Systems of Male Privilege: The Industrial Relations Policies of the Ford Motor Company in the 1940s

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
BRETT THEODORE MORRITT
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Ford Motor Company ◽  
World War ◽  
Male Privilege ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Military Production

This article examines the industrial relations systems constructed by Ford and United Automobile Workers (UAW) leaders for the Ford Motor Company in the 1940s. Ford’s industrial relations systems extended privileges to men and male-dominated groups to the detriment of their female counterparts and women seeking employment and advancement. Systemic male privilege was integral to Ford’s operations throughout conversion to military production for World War II and reconversion back to civilian production.

Rosie the Riveter Revisited

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
United Automobile Workers ◽  
Hiring Policies

This chapter examines the ways in which employers contributed to the historical formation of the sexual division of labor and to patterns of job segregation by gender. It begins with a discussion of the formation of the sexual division of labor in the automobile industry prior to World War II. It then considers the logic of Fordism and the lack of incentive to retain or hire women workers after the war, with particular emphasis on how hiring policies fostered the gender division of labor. It shows that labor unions, and more specifically the United Automobile Workers (UAW), collaborated with management in purging women from the auto industry, with the latter playing the far more powerful role owing to its preference for male workers.

Working Class Rosies: Women Industrial Workers during World War II

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherrie A. Kossoudji ◽  
Laura J. Dresser
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Older Women ◽  
Ford Motor Company ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
World War ◽  
Industrial Employment ◽  
Work Histories

After joining the industrial workforce during World War II, women disappeared from industrial employment with postwar reconversion. This article uses data from Ford Motor Company employee records to describe female industrial workers, their work histories before Ford, and their exit patterns from Ford. We draw a more complete picture of these industrial workers and discuss the differences between those who chose to leave Ford and those who left involuntarily. Contrary to popular myth it was housewives, along with African-American and older women, those with the fewest outside opportunities, who were more likely to be laid-off.

The All American Girls Professional Baseball League, 1943–1954: Gender Conflict in Sport?

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen H. Weiller ◽  
Catriona T. Higgs
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Women Athletes ◽  
Sport Participation ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Professional Baseball ◽  
World War ◽  
Gender Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
Male Dominated

The increase of women workers in industry during World War II coincided with an increase in sport participation and competition. From 1943 to 1954, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) allowed talented women athletes a chance to play professional baseball. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of women’s professional baseball and its connection with the social, cultural, and economic roles for women in society. An open-ended questionnaire allowed former players to respond to the social and cultural forces that impacted on women in society and sport during this era. The players of the AAGPBL were respected and admired professional women athletes in a male-dominated sport.

Using History to Model with Mathematics: The German Tank Problem

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 370-377
Author(s):  
George J. Roy ◽  
Jennifer A. Eli ◽  
Hendrix Leslie ◽  
LuAnn Graul
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Security ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Seventh Grade ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Equipment ◽  
Random Samples ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Military Production

During World War II, the Allied Forces were concerned with the monthly production of tires, tanks, and other military equipment in Germany (Flaspohler and Dinkheller 1999; Ruggles and Brodie 1947). Knowing these production totals was important for international security. To determine military production, the Allied Forces in England recruited individuals from a wide range of educational and occupational backgrounds to help analyze serial numbers found on military equipment and to analyze secret codes (Pioneer Productions 2014). We used this historical context to challenge a class of twenty-six seventh-grade students to imagine themselves as one of these codebreaking analysts while studying random samples and learning to draw inferences about a population (CCSSI 2010).

scholarly journals Decline or transformation? Change in industrial conflict and its challenges

2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Bordogna ◽  
Gian Primo Cella
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Strike Activity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strong Trend ◽  
Measurement Analysis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
National Styles

This article begins with a quantitative analysis of post-World War II strike activity in a group of European countries and the United States. The analysis highlights two important changes. First, over the past two decades, and particularly during the 1990s, there was a significant decrease in strike activity in the countries surveyed (with the notable exception of Denmark). Secondly, there has been a strong trend towards the so-called tertiarisation of conflict. This raises major problems for the measurement, analysis and regulation of strike activity, the strength of tertiary conflicts being based not on the number of days lost or the number of strikers involved, but on the extent of harm caused to the users of services. The impact of tertiary conflict varies from one country to another, in line with the different national regulatory mechanisms, national institutions and national styles of industrial relations.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ethan Schrum
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Structural Feature ◽  
Research University ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Direct Service ◽  
New Model ◽  
Organized Research Units

The introduction describes how a generation of elites, under the spell of a vision of American modernity, transformed the research university into a new model, the instrumental university. Four modern ideals connected to technocratic progressivism—industrial relations, city planning, administration, and economic development—played prominent roles in this transition. Proponents of the instrumental model reinterpreted the university’s longstanding commitment to serve society as “direct service,” often through organized research on specific public problems. Organized research units proliferated after World War II and became the key structural feature of the instrumental university.

Workers, Management, and the Right to Smoke during World War II

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Wood
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Military Service ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Ford Motor Company ◽  
General Motors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Historical Moment

This chapter explains that World War II was a major historical moment when cigarettes became respectable in American culture and soon became permissible in the industrial workplace. Wartime popular culture connected smoking to military service and support for soldiers' sacrifices, making the cigarette an acceptable and respectable symbol of patriotic expression. At the same time, workers pressed employers for the right to smoke on the job, and smoking disputes played a significant role in several strikes in the automobile-turned-defense plants of Michigan. By 1950, many major employers such as General Motors and the Ford Motor Company had rescinded their bans on smoking.

The Intellectual Journey of Marion Countess Dönhoff

2018 ◽  
pp. 85-128
Author(s):  
Volker R. Berghahn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Intellectual Journey ◽  
Significant Factors

This chapter considers the experiences of Marion Countess Dönhoff (1909–2002), one of the most famous female German journalists of the twentieth century. Dönhoff belongs to the so-called “Generation of '32” and was confronted with the difficult question of how to react to the dictatorship that Hitler established so swiftly starting in January 1933. For an understanding of her career, both during the Nazi period and after World War II, it is also important that she was a woman in what was still very much a male-dominated world. These are significant factors when it comes to assessing her role as an “inner emigrant.” Here she, an anti-Nazi of the first hour, moved more and more toward active resistance and, as will be seen, was lucky that the local Gestapo let her go after a brief interrogation following the failed July 1944 plot to kill Hitler. After 1945 she became a journalist who wrestled with explanations of what had happened under Nazism and of what kind of society should be built out of the ruins of the German and European catastrophe.

James D. Mooney and General Motors' Multinational Operations, 1922–1940

2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Wren
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Ford Motor Company ◽  
General Motors ◽  
World War ◽  
Vertical Coordination ◽  
Unpublished Paper ◽  
Organizational Hierarchy ◽  
Assembly Plants ◽  
First Mover

This article traces the emergence of the General Motors Corporation as a multinational enterprise under the leadership of James D. Mooney from 1922 to the outbreak of World War II. Mooney's unpublished paper “The Science of Industrial Organization” (1929) portrays GM's multidivisional organization's use of the line-staff concept in organizing overseas assembly plants. Here I compare General Motors with Ford Motor Company, which had first-mover advantages overseas, and examine how each company organized and managed their international operations. “Linking pins,” a social-science concept, illustrates how GM's organizational hierarchy achieved vertical coordination of effort. Economic depression and the prelude to World War II followed the expansionary 1920s, requiring GM and Ford to adjust to a changing environment. The article also covers Mooney's naïve attempts to use business for diplomacy in the years leading up to the war.

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