On Gender, Labor, and Inequality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

The author's groundbreaking research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. This book presents four decades of the author's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define. The book's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: the interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on the author's pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. The book's second half turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. The book concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
The 2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Work Family

This book examines the historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the U.S. labor market, as well as efforts to challenge those inequalities. Drawing on four decades of research that dates back to the 1970s, it investigates the dynamics of job segregation by sex—the linchpin of gender inequality. It considers the relationship between women workers and labor unions and the American labor movement more generally. It also discusses union responses to workforce feminization, along with the sexual division of labor in the automobile industry during World War II. After explaining how the growing class inequality among women has contributed to employment growth in paid domestic labor and assessing these growing class inequalities in the context of work–family policy, the book concludes with an analysis of class-based disparities among women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by comparing the gender dynamics of the Great Depression of the 1930s and those of the Great Recession associated with the 2008 financial crisis.

Women’s Work and Economic Crisis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Milkman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
Sex Typing ◽  
Economic Role ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the impact of the 1930s economic crisis on women workers, focusing on their experience during the Great Depression and World War II while also reflecting on the 1970s. It first considers women's unemployment and unpaid work in the Great Depression, noting how the sex-typing of occupations created an inflexibility in the structure of the labor market that prevented the expulsion of women from it. It then evaluates the “reserve army” theory by analyzing how women's economic role in the family was affected by the economic crisis of the 1930s, suggesting that it was the work of women in the home, rather than their labor market participation, that was forced to “take up the slack” in the economy during this period of contraction. The chapter demonstrates that job segregation by gender persists even during major economic upheavals like depressions and world war. It also refutes the reserve army theory by showing that women were less likely to suffer unemployment than men during the Great Depression.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

scholarly journals The Development and Historic Use of Habitat Structures in Channel Restoration in the United States: The Grand Experiment in Fisheries Management

2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Thompson ◽  
Gregory N. Stull
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fish Populations ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Government ◽  
Conservation Projects ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The use of instream structures to modify aquatic habitat has a long history in the United States. Pioneering work by wealthy landowners in the Catskills region of New York produced a range of designs in the decades preceding the Great Depression in an effort to replenish fish populations depleted from overfishing. The scientific evaluation of structures began in 1930. Within two years, a Michigan research team claimed improved fish populations. Cheap labor and government-sponsored conservation projects spearheaded by the Civilian Conservation Corps allowed the widespread adoption of the techniques in the 1930s, before adequate testing of the long-term impact of the devices. The start of World War II temporarily ended the government conservation efforts and prevented the continued evaluation of structures. During the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, designs of instream structures remained essentially unchanged. Meanwhile, the small number of evaluations of the impact of the structures often were flawed. The continued use of early designs of instream structures helped instill a false belief that instream structures were proven to be a benefit to fish. Even modern use of instream structures continues to rely on the basic blueprints developed in the Catskills, despite documented problems with the use of these designs.

World War II Fiscal Policies and the End of the Great Depression

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Vernon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
United States Economy

The United States economy completed its recovery from the Great Depression in 1942, restoring full-employment output in that year after 12 years of below-full-employment performance. Fiscal policies were not the most important factor in the 1933 through 1940 phase of the recovery, but they became the most important factor after 1940, when the recovery was less than half-complete. World War II fiscal policies were, then, instrumental in the overall restoration of full-employment performance.

scholarly journals Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses—and Misuses—of History

2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per H. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Successful Search ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Barry Eichengreen's new bookHall of Mirrorsis a detailed, excellent, and somewhat pessimistic comparison of the two most serious financial crises ever—their causes, development, and consequences. Readers well versed in the comprehensive literature on the Great Depression and the Great Recession in the United States and Europe will not find much information inHall of Mirrorsthat is completely new, but most others will. Whatisnew is the comparative approach: the detailed and analytically successful search for similarities and differences between the Great Depression and the Great Recession.

The End of the Project, 1939–1940

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanís Enciso Fernando Saúl ◽  
Russ Davidson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

This chapter concludes Enciso’s exploration of the Mexican government’s attempts to repatriate its citizens, as well as its 1939 decision to end its official plan for organized repatriation. This chapter also explores how the official end of the repatriation plan impacted immigration and deportation measures in the U.S., as well as how the threat of a mass deportation once again spurred the Cardenas administration to announce plans to repatriate 1,000 Mexican nationals each month. Chapter 8 also notes the impact that the United States’ war effort had on migration and repatriation levels, as well as concludes that the Mexican government’s struggle to successfully repatriate its citizens during the Great Depression has greatly impacted the attitude and policies of both Mexico and the U.S. concerning immigration today.

The Great Depression

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Alan Brinkley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most catastrophic economic crisis of modern times. Although it began in the United States, it swept quickly through most of the industrial world and created untold misery to millions of people. It also created political and social instability and contributed significantly to the coming of World War II. Although the Depression has received enormous attention from historians, economists, and many others, there is still no consensus on the two major questions that the crisis raises.

Conclusion—Where Did We Go Wrong?

2021 ◽  
pp. 527-560
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Masses

Having finished our history of prohibitionism, Chapter 18 asks: Where did our historical understandings go wrong? The chapter begins with the autumn years of Pussyfoot Johnson during the Great Depression, when prohibitionists had been thoroughly discredited. With the rise of Hayekian neoliberalism after World War II in the United States, any infringement on individual economic rights became understood as a necessary infringement on political rights too—which has made it difficult for contemporary historians to understand prohibitionism. In the 1950s and 1960s, Richard Hofstadter and Joseph Gusfield cast prohibition as solely a moral, religious issue, rather than a political or economic one, motivated by equal parts of “Marx, Jefferson and Jesus.” Ultimately, prohibitionism was a transnational normative shift about the inappropriateness of benefiting from addiction and misery of the masses, and an attempt to put the welfare of society ahead of the needs of the state.

scholarly journals Did the Great Recession increase suicides in the USA? Evidence from an Interrupted Time Series analysis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Harper
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Interrupted Time Series ◽  
The United States ◽  
Interrupted Time Series Analysis ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Suicide Rates ◽  
The Usa ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

PurposeResearch suggests that the Great Recession of 2007–2009 led to nearly 5000 excess suicides in the United States. However, prior work has not accounted for seasonal patterning and unique suicide trends by age and gender.MethodsWe calculated monthly suicide rates from 1999 to 2013 for men and women aged 15 and above. Suicide rates before the Great Recession were used to predict the rate during and after the Great Recession. Death rates for each age-gender group were modeled using Poisson regression with robust variance, accounting for seasonal and nonlinear suicide trajectories.ResultsThere were 56,658 suicide deaths during the Great Recession. Age- and gender-specific suicide trends before the recession demonstrated clear seasonal and nonlinear trajectories. Our models predicted 57,140 expected suicide deaths, leading to 482 fewer observed than expected suicides (95% confidence interval −2079, 943).ConclusionsWe found little evidence to suggest that the Great Recession interrupted existing trajectories of suicide rates. Suicide rates were already increasing before the Great Recession for middle-aged men and women. Future studies estimating the impact of recessions on suicide should account for the diverse and unique suicide trajectories of different social groups.

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