Introduction to Womens Studies

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Introduction to Womens Studies

• WS 1824
• Thursday, September 25, 2008
• Neal King

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Guide to Hiring Women
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occupational segregation

• Informal processes steer girls and women away
  from high-status toward lower-status jobs (e.g.,
  stereotypes about math scores, and social
  networking in college).
• Consequences
• lower wages/salaries and pensions
• low status treatment
• harassment/exclusion on mens turf
• deference

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the wage gap
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emotion/body service work

• Victorian Marital Bargains division of labor
• breadwinning, protection, leadership
• household services, care, deference
• Pink collar trades personal care, customer
  service/care, domestic service
• Womens ways of making their livings shape their
  views of womens abilities.
• Consider, for example the link between homemaker
  status and pro-life politics.

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emotion/body service work

• Pink collar trades personal care, customer
  service/care, domestic service involve regular
  displays of skills supposed to come naturally.
• Maids tend to have to fight for occupational
  respect in face of employers wishes to treat
  them as conquered people or children.
• Consequences include intense versions of those of
  occupational segregation.

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globalization

• Globalization developed from colonial extraction
  of resources from conquered nations.
• Colonial rule left 3rd world societies in
  poverty, to provide services and goods to
  advanced capitalist nations.
• Today, they provide low-wage labor to recently
  relocated factories.
• This keeps most resources moving back to
  capitalist nations, though developing governments
  make money as well.

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globalization

• Globalization refers to the immigration, banking,
  and domestic-development policies that help
  governments and companies do this.
• Peasant families in colonized societies lose
  lands to factory construction, and must either
  work at the factories or leave town.
• Welcoming industries include sex tourism and
  domestic work in colonizer nations.
• Those factory- and service-workers make very
  little of the money floating around.

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globalization in the U.S.

• Changes here include economic policies that make
  poverty tenacious
• Closing/moving of factories
• Welfare reform
• Lowering of wages
• Diminishment of benefits to employees
• Denials of services/protections to immigrants
• Outcome Service-working immigrants can become
  trapped in their jobs (and serve the descendents
  of their ancestors colonizers).

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live-in maids

• live far from own families (unable to do their
  own reproductive work)
• care for wealthy families for little money
• often represent conquered people
• send money home to their own families
• go ignored by native labor unions
• lack access to most government services and
  protections, and thus
• lack civil rights/workers rights.

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womens professional status

• In this context, women tend to band together to
  fight for professional recognition and status.
• The movement of women into professional turf, and
  the political organizing for their rights is
• feminism, the political expression of women who
  seek occupational recognition and relevant legal
  rights.

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Introduction to Womens Studies

• WS 1824
• Thursday, September 25, 2008
• Neal King