Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Maternity Leave: Taking Sex Differences Into Account, Nancy E. Dowd
Maternity Leave: Taking Sex Differences Into Account, Nancy E. Dowd
Nancy Dowd
This Article focuses on restructuring the workplace in the context of maternity leave. Although most women are no longer, and, indeed, generally cannot be required to take maternity leave, many are not guaranteed leave or may be provided only with inadequate leave. A minority of states have addressed this problem by enacting statutes requiring that all employers provide job-protected maternity leave. Two of the statutes, the California and Montana provisions, have been challenged as discriminatory under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and the Supreme Court has recently …
Fatherhood And Equality: Reconfiguring Masculinities, Nancy E. Dowd
Fatherhood And Equality: Reconfiguring Masculinities, Nancy E. Dowd
Nancy Dowd
In this article, Professor Dowd sets out the asymmetric pattern of men’s caretaking as compared to women’s caretaking, and raises the issue of why greater equality has not been achieved in care as women’s participation in the workforce has increased. She argues that not only is this linked to the lack of institutional and structural supports for parenthood, which leads to gendered outcomes in who does care, but in addition, and perhaps most importantly, the barrier to care is cultural, linked to masculinities norms. Dowd sets out the barriers to care linked to masculinities and suggests a further analysis linked …
Bringing The Margin To The Center: Comprehensive Strategies For Work/Family Policies, Nancy E. Dowd
Bringing The Margin To The Center: Comprehensive Strategies For Work/Family Policies, Nancy E. Dowd
Nancy Dowd
The ultimate goal of work/family policy has always seemed deceptively clear: to provide institutional and cultural support to permit a healthy balance between family and work. An implicit assumption of that goal is that it would be achieved without undermining principles of equality. Indeed, the assumed result of work/family balance is that it would help achieve equality: families would be treated equally, caregivers would be supported equally, and children and family members would receive necessary and important care equally. It has long been recognized that work/family balance is especially critical to gender equality. Equality principles require that work/family policy and …
Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy Dowd
Race, Gender, And Work/Family Policy, Nancy Dowd
Nancy Dowd
Family leave is not an end in itself, but rather is part of a much bigger picture: work/family policy. The goal of work/family policy is to achieve a good society by supporting families. Ideally, families enable children to develop to their fullest capacity and to contribute to their communities and society. Public rhetoric in the United States has always strongly supported families. Our policies, however, have not. In the area of work/family policy, the United States continues to lag behind every other advanced industrialized country, as well as many developing countries, in the degree to which we provide affirmative support …
Boys, Masculinities And Juvenile Justice, Nancy E. Dowd
Boys, Masculinities And Juvenile Justice, Nancy E. Dowd
Nancy Dowd
Culture and tradition are part of the macrosystem of ideas and beliefs that have a dramatic effect on children and families. One aspect of culture is gender beliefs, values and roles. Feminist analysis has explored the incorporation of gender in a wide range of structures, challenging gender bias and advocating reform of a range of laws, structural systems, and social practices. Masculinities analysis, an outgrowth of feminist analysis that focuses on men as gendered subjects, provides a perspective to consider those areas in which men are disproportionately present either in positions of power and privilege, or in positions of disadvantage. …
Asking The Man Question: Masculinities Analysis And Feminist Theory, Nancy E. Dowd
Asking The Man Question: Masculinities Analysis And Feminist Theory, Nancy E. Dowd
Nancy Dowd
Masculinities scholarship is an essential piece of feminist analysis and of critical equality analysis. It requires that we "ask the man question" to further unravel inequalities. This symposium marks one of several movements toward examining and considering what masculinities scholarship can offer. In this introduction, I suggest a framework of masculinities analysis and describe its relationship to feminist theory. First, I consider why we should ask the "man question," and how we should ask it. Second, I explore how masculinities analysis might be useful in our examination of the "man question." Masculinities work can be used to understand more clearly …
Unbending Gender: Why Family And Work Conflict And What To Do About It (Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?), Nancy Dowd, Adrienne Davis, Marion Crain, Bonnie Dill, Catherine Ross, Joan Williams
Unbending Gender: Why Family And Work Conflict And What To Do About It (Panel Two: Who's Minding The Baby?), Nancy Dowd, Adrienne Davis, Marion Crain, Bonnie Dill, Catherine Ross, Joan Williams
Nancy Dowd
A central characteristic of our current gender arrangements is that they pit ideal worker women against marginalized caregiver women in a series of patterned conflicts I call gender wars. One version of these are the mommy wars that we see often covered in the press between employed mothers and mothers at home. Employed mothers at times participate in the belittlement commonly felt by homemakers. Also mothers at home, I think, at times participate in the guilt-tripping that's often felt by mothers who are employed. These gender wars are a central but little understood characteristic of the gender system that grew …