Examines the pressing issues that affect women pornography, prostitution, battery, rape, pay equity, sexual harassment, motherhood, abortion, adoption, reproductive technologies and considers them through the lens of feminist legal theory. This book features more than sixty articles.

Doing Comparable Worth is the first empirical study of the actual process of attempting to translate into reality the idea of equal pay for work of equal value. This political ethnography documents a large project undertaken by the state of Oregon to evaluate 35,000 jobs of state employees, identify gender-based pay inequities, and remedy these inequities. The book details both the technical and political processes, showing how the technical was always political, how management manipulated and unions resisted wage redistribution, and how initial defeat was turned into partial victory for pay equity by labor union women and women's movement activists. As a member of the legislative task force that was responsible for implementing the legislation requiring a pay equity study in Oregon, Joan Acker gives an insider's view of how job evaluation, job classification, and the formulation of an equity plan were carried out. She reveals many of the political and technical problems in doing comparable worth that are not evident to outsiders. She also places comparable worth within a feminist theoretical perspective. In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

In the era after Suffrage, white middle-class housewives abandoned moves toward paid work for themselves, embraced domestic life, and felt entitled to servants. In Domesticity and Dirt, Phyllis Palmer examines the cultural norms that led such women to take on the ornamental and emotional elements of the job while relegating the hard physical work and demeaning service tasks to servants—mainly women of color. Using novels, films, magazine articles, home economics texts, and government-funded domestic training course manuals, the author details cultural expectations about middle-class homelife. Palmer describes how government-funded education programs encouraged the divisions of labor and identity and undercut domestic workers’ organized efforts during the 1930s to win inclusion in New Deal programs regulating labor conditions. Aided by less powerful black civil rights groups, without the assistance of trade unions or women’s clubs, domestics failed to win legal protections and the legal authority and self-respect these brought to covered workers. The author also reveals how middle- class women responded ambivalently to the call to aid women workers when labor reforms threatened their domestic arrangements. Throughout her study, Palmer questions why white middle-class women looked to new technology and domestic help to deal with cultural demands upon "the perfect housewife" rather than expecting their husbands to help. When the supply of servants declined during the 1950s, middle-class housewives were left isolated with lots of housework. Although they rapidly followed their servants into paid work outside the home, they remain responsible for housework and child care.

Book by Gerstel, Naomi

Attempts to do justice to the complexity of contemporary families and to situate them in their economic, political, and cultural contexts. This book explores the ways in which family life is gendered and reflects on the work of maintaining family and kin relationships, especially as social and family power structures change over time.

This collection of twenty-six original essays looks at contemporary feminist organizations, how they've survived, the effects of their work, the problems they face, the strategies they develop, and where the women's movement is headed. The contributors, leading feminist scholars from nine social science disciplines, examine a wide variety of local feminist organizations, past and preset, illuminating the struggles of feminist organizers and activists. In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

In essays written specially for this volume, eighteen senior women sociologists engage in analytic reflections on interconnections between their personal lives and their research, teaching, and activism. With humor, irony, and passion, these women—whose institutions range from elite universities to junior colleges—convey their diverse personal histories, career paths, and professional obstacles. As a result, the volume provides a picture of the complex dynamic among individual biography and sociological practice, personal growth, and institutional change.

Offers a full-length study of the Australian femocrats published in the United States. This book analyzes the implicit political theory of the femocrats and addresses the issues of strategies for social change, class, race and racism, sexuality and sexual politics, gendered experience, and accountability to the women's movement.

Gives accounts by women on active duty, retired officers, women who have worked for the armed forces in a civilian capacity, and civilian academics. This book dispels many of the myths about women and the military and explores the reasons for the persistence of misconceptions in the face of increased female participation.

Since 1970, women have made widely publicized gains in several customarily male occupations. Many commentators have understood this apparent integration as an important step to sexual equality in the workplace. Barbara F. Reskin and Patricia A. Roos read a different lesson in the changing gender composition of occupations that were traditionally reserved for men. With persuasive evidence, Job Queues, Gender Queues offers a controversial interpretation of women's dramatic inroads into several male occupations based on case studies of "feminizing" male occupation. The authors propose and develop a queuing theory of occupations' sex composition. This theory contends that the labor market comprises a "gender queue" with employers preferring male to female workers for most jobs. Workers also rank jobs into a "job queue." As a result, the highest-ranked workers monopolize the most desirable jobs. Reskin and Roos use this queuing perspective to explain why several male occupations opened their doors to women after 1970. The second part of the book provides evidence for this queuing analysis by presenting case studies of the feminization of specific occupations. These include book editor, pharmacist, public relations specialist, bank manager, systems analyst, insurance adjuster, insurance salesperson, real estate salesperson, bartender, baker, and typesetter/compositor. In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

Whether temp life is a preferred choice or grudgingly accepted as the last option when 'real' or permanent work is unavailable, all temps must confront issues of gender, identity, and self-esteem. This book examines these issues, documenting the concerns and interpretations of temp workers about their own work lives.

Today, when fifty percent of couples who marry eventually get divorced, it's clear that we have moved from a culture in which marriage is forever to one in which marriage is contingent. Author Karla Hackstaff looks at intact marriages to examine the impact of new expectations in a culture of divorce. "Marriage in a Culture of Divorce" examines the shifting meanings of divorce and gender for two generations of middle-class, married couples. Hackstaff finds that new social and economic conditions both support and undermine the efforts of spouses to redefine the meaning of marriage in a culture of divorce. The definitions of marriage, divorce, and gender have changed for all, but more for the young than the old, and more for women than for men. While some spouses in both generations believe that marriage is for life and that men should dominate in marriage, the younger generation of spouses increasingly construct marriage as contingent rather than forever. Hackstaff presents this evidence in archival case studies of couples married in the 1950s, which she then contrasts with her own case studies of people married during the 1970s, finding evidence of a significant shift in who does the emotional work of maintaining the relationship. It is primarily the woman in the '50s couples who monitors the marriage, whereas in the '70s couples both husband and wife support a marital work ethic, including couples therapy in some cases. The words and actions of the couples Hackstaff follows in depth - the '50s Stones, Dominicks, Hamptons, and McIntyres, and the '70s Turners, Clement-Leonettis, Greens, Kason-Morrises, and Nakatos—reveal the changes and contradictory tendencies of married life in the U.S. There are traditional relationships characterized by male dominance, there are couples striving for gender equality, there are partners pulling together, and partners pulling apart. Those debating family values should not forget, Hackstaff contends, that there are costs associated with marriage culture as well as divorce culture, and they should view divorce as a transitional means for defining marriage in an egalitarian direction. She convincingly illustrates her controversial position, that although divorce has its cost to society, the divorce culture empowers wives and challenges the legacy of male dominance that previously set the conditions for marriage endurance.

Takes a look at the sizeable population of women who are domestic workers in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Interviews 50 American women, born between 1884 and 1918 who were never married, and examines their refusal to be 'yoked by wifing', as one woman expressed it. This title presents autobiographical reflections that provide insights about the symbolic and material worlds of never-married women and comparisons to the lives of single career women.

The demand and need for maternity disability and parenting policies have increased enormously in the United States. Addressing key public policy issues, this work serves as a useful resource for those who are considering laws to establish parental leave and legislation on child care provision.

In this lively critical analysis, Diane Barthel reveals the previously overlooked and underestimated depth of cultural meaning behind contemporary American advertising. Focusing mainly on ads for beauty products directed at women, she demonstrates how stereotypical gender identities are emphasized and how advertising itself creates a gendered relationship with the consumer. She explores psychological, sociological, and cultural messages in advertising to show how Putting on Appearances is anything but a purely personal matter, and how the social realities in which we are forced to live are conditioned by the personal appearances we choose to create. Most advertisements are not sexually obvious, but rely instead on sexual story-telling in which seduction, deception, and passion are portrayed as acceptable means for achieving selfhood. Advertisements that proclaim, "Now is the time to paint your knees" speak with one form of those that present the voice of the all-knowing scientist or the nurturing mother rely on others. Celebrities figure as professional beauties and wise older sisters, sharing their secrets with the consumer. "The Gentle Treatment Great Model Search Made Me a Star. Now it’s your turn." Inseparable from the clothes we wear and the products we use are our ideas and fantasies about our bodies. Beauty products present beauty rituals as transcendent occasions, and diet products call up religious imagery of guilt and salvation. The body itself is to be anxiously manipulated and systematically worked over until the consumer "turns her body into...an advertisement for herself, a complicated sign to be read and admired." In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

In this rich, well-written study, Eleanor Miller analyzes the social organization of street hustling and the lives of the women involved in it. Miller views hustling as 'illegal work': prostitution, fraud, forgery, embezzlement, and larceny. Using information garnered from life histories and interviews with 64 female street hustlers in Milwaukee, she vividly describes a female underclass recruited to the world of the street for a substantial period of their lives. "Street Woman" offers a challenging alternative to recent sociological studies that view the 'women's movement' as directly linked to the increasing participation of women in property crime.Miller shows that this increase in crime is a response to sustained poverty. Thus, many sociologists are out of touch with the typical female criminal in this country on both a demographic and personal level. 'Typical' female hustlers, as their own words poignantly reveal, are young, poor minority women who have limited education and skills and who also have several children of their own.They adopt characteristic interpersonal relationships and familial forms that insure their survival but which leave the youngsters at greater risk of being recruited to street life. Street Woman is a work of great importance to sociologists and criminologists alike, both in its ramifications for public policy and its explicit implications for further research. Most important, Miller's desire to render a more personal portrait, to enable us to 'at least recognize the individual in the picture painted of the group', leaves the reader with haunting portrayals of the women who struggle to survive in the violent, desperate, drug-ridden world of the street. Eleanor M. Miller is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

There is a growing movement among corporations to provide family benefits in order to attract and retain women workers. This book provides an inside look at life in a major US corporation, focusing on the impact of workplace culture on the use of parental leave and those who use it.

Kathleen Mullan Harris reveals the relationship between black teenage mothers and the welfare system. Does welfare encourage them to maintain a life of dependency? How does education, marriage, and employment impact this relationship? How do these women escape dependency? Harris' account is based on Frank Furstenberg's Baltimore study, which began in the 1960s and has continued for more than 20 years. This study traces the paths of these mothers and provides commentary on the changes in the welfare system and the way society perceives welfare recipients. Not only are job prospects worse today but so are welfare benefits, and the abortion rate has risen drastically.

Many new mothers and fathers are surprised at how they change as individuals and as couples after a baby is born. Susan Walzer's interviews explore the tendency for men and women to experience their transitions into parenthood in different ways-a pattern that has been linked to marital stress. How do new mothers and fathers think about babies, and what is the influence of parental consciousness in reproducing motherhood and fatherhood as different experiences? The reports of new parents in this book illustrate the power of gendered cultural imagery in how women and men think about their roles and negotiate their parenting arrangements. New parents talk about what it means to them to be a "good" mother or father and how this plays out in their working arrangements and their everyday interactions over child care. The author carefully unravels the effects of social norms, personal relationships, and social institutions in channeling parents toward gender-differentiated approaches to parenting.

“Pek az iş Sisyphos’un işkencesine sonsuzca tekrarlanan ev işleri kadar benzer. Temiz olan kirlenir, kirlenen temizlenir, tekrar ve tekrar, gün be gün. Ev kadını, zamanın dışındadır: o hiçbir şey yapmaz; sadece şimdiyi sürükler.” Simone de Beauvoir Gül Özyeğin, öncü niteliğindeki bu çalışmasında, ev işlerini zamanın içine çekiyor – zamanın, tarihin, toplumsallığın. Bunu yaparken, gündelik hayatın ince kıvrımları içinde yol alıyor, gündelikçiler ve hanımları arasındaki mahrem ilişkileri birer iktidar ilişkisi olarak inceliyor. Modern orta sınıf ev kadınlığının ayrılmaz bir parçası olan ücretli ev hizmetlerinin kadınlar arası ilişkilerle olduğu kadar, toplumsal iktidarla ve ataerkiyle bağlantılarını ortaya koyuyor. Ankara’da kapıcılar, gündelikçiler, eşleri ve işverenleri ile yapılan derinlemesine görüşmelere, anketlere ve katılımcı gözleme dayanan kapsamlı bir saha araştırması yapan Özyeğin, pek çoğumuzun hayatına değdiği halde hâlâ yeterince çalışılmamış bir alan olarak duran “ücretli ev emeği” konusunda önemli tespitlerde bulunuyor. Cinsiyet ilişkilerinin salt kadın erkek eşitsizliği sorununa indirgenmesi, toplumsalı anlama çabamızın önündeki zihinsel engellerden biri haline gelmiş durumda. İnanıyoruz ki, Başkalarının Kiri, bu engelin aşılmasında güçlü bir etki yapacak.

Book by Maglin, Nan

Book by Bookman, Ann

Book by Dinnerstein, Myra

Using twenty-nine interviews with women involved in eight local sanctuary sites, this work explores the workings of the sanctuary movement; the reasons for their commitment to this illegal activity; the relationship between their activism, liberation theology and feminism; and the tensions among the women and between women and men in the movement.

Book by Klatch

In a unique departure from the usual stereotypes, Susan Ostrander gained access to this elite community and interviewed the women in one U.S. region to study their roles, activities, and self-images. Among her conclusions, Ostrander shows that although these women are economically and socially powerful, they are for the most part, unliberated, being subservient to their husbands and to their duty to bear and raise children. In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.

Book by Ames, Lynda

Although many of the social movements born in the 1960s and 1970s have expired, the feminist movement is one of the few survivors. Yet the relative infrequence of protests, demonstrations, and marches, the dissolution of the earlier consciousness-raising groups and the more audible self-criticism within the movement has signaled to some movement-watchers that contemporary feminism has spent its force. Obviously, there is a need to gauge exactly where the women’s movement stands today. This book seeks to fill a gap in feminist scholarship by focusing on the women’s movements and the different opportunities their political environments provide. Offering comparisons of the feminist movements in seven countries, the essays seek to assess the power and potential of the feminist movement in Western Europe and the United States.

Providing an original look at twentieth-century service occupations, Nona Y. Glazer offers an innovative interpretation of how managers reduce labor costs by shifting labor for paid women workers to women as family members. She critically examines the past and present practices of retailing and health service occupations as a way to better understand the deskilling, speed-ups, and job consolidation of nurses, salesclerks, and cashiers. Glazer calls the shifting of tasks from paid to unpaid labor the work transfer, one of the many mechanisms that managers used to change the labor process in service jobs. She maintains that these shifts in labor costs increase profit margins in a capitalistic economy that demands such increases. Drawing on social history, economics, interviews with health service workers, union newsletter accounts, and advertisements in mass market magazines and retail trade journals, this book affords new insights into how the hidden work of women is structured by changes in paid labor. Nona Y. Glazer is Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Portland State University and the editor of Woman in a Man-Made World and New Family/Old Family.

Since the 1960's, academic and activist women have been challenging the conventional wisdom about political life and the study of politics. This book provides a comprehensive critical history of the changing research on politics and the changing nature of the political science discipline. It analyzes the course of women's political activism in US.

This anthology gathers the past decade’s most thought-provoking and self-reflective articles written from a socialist-feminist perspective. It includes contemporary "classics" on socialist feminism by Juliet Mitchell, Gayle Rubin, Zillah Eisenstein, and Heidi I. Hartmann; reflections on the movement itself; and discussions on such issues as sexuality and pornography, work and the labor movement, and the viability of socialist feminist strategies in a liberal world.

Global attention has focused on some remarkable transitions to democracy on different continents. Those transitions have often failed to improve the situation of women, and democratic practices have not included women in government. This title includes essays and a conclusion that show the upsurge of interest in women and development since 1990.