Women, Labor, and the Transnational

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Boyce Davies
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Domestic Labor ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on Caribbean domestic labor. It argues that the economics of slavery and colonialism that accompanied the rise of European modernity, created the conditions for contemporary American economic globalization, which serve as the larger backdrop for Caribbean women's labor in migration. The sexual division of labor in feminist political economy assumes the control of women's time and work as normal. Additionally, a segmented pattern of labor based on gender and class creates assumptions about the value and availability of certain women's work. In particular, the labor of women of color is assigned lower value, while it is multiply extracted and linked, therefore precisely, to that long history of imperialist exploitation that began in enslavement to plantation economies.

Organizing the Sexual Division of Labor

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
American Federation Of Labor ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Job Segregation ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor

This chapter examines the effects of union organization on women workers and sexual division of labor, focusing on the 1930s and 1940s along with earlier developments in U.S. women's labor history. It draws on feminist scholarship that argued that labor unions' efforts to exclude women from membership had helped to consolidate patterns of job segregation by gender in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After reviewing theories of occupational segregation by sex, especially with regards to the role of unions in the formation of labor-market boundaries between “women's work” and “men's work,” the chapter discusses the ways that the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (initially called Committe for Industrial Organization) contributed to the sexual division of labor. It argues that industrial unions had the opportunity to challenge job segregation by sex during the 1930s and 1940s, but instead helped consolidate it. In both periods, the labor movement showed litte interest in recruiting women into its ranks.

Redefining “Women’s Work”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Auto Workers ◽  
Sexual Division ◽  
Women’S Work ◽  
Job Segregation ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor

This chapter examines the sexual division of labor in the automobile industry during World War II to find out whether job segregation by gender had been dismantled during the war. It begins with a discussion of “women's work” in the auto industry in the prewar period and goes on to explore how the idiom of sex-typing of occupations was implemented and readjusted in the face of a dramatic change in the economic constraints on the sexual division of labor, along with the ensuing political struggles over the redefinition of the boundaries between “women's work” and “men's work.” It then considers the ambiguity and labor–management conflict over “women's work,” the various exclusionary tactics employed by male auto workers against women, and the disputes over the question of equal pay in the industry during the war. It also discusses the process through which war factories reproduced new patterns of job segregation by sex in the industry, instead of eliminating it.

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