Women's History Resources: Work

Spanning the years from 1600 to the present, selections from diaries, popular magazines, historical works, oral histories, letters, songs, poetry, and fiction show women's creativity in supporting themselves, their families, and organizations or associations.

What difference does a written constitution make to public policy? How have women workers fared in a nation bound by constitutional principles, compared with those not covered by formal, written guarantees of fair procedure or equitable outcome? To investigate these questions, Vivien Hart traces the evolution of minimum wage policies in the United States and Britain from their common origins in women's politics around 1900 to their divergent outcomes in our day.

Offering fresh insights into the history of labor policy, the New Deal, feminism, and southern politics, Landon Storrs examines the New Deal era of the National Consumers' League, one of the most influential reform organizations of the early twentieth century. Founded in 1899 by affluent women concerned about the exploitation of women wage earners, the National Consumers' League used a strategy of "ethical consumption" to spark a successful movement for state laws to reduce hours and establish minimum wages for women.

Martin and Jurik provide a clear body of evidence illuminating the gendered nature of criminal justice occupations. Of the multitude of feminist works on this topic, this is one of the best analyses available. Doing Justice, Doing Gender: Women in Legal and Criminal Justice Occupations is a highly readable, sociologically grounded analysis of women working in traditionally male dominant justice occupations of law, policing, and corrections.

In 1964, as part of its landmark Civil Rights Act, Congress outlawed workplace discrimination on the basis of such personal attributes as sex, race, and religion. This provision, known as Title VII, laid a new legal foundation for women's rights at work. Though President Kennedy and other lawmakers expressed high hopes for Title VII, early attempts to enforce it were inconsistent. In the absence of a consensus definition of sex equality in the law or society, Title VII's practical meaning was far from certain. The first history to foreground Title VII's sex provision, Equality on Trial examines how the law's initial promise inspired a generation of Americans to dispatch expansive notions of sex equality.

A social transformation of profound proportions has been unfolding over the second half of the twentieth century as women have turned from household work to wages as the key source of their livelihood. This timely study, a broad comparative analysis of African American women's and white women's changing relationships to home and work over the past forty years, at last provides a wide-ranging overview of how this shift is influencing the shape of families and the American economy.

Evicted meets Nickel and Dimed in Stephanie Land's memoir about working as a maid, a beautiful and gritty exploration of poverty in America.

A Mouthful of Rivets is the oral history of the women who took part in World War II on the homefront. In more than one hundred interviews, Nancy Baker Wise and Christy Wise create a textured portrait of the challenges and triumphs these powerful women experienced. Each woman vividly describes how she overcame discrimination, harassment, emotional and physical challenges, and inadequate training to successfully meet the needs of defense production while bringing the American economy to its height.

The story of an industry from 1833 to present, written by the people who fought for a union, as well as those who opposed it. Using newspaper and magazine stories, personal accounts and histories, it reflects the views of both workers and bosses, of judges, presidents, sociologists, and journalists.

In this engaging book--the first to historicize our understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace--Julie Berebitsky explores how Americans' attitudes toward sexuality and gender in the office have changed since the 1860s, when women first took jobs as clerks in the U.S. Treasury office.

Although millions of women in the United States have worked on the land,With These Hands is the first history of their work. This collection begins with the agricultural work of Native American women, and traces to the eighties their experience as well as that of Euro-American, Hispanic, Black, and Asian women who have struggled to remain on the land.

In this fine, scholarly work detailed case studies document the complexities and ambiguities of the status of women industrial workers in World War I. Professor Greenwald's determination to see the larger picture and see it whole makes her book equally valuable to those interested in the history of labor, in social and reform history, and in the history of women.

As paid work becomes increasingly central in women's lives, the history of their labor struggles assumes more and more importance. This volume represents the best of the new feminist scholarship in twentieth-century U.S. women's labor history. Fourteen original essays illuminate the complex relationship between gender, consciousness and working-class activism, and deepen historical understanding of the contradictory legacy of trade unionism for women workers.

An account of the efforts of women to improve their working conditions, often in the face of hostility from employers and the public and the indifference of the male-dominated trade unions, discussing these efforts against the background of the major social, political, and economic events in American history