Gendered Activism and the Politics of Women's Work: Introduction

It is often said that labor history is in decline. Yet other interpretations are possible. The flourishing of labor history from the 1960s to the 1980s could instead be regarded as exceptional and the situation during the last twenty years as the more typical state of affairs. A second interpretation, which I favor, is that labor history has, in fact, not declined. Rather, the content of labor history has shifted. There may be less scholarship on many of the traditional or original objects of research, but there is new research, in history and other disciplines, on topics that arguably fall under a new, expanded understanding of “labor history.” This second explanation is supported by the continued vitality of scholarship on women's work and women's activism.

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Badania, herstoria i praca kobiet — od PRL do dziś. Szkic do historii socjologii pracy kobiet

Górnośląskie Studia Socjologiczne. Seria Nowa ◽

10.31261/gss_sn.2020.11.10 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

pp. 151-161

Author(s):

Iza Desperak ◽

Martyna Krogulec

Keyword(s):

Transition Period ◽

Women's Work ◽

Women’S Work ◽

First Results ◽

History Of ◽

1960S And 1970S ◽

The 1960S ◽

New Research ◽

The University ◽

New Phenomena

The article intends to sketch history of sociology of women’s work, and focuses on transition between the Polish People’s Republic and contemporary Poland. It describes main patterns of development of study on women at work, with its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, than marginalization of this subject, and its revival in transition period. The analysis is supported by the first results of Łódź multidisciplinary research project aiming to describe history of women’s work and research on it conducted by the University of Łódź and the Institute of Occupational Medicine. It also includes new research conducted by historians, and its multidisciplinary character is supported by some non-academic participants of the project, including museums and local herstory movement. Łódź has been chosen for its long tradition of feminization of workforce, and great bulk of research on working women, both in the past and during transition period, including new phenomena of unemployment, then feminization of poverty and precarious character of today’s work affecting also women.

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The Division of Matrimonial Property in Tanzania

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x00054689 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 28 (3) ◽

pp. 521-526 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rose Mtengeti-Migiro

Keyword(s):

Working Hours ◽

Women's Work ◽

Economic Equality ◽

Women’S Work ◽

The Family ◽

Long Time ◽

State Of Affairs

For a long time, women's work has not been valued very highly, mainly because of the belief in many cultures that whatever is undertaken in the house is a natural duty and/or act of love for the husband and the family. Indeed, in many parts of subsistence Africa, the heavy duties performed by women in preparing, planting, weeding, and harvesting crops are regarded as ‘domestic’ commitments and hence not serious labour. This situation can hardly be said to be characteristic of only ‘non-developed’ societies, in which patriarchal attitudes are still dominant, since according to a 1985 study, although women make up more than half of the world's population and do two-thirds of the world's working hours, they receive only one-hundredth of the worl'ds property. This state of affairs, however, is now changing, because as women everywhere unite in order to achieve legal, social, and economic equality, the value attached to their work naturally increases.

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A Historical View of Studies of Women’s Work

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) ◽

10.1007/s10606-020-09387-9 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ellen Balka ◽

Ina Wagner

Keyword(s):

Labour Market ◽

Women's Health ◽

Research Methods ◽

Observational Studies ◽

Historical Perspective ◽

Women's Work ◽

Main Motivation ◽

Women’S Work ◽

Historical View ◽

The 1960S

AbstractThis paper places observational studies of women’s work in historical perspective. We present some of the very early studies (carried out in the period from 1900 to 1930), as well as several examples of fieldwork-based studies of women’s work, undertaken from different perspectives and in varied locations between the 1960s and the mid 1990s. We outline and discuss several areas of thought which have influenced studies of women’s work - the automation debate; the focus on the skills women need in their work; labour market segregation; women’s health; and technology and the redesign of work – and the research methods they used. Our main motivation in this paper is threefold: to demonstrate how fieldwork based studies which have focussed on women’s work have attempted to locate women’s work in a larger context that addresses its visibility and value; to provide a thematic historiography of studies of women’s work, thereby also demonstrating the value of an historical perspective, and a means through which to link it to contemporary themes; and to increase awareness of varied methodological perspectives on how to study work.

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