Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

The Psychology Of "Othering" And The Fears Of Feminizing The Fire Services Through Gender Inclusiveness, Rodger E. Broome Phd

Rodger E. Broome

Editor’s Note: In searching for answers for the way things are – you sometimes have to look at things from a different viewpoint. iWomen thought that Dr. Broome has an interesting perspective as he does consider whether we contribute to our (all women in the fire service) own obstacles by not promoting

Gender Inequality And Growth: The Case Of Rich Vs. Poor Countries, Mohammad Amin, Veselin Kuntchev

Mohammad Amin

Using cross-section data for over 120 countries, we explore the relationship between gender inequality and economic growth. We contribute to the existing literature in two important ways. First, we use a broad measure of gender inequality that goes well beyond gender inequality in education, the focus of most existing studies. Second, we allow for heterogeneity in the growth and gender inequality relationship across low and high-income countries. Our results confirm that greater gender inequality is associated with lower growth. However, this negative relationship holds among the low-income countries but not among high-income countries. Our findings have important implications for the …

Overexposed: Issues Of Public Gender Imaging, Pamela K. Morris

Pamela K. Morris

Make no mistake—it is popularity that makes pop culture important. And it is the powerful visual imagery of advertisements that helps define the largely artificial construction we call gender. Sex-role stereotyping and gender representations are typically studied in content analyses of television and magazine advertisements. Less common are investigations into outdoor advertising, a medium that is ubiquitous and the most democratic—everyone has equal access to visuals. This essay calls attention to and offers insights on advertisements in our outdoor visual space, focusing on gender representations. Capturing and analyzing these ephemeral images can show how they influence how we feel, think, …

Does Democracy Explain Gender Differentials In Education?, Arusha V. Cooray

Arusha Cooray

This study shows that despite a strong empirical association between gender differentials in enrolment ratios and democracy, that democracy alone does not explain gender differentials in education in Africa and Asia. The results indicate that income, employment in agriculture, religious heterogeneity and colonialism also help explain the under-representation of girls in education in these regions. Countries in which the duration of suffrage has been longer tend to perform better on average in terms of gender equality in education.

Women In Ict: Guidelines For Evaluating Intervention Programmes, Annemieke Craig, Julie Fisher, Linda Dawson

Associate Professor Linda Dawson

Many intervention programmes to increase the number of women in theInformation and Communications Technology (ICT) profession have been implemented over the last twenty years. Detailed evaluations help us to determine the effectiveness of these programmes yet few comprehensive evaluations appear in the literature.The research reported here describes an investigation of the evaluation of the intervention programmes focusing on increasing the enrolment and retention of females in ICT in Australia. This paper describes an empirical study which explores how evaluation has been and might be conducted and concludes with guidelines for evaluation for those developing programmes for increasing the participation of …

Single-Sex Schools, Student Achievement, And Course Selection: Evidence From Rule-Based Student Assignments In Trinidad And Tobago, C. Kirabo Jackson

C. Kirabo Jackson

Existing studies on single-sex schooling suffer from biases because students who attend single-sex schools differ in unmeasured ways from those who do not. In Trinidad and Tobago students are assigned to secondary schools based on an algorithm allowing one to address self-selection bias and estimate the causal effect of attending a single-sex school versus a similar coeducational school. While students (particularly females) with strong expressed preferences for single-sex schools benefit, most students perform no better at single-sex schools. Girls at single-sex-schools take fewer sciences courses and more traditionally female subjects.

Psychosocial Health Of Black Sexually Marginalized Men, Louis Graham

Louis F Graham

There is a paucity of research on the psychosocial health of black sexually marginalized men. The little research that exists suggests that black sexually marginalized men are disproportionately burdened by mental health problems and disorders, the most severe of which are depression, anxiety, and suicidality. A number of theoretical models have been conceptualized to explain health outcomes among both ethnic and sexual minorities, the most comprehensive of which include three primary pathways. The minority stress model, which has been used with ethnic and racial minorities as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities, posits that minorities who face oppression from …

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

Why Are Returns To Education Higher For Women Than For Men In Urban China?, Emily C. Hannum, Zhang Yuping, Wang Meiyan

Emily C. Hannum

It is well established that women’s returns to education are higher than men’s in urban China. We argue that this finding, while accurate, is misleading due to its individualist perspective. The incomes to which most working-age women and men have access include not only own income, but spouse income. Further, decisions about participation and investment in the labor force, both consequential for income trajectories, are likely made with partner income and potential income in mind. To our knowledge, no research in China has explored the returns to education enjoyed via spouse income, or the implications of pooling couple income, for …

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections Of Race And Class For Women In Academia -- Introduction, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. One of the topics addressed is the importance of forging supportive networks to transform the workplace and create a more hospitable environment for traditionally subordinated groups. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and …

Self-Cutting And Suicidal Ideation Among Adolescents: Gender Differences In The Causes And Correlates Of Self-Injury, Nicholas W. Bakken, Whitney Decamp

Whitney DeCamp