Davies, Andrea Rees and Brenda Frink. Flashcards
When did the home and work become seperate?
industrial revolutions of the 19th
century, (for the middle classes)
When did the “ideal worker” norm start?
the early 20th century’s expanding white-collar office
Mostly in 1950’s
What is the Ideal worker norm? Did most people follow this norm?
White, middle-class family man with stay-at-home spouse
did not match the reality of most American workers, and some workers chafed against its restraints
What are the two ways the separation of work and home is decided?
- Separation is predicated on a gendered division of labor
(men responsible for work, and women responsible for the home) - compartmentalization of time achieved by an individual worker.
Here, work and home are separate when work tasks take place during designated
work hours and home tasks take place during nonwork hours.
Were separate spheres always fully separate?
Not fully realistic, more of an ideal
omen have always played a part in public life, and public and private spheres have often overlapped
Which women were excluded from the separate spheres ideology?
working-class women and women of color
Often did piecework at home, or did nannying / housekeeping
What is “work devotion”?
behaving as an ideal worker —or perceiving one’s career as a satisfying calling that deserves extreme personal sacrifice
Most common in professional-level careers, as opposed to working-class career
What is the “market revolution”?
Modes of transportation opened meaning goods could be transported
- Everyone you worked with = family (ex. When a master shoemaker, for example,
spoke of his family, he referred to both his employees and his kin—the household consisted of husband, wife, journeymen, apprentices, and children, all under one roof)
This change generally meant that men’s tasks were viewed as work, and women’s were not.
How was mass production in the market revolution?
Shift from doing everything at home to factories / commission work
o longer producing everything in the home
workshop, master shoemakers operated small factories or sent piece- work to families in the emerging working class.
How did the market revolution influence mens work?
- the definition of work narrowed to include only money-generating activities
- employees moved out of their employers’ homes
- By the Civil War, White, middle-class northerners largely viewed work and home as distinct, gendered spheres that took place at different locations. Men worked, women stayed home
In the industrial revolution, who was being drawn to factories?
- Male workers (stopping self employment)
- Immigrants
- Women and children
What is the discourse around piecework at the time?
Piecework in the home allowed women to earn money while caring for their children.
BUT: The low piece rate for tenement-made cigars meant that many families worked
14-hr days, 7 days a week (Push back on this, saying how women should focus on their children and decline paid labor at home)
- But women wanted to keep this, cuz the money was important
What did factories change about the work day?
Now not just 12 hours
but had 12 hour shifts and ran 24 hrs
PPL started pushing for 8 hr shifts
When office work emerged, what was interesting about the workers?
Half were women
But still kept separate from men: entry points for men and women included separate hallways, stairways, and elevators
What brought a lot of white women to the office?
New technologies,
such as the typewriter (1874),
telephone (1876),
and Dictaphone (1907)
With the emerging offices, how was the ideal worker gendered?
Men: Any married man putting his whole
soul into work relied on a spouse at home.
Women: Devotion to boss. Upon marriage,
it was expected that she would exit the workplace to devote her whole soul to her family
What did manliness depend on with the “ideal worker”
Continuous promotions
Women: relegated to low-paying and nonpromoting clerical work, held the ladder firm from below.
Explain how separate spheres were ingrained in legislation?
Muller v. Oregon, for example, permitted states to restrict women’s labor, but not men’s, to 8-hr days (push women to be at home more)
What is a major issue with legislation pushing women to work less?
A lot of widows or women living independently were working.
Explain Kellogg’s 6 hr shifts a day experiement?
Changed 6 hours a day / 30 hrs a week (an attempt to share wages cuz of great depression)
Gave fathers and mothers more time at home
Previously, working full time was part of the male breadwinner image. But during the 1930s, any Kellogg man demanding full-time work was called a variety of derogatory terms, including “work-hog,” “overtime-hog,” “selfish,” and “money hungry”
Did the Kellogg’s thing last?
Nah
6-hr workday was identified as women’s work or girls’ departments and the
8-hr workday as men’s departments
How did Rosie the Riveter push women to help in WW2?
portrayed patriotism, not breadwinning, as the driving force behind
White, married women’s work
- So they weren’t doing men’s jobs, but being a patriot
Were WOC allowed to work in WW2?
Yes
Gender and racial barriers to industrial employment weakened
during the war, giving visibility to some women of color as productive
and patriotic members of the American workforce.
Ex. chinese american woman worked at a shipyard
After WW2 many white women returned to the home. Did WOC follow this?
While White, middle-class women
could afford to respond to the cultural pressures to return home, many
working-class women were forced to return to traditional sex- and race-
segregated jobs
