From Servitude to Service: Historical continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor

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From Servitude to ServiceHistorical
continuities in the Racial Division of Paid
Reproductive Labor

• Facilitated by
• Erica Cochran

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What is the author trying to argue?

• Women tend to be discussed in comparison to men,
  not women amongst women
• In this article specifically women with power
  over women with out
• Racial inequalities even exist between the
  minority races.

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How does the author explain the argument?

• Through a historical look at both women in the
  workforce and racial segregation of the jobs
  within the workforce
• Segregation of jobs according to race and
  geographical location
• South (African Americans),
• West (Asians)
• South west (Mexicans/Chicanas)

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Contradictory truths

• The labor for some races was harder than the
  labor for other races.
• Very contradictory because women's work was dirty
  work but white women were excluded from doing
  it.
• White women were expected to be social and
  proper.
• Domestics were expected to be maternal to there
  employers children
• They were not seen as mothers to their own
  children.

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Who is the norm in this article?

• Middle class white women

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Strengths of the article

• Tracing how race and gender have been fashioned
  in one area of womens work helps us understand
  them as socially constructed
• By understanding that they are interlocking and
  socially constructed helps strategize for change

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• If race and gender are socially constructed
  then they must arise at specific moments in a
  particular circumstance and change as these
  circumstances change

Do they in this article?
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Two fundamental elements in the construction of
racial and ethnic womanhood

• Inherent traits that suited women for service
• African American women Domestics
• Mexicans/Chicanas Laundresses
• Asians Servants based on who their husband or
  father worked for.

• The denial of women's identities as wives and
  mothers

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Weaknesses of the article

• Is there a solution?
• Are white women supporters because of short term
  interest
• Gains of one group are still the priorities
  because of gains of another group require a
  corresponding loss of advantage and privilege for
  others

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In other words

• What is more important?
• The success of women as a collective group
• Status of women as a collective group
• or individual success of one race as the dominant
  group
• Its a very problematic question

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