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.

Family constraints on women's work

Abstract: The “immediate objective” of the Conference on Successful Women in the Sciences was “to convene successful professional women . . . who have managed to work actively in predominantly male professions and to evaluate the parameters in their lives that were determining factors in their subsequent careers.” But a second goal, one described by the planners as “ultimate albeit utopian,” is “to salvage the tremendous natural resources currently being wasted by the neglect of talented women in our society.” There is no doubt that the first of these goals has been served. We are learning something about a group of exceptionally talented women. But will knowledge about this group of remarkable women generalize to the vastly larger proportion of les\\ exceptional women whose waste of talent is deplored in the statement of the second goal? Partly, of course, it will-and in any case, the determinants of success of such an unusual group are of great interest in their own right. But exceptional talent is always a rare commodity, and if we want to understand the constraint5 operating on less remarkable but still talented, trained, and committed women, we may have to redesign our investigation. Studies of women in the sciences. women actively engaged in the pursuit of a scientific career, deal with women who are exceptional not only in their energies and abilities. both scientific and managerial, but in family circumstances as well. Most studies comparing the careers of men and women in science consistently show that a much larger proportion of the women are not married. Generally, close to half the women scientists are unmarried: the figure for men is closer to ten percent. Further, even when married, the women scientists have fewer children: between one third and one half of such women’s families are childless, whereas the childless men generally comprise no more than 10% of the total group.’ By studying such groups, we may miss the pattern of constraints operating on less exceptional women: women with families who are trained, and willing to participate in professional work, but whose contributions are not on the level of the most accomplished group of either sex. By identifying the constraints on the work of such women we may be able to localize those conditions in need of change, those circumstances which today still require exceptional individual effort to overcome. It is at those points that social intervention will be most fruitful in the pursuit of our “ultimate albeit utopian” goal. For this reason I shall deal here not with a group of extraordinary women, but with a more varied group, a group of women that is defined only by the fact of marriage to educated men. It is among such women that we characteristically find the greatest waste of talent, and the factors that influence their participation or lack of participation in the occupational world may be very different from those that propel the most gifted group. Speaking quite generally, we can identify three overall sources of constraints on women’s professional work: those stemming from the woman herself, those from the professional world, and those from her adult family. The first dependent on her early socialization by parents and teachers, and influenced by such

Counting women's work in the agricultural census of Nepal: a report.

Abstract: Like many national statistical surveys the Agricultural Census of Nepal does not reflect the actual contribution of womens work in agriculture. Inadequacies in conceptualization definition of terms and data gathering methods result in undervaluation and underrepresentation of womens work. This study of 124 Newar households in the Lubhu Village Development Committee Kathmandu Valley provides a statistical representation of womens roles in agricultural operations and household activities by assessing the actual extent of their work. After analyzing the gender division of labor the study concludes that womens work in agriculture and household activities is significantly higher than mens work. (authors)

Infant feeding and women's work in Western Samoa: a hypothesis, some evidence and suggestions for future research.

Abstract: This paper argues that a key reason for the decline in the age of weaning in 3rd world countries may be an increasing workload for women associated with increasing involvement in the cash economy. This hypothesis is considered in light of data collected in an anthropological field study of a rural village in Western Samoa. Methods used were a village census a household survey with fertility histories and questions on household economy a questionnaire on breastfeeding key informant interviews observations made during residence in the village and archival research. The ethnographic data suggest the possibility of a causal relationship between a decline in the age of weaning and an increasing workload for women in Western Samoa. In addition other factors thought to account for a decline in the age of weaning such as bottle feeding and urbanization are unimportant in rural Western Samoa. (authors)

Mill, Political Economy, and Women's Work

Abstract: The sexual division of labor and the social and economic value of women's work in the home has been a problem that scholars have struggled with at least since the advent of the “second wave” women's movement, but it has never entered into the primary discourses of political science. This paper argues that John Stuart Mill's Political Economy provides innovative and useful arguments that address this thorny problem. Productive labor is essential to Mill's conception of property, and property was vital to women's independence in Mill's view. Yet since Mill thought most women would choose the “career” of wife and mother rather than working for wages, then granting that work productive status would provide a radical and inventive foundation for women's equality. Mill, however, is ambiguous about the productive status of domestic labor, and is thereby representative of a crucial failure in political economic thought, as well as in egalitarian liberal thought on gender. But because Mill at the same time develops a conception of production that goes well beyond the narrow limits offered by other prominent political economists, he offers contemporary political scientists and theorists a way to rethink the relationship of reproductive to productive labor, the requirements for gender equality, and the accepted categories of political economy.