work presents data and research on the wide range of work performed by women in our society, and analyzes it from the distinct theoretical perspective of socialist feminism. It highlights the lives, the work, and the experiences of women of different races and classes through the different types of work they do. Addresses the full range of women's work--productive work done in the labor market, reproductive work performed mainly in the home, and the additional work women perform for the state (by the state regulation of women's lives in the areas of employment and children). Contrasts the socialist feminist perspective with other major theoretical perspectives from sociology and women's studies. Expresses the voices and experiences of women through qualitative research data and excerpts from the creative literature (by and about women, including women of color). Features original tables that describe the contemporary socio-economic standing of women in the U.S. For anyone interested in women's studies, the sociology of women, gender roles, social stratification, women cross-culturally, work and occupations.

What Difference did Women’s Work to the Industrial Revolution?

Abstract: Recent research by economic historians on patterns of economic growth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has raised important questions for the significance of women's work. This research has substantially changed our views on the speed and extent of industrial change during those years classically identitied with the Industrial Revolution. about 1760 to 1820.

Household Childcare Choices and Women’s Work Behavior in Russia

Abstract: The author models mothers' participation in the labor force, their working hours, and household demand for childcare in Russia. The model estimates the effects of the price of childcare, mothers' wages, and household income on household behavior and well-being. The theoretical model yields several predictions. To test these, reduced-form equations of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of semi-parametric full information maximum likelihood. This method controls for the correlation of error terms across outcomes, and the correlation of error terms that can result when panel data are used. The results of this analysis indicate that the extent to which mothers participate in the labor force, and for how many hours, depends on the costs of childcare and on what level of hourly wage is available to them and to other members of the household. The author's simulations show that family allowances - intended to reduce poverty - do not significantly affect the household choice of childcare arrangements. Replacing family allowances with childcare subsidies might have a strong positive effect on women's participation in the labor force and thus could be effective in reducing poverty.

WOMEN'S WORK AND WORKING WOMEN: The Demand for Female Labor

Abstract: The demand for female labor is a central explanatory component of macrostructural theories of gender stratification. This study analyzes how the structural demand for female labor affects gender differences in labor force participation. The authors develop a measure of the gendered demand for labor by indexing the degree to which the occupational structure is skewed toward usually male or female occupations. Using census data from 1910 through 1990 and National Longitudinal Sample of Youth (NLSY) data from 261 contemporary U.S. labor markets, the authors show that the gender difference in labor force participation covaries across time and space with this measure of the demand for female labor.

‘I can do women's work’: reflections on engaging men as allies in women's economic empowerment in Rwanda

Abstract: The benefits of women's economic empowerment are well-known and documented in the development literature. Few studies and interventions, however, have explored how men react or can be engaged to enhance such interventions. This article presents an evaluation of a pilot project in Rwanda in collaboration with CARE Rwanda's Village Savings and Loan (VSL) programme that deliberately engaged men as partners of women beneficiaries of the micro-credit programme. Preliminary results affirm the importance of engaging men in a deliberate questioning of gender norms and power dynamics, so that they can embrace better co-operation and sharing of activities at the household level; and that a ‘do-no-harm’ approach to women's economic empowerment should involve activities to engage men at the community level in questioning and ending gender-based violence – building on those interventions that have shown evidence of changes in men's attitudes and behaviours related to gender-based violence.