What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do

What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do
Author: Stephanie J. Shaw
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2010-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226751309

Stephanie J. Shaw takes us into the inner world of American black professional women during the Jim Crow era. This is a story of struggle and empowerment, of the strength of a group of women who worked against daunting odds to improve the world for themselves and their people. Shaw's remarkable research into the lives of social workers, librarians, nurses, and teachers from the 1870s through the 1950s allows us to hear these women's voices for the first time. The women tell us, in their own words, about their families, their values, their expectations. We learn of the forces and factors that made them exceptional, and of the choices and commitments that made them leaders in their communities. What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do brings to life a world in which African-American families, communities, and schools worked to encourage the self-confidence, individual initiative, and social responsibility of girls. Shaw shows us how, in a society that denied black women full professional status, these girls embraced and in turn defined an ideal of "socially responsible individualism" that balanced private and public sphere responsibilities. A collective portrait of character shaped in the toughest circumstances, this book is more than a study of the socialization of these women as children and the organization of their work as adults. It is also a study of leadership—of how African American communities gave their daughters the power to succeed in and change a hostile world.

The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East

The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East
Author: Brigitte Lion
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2016-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614519978

Economic history is well documented in Assyriology, thanks to the preservation of dozens of thousands of clay tablets recording administrative operations, contracts and acts dealing with family law. Despite these voluminous sources, the topic of work and the contribution of women have rarely been addressed. This book examines occupations involving women over the course of three millennia of Near Eastern history. It presents the various aspects of women as economic agents inside and outside of the family structure. Inside the family, women were the main actors in the production of goods necessary for everyday life. In some instances, their activities exceeded the simple needs of the household and were integrated within the production of large organizations or commercial channels. The contributions presented in this volume are representative enough to address issues in various domains: social, economic, religious, etc., from varied points of view: archaeological, historical, sociological, anthropological, and with a gender perspective. This book will be a useful tool for historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and graduate students interested in the economy of the ancient Near East and in women and gender studies.

Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France

Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France
Author: M. Lyons
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2001-07-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230287808

In the nineteenth century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower-class and female readers frightened liberals, Catholics and republicans alike. The study focuses on workers, women and peasants, and the ways in which their reading was constructed as a social and political problem, to analyse the fear of reading in nineteenth century France. The author presents a series of case-studies of actual readers, to examine their choices and their practices, and to evaluate how far they responded to (or subverted) attempts at cultural domination.

A Class by Herself

A Class by Herself
Author: Nancy Woloch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2017-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691176167

A Class by Herself explores the historical role and influence of protective legislation for American women workers, both as a step toward modern labor standards and as a barrier to equal rights. Spanning the twentieth century, the book tracks the rise and fall of women-only state protective laws—such as maximum hour laws, minimum wage laws, and night work laws—from their roots in progressive reform through the passage of New Deal labor law to the feminist attack on single-sex protective laws in the 1960s and 1970s. Nancy Woloch considers the network of institutions that promoted women-only protective laws, such as the National Consumers' League and the federal Women's Bureau; the global context in which the laws arose; the challenges that proponents faced; the rationales they espoused; the opposition that evolved; the impact of protective laws in ever-changing circumstances; and their dismantling in the wake of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Above all, Woloch examines the constitutional conversation that the laws provoked—the debates that arose in the courts and in the women's movement. Protective laws set precedents that led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and to current labor law; they also sustained a tradition of gendered law that abridged citizenship and impeded equality for much of the century. Drawing on decades of scholarship, institutional and legal records, and personal accounts, A Class by Herself sets forth a new narrative about the tensions inherent in women-only protective labor laws and their consequences.

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1995-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0393285588

"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.

Becoming Women/Becoming Workers

Becoming Women/Becoming Workers
Author: Catherine Raissiguier
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1994-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780791420850

This book traces the experiences of young French and Algerian women students in a Parisian vocational school--how they negotiate their class, gender, and ethnic/racial identities in relation to school, family, romance, and future work in a changing and unpromising economy. Drawn from classroom observations and personal interviews, the book provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the complex network of cultural and historical discourses, limitations, and expectations that form the students' present lives and future outlook. The author links the micro and macro levels of her analysis by grounding her study in the nature of the French school, the discursive boundaries of French society, and the volatile French economy. The book contributes to an overall understanding of the processes of identity formation; class, race/ethnicity, and gender intersections; and women's responses to schooling and education.

What We Owe Each Other

What We Owe Each Other
Author: Minouche Shafik
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 069120764X

From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

Gendered Worlds

Gendered Worlds
Author: Judy Root Aulette
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Feminist theory
ISBN: 9780199774043

"In Gendered Worlds, Second Edition, authors Judy Root Aulette and Judith Wittner use the sociological imagination to explore gender relations throughout the world. They look at how concrete forms of gender, race, class, and sexual inequality operate transnationally; examine the impact of globalization on local and everyday life experiences; and identify how local actors re-imagine social possibilities, resist injustice, and work toward change. Integrating theory with empirical studies that are of particular interest to college students--including research on violence, sports, and sexuality--the authors make gender concepts genuinely interesting and accessible. They also demonstrate how students can think critically about gender, both within and beyond the classroom. Incorporating a broad range of pedagogical features, including boxed sections and end-of-chapter sections that focus on social movements, Gendered Worlds, Second Edition, is ideal for courses in sociology of gender, sociology of sex roles, and gender studies. New to this Edition * A new concluding chapter, "Gender and Globalization," and an expanded Chapter 1 * A completely rewritten Chapter 4 featuring the most current research on gender and sexuality, particularly the gendered character of heterosexuality and heterosexual relationships * A reconceptualized Chapter 9 exploring illness as a function of a global division of labor by race, ethnicity, gender, and nation * More research on gender outside of the United States in every chapter * Additional coverage of race, intersectionality, masculinity, and transgender issues"--