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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Introduction To United Apart: Gender And The Rise Of Craft Unionism, Ileen A. Devault Oct 2012

Introduction To United Apart: Gender And The Rise Of Craft Unionism, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] The American Federation of Labor entered the twentieth century ensconced as the primary vehicle for the nation's organized workers. As such, the attitudes of the AFL toward women workers provided the basis for virtually all later attempts at organizing women. The cross-gender strikes that are the basis of this book illustrate both the ways in which men and women would move forward united and the ways in which they would remain apart. That both females and males could at times feel drawn together and at other times feel driven apart, and carry both those feelings into their actions and …


Narratives Serially Constructed And Lived: Ethnicity In Cross-Gender Strikes 1887-1903, Ileen A. Devault Oct 2012

Narratives Serially Constructed And Lived: Ethnicity In Cross-Gender Strikes 1887-1903, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] The strikes narrated in this paper have illustrated different ways in which individuals' recognition of ethnic identity could interact with their recognition of gender and class identities. In each strike workers' identities developed along with the serial narrative of the particular strike situation. The use of Sartre's concept of the series helps us think about the many possible variations of class, ethnicity, and gender. Though Sartre planned to use his concept of series as a way to examine peoples' class identities, my employment of the concept broadens it to include other categories of identification as well. Using the concept …


White Collar/Blue Collar, Ileen A. Devault Oct 2012

White Collar/Blue Collar, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] Examining the determinants of class for women and the ways men experienced gender will help clarify some of the ambiguous status of the clerical sector, but it will still not answer all of our questions. To understand the place of clerical work in the class structure, we need to examine more than just clerical work itself. A major argument of this book is that understanding the impact of clerical work on overall social stratification requires understanding stratification within the manual working class as well. The status of clerical work would perhaps be much clearer in contrast to that of …


‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues, Ileen A. Devault Oct 2012

‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

This essay draws upon a larger study of over forty strikes which involved both male and female strikers in the United States between the years 1887 and 1903. Here the focus of analysis is on those strikes which began with demands raised by women workers. The essay examines the nature of women workers’ demands, the ways in which cooperation with male co-workers altered those demands, and the affect that formal union involvement had on women strikers and their strike demands. Because the original set of case studies examines strikes across the United States, the strikes explored here also highlight a …


"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault Oct 2012

"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] It seems redundant (but is unfortunately not unnecessary) to say that this response emphasizes the gendered nature of the famed "manliness" of turn-of-the-century skilled workers. Davis Montgomery has described how "the workers' code celebrated individual self-assertion, but for the collective good, rather than for self-advancement." The process by which these skilled workers chose their jobs suggests an intermediate step: between the "collective good" of the union and the "self-advancement' of the individual stood the smaller collective unit of the male-headed household. The sense of what it meant to "be a man" thus not only holds the potential of explicating …


Empirical Consequences Of Comparable Worth, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

Empirical Consequences Of Comparable Worth, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] To help focus subsequent debate, this paper presents a nontechnical survey of the small but growing empirical literature by economists on the consequences of comparable worth. I discuss in turn studies of the consequences of comparable worth on the male-female earnings gap, of its potential to affect adversely the employment of women, of its effects on the labor supply and occupational mobility of women, and of its effects on women and their families as a group. The survey is critical in nature and points to areas in which research is needed.


[Review Of The Book Discrimination In Labor Markets], Ronald G. Ehrenberg Aug 2012

[Review Of The Book Discrimination In Labor Markets], Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In sum, I consider Discrimination in Labor Markets a fine volume. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the analysis of labor-market discrimination should seriously contemplate purchasing it. The relatively nontechnical nature of the papers will appeal to a wide range of readers, and the book should quickly find its way onto reading lists for undergraduate and graduate courses that discuss the economics of discrimination.


Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith Aug 2012

Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] At the theoretical level, we conclude that the case for comparable worth rests on the argument that the current distribution of female employees is based on discriminatory barriers which existing legislation have not broken down. If this argument is valid, the desirability of comparable worth depends upon one's perceptions of how the benefits it provides contrasts with the efficiency losses it induces. Given the trade-offs involved, ultimately one's position on comparable worth must depend on value judgments.


Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments And Female Employment In The State And Local Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith Aug 2012

Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments And Female Employment In The State And Local Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper simulates the likely effects of a comparable-worth wage-adjustment policy in the state and local sector on female employment in the sector. The simulation is based on estimates of within-occupation male/female substitution and across-occupation occupational employment substitution that we obtain using data from the 1980 Census of Population.


Do Teachers’ Race, Gender, And Ethnicity Matter? Evidence From The National Education Longitudinal Study Of 1988, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel D. Goldhaber, Dominic J. Brewer Jul 2012

Do Teachers’ Race, Gender, And Ethnicity Matter? Evidence From The National Education Longitudinal Study Of 1988, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel D. Goldhaber, Dominic J. Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), the authors find that the match between teachers' race, gender, and ethnicity and those of their students had little association with how much the students learned, but in several instances it seems to have been a significant determinant of teachers' subjective evaluations of their students. For example, test scores of white female students in mathematics and science did not increase more rapidly when the teacher was a white woman than when the teacher was a white man, but white female teachers evaluated their white female students more highly than …


Informality And Labor Market Dynamics During Economic Downturns: Evidence From Egypt, Rania Roushdy, May Gadallah Jan 2012

Informality And Labor Market Dynamics During Economic Downturns: Evidence From Egypt, Rania Roushdy, May Gadallah

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This working paper investigates the evolution of the Egyptian labor market during the world financial crisis period. There has been a mild decline in unemployment, combined with a slight increase in both labor force participation and employment to population ratio. Some subgroups of workers have been more vulnerable than others during the crisis period. The results of this paper concur with the historical experience, which suggests that young, old, unskilled and female workers are more likely to bear the brunt of an economic downturn.