Hesse-Bibber, Sharlene Nagy and Gregg Lee Carter. Flashcards
For white women in the pre-industrial period, what was work closely identified with?
Home and family life
The family was the primary economic
unit, and family members were dependent on one another for basic sustenance
What were married white men and women’s roles in the pre-industrial period?
Men: Agricultural work
Women: Domestic life
What work were single white women doing in pre-industrial period?
Still did domestic work (often as “assistant
homemakers” with relatives)
How did work depend on economic circumstances for white women in the pre-industrial period?
In Cash Poor homes: women burdened to provide daily needs
- Worked to reduce spending elsewhere (ex. making family clothes, etc)
Wife of successful Farmer: Did little work
- Supervised servants / slaves
Did colonial America exclude women from working outside the home?
Many did work outside the home
Women were innkeepers, shopkeepers, crafts workers, nurses printers, teachers, and landholders.
Many of the women who worked outside their homes were widows with de-pendent children, who took their husbands’ places in family enterprises.
How were the experiences of women of colour and white women different / similar?
Similar: Relatively low economic position, being the target of discriminatory practices in education and in work, and overall marginality in the power structure
Different: Black women never had the option of choosing between work and leisure
- Black women were not considered “weak” females, but were treated more like beasts of burden. Thus these women of color suffered a double oppression of sexism and racism
How does slavery show the intersection of race and gender?
Enslaved women were the most exploited of all women
- exploited not only as workers but as breeders of slaves.
How were enslaved women exploited as property?
- Thought to produce more slaved
-Sex objects for white men
-
How were white and black women described differently?
European woman became “the
guardian of civilization,”
African American woman was “spared neither harsh labor nor harsh punishment,”
How is the relationship between white women (oppressors) and black women (oppressed) especially complex?
“In their role as labor managers, mistresses lashed out at slave women not only to punish them, but also to vent their anger on
victims even more wronged than themselves.
white woman saw the source of her own misery, but she also saw herself-a woman without rights or re-course, subject to the whims of an egotistical man”
- To Sum: Taking out anger from being oppressed, while seeing herself in the further marginalized women
How did enslaved families resist the oppressive work?
banding together to help one another in the
fields and to lessen the workloads of older, weaker, or sicker workers.
- Extended families were huge
What important roles did Native American women play in their communities?
- gathered plants
- tilled soil
as a general rule, men hunted and women engaged in agricultural work.
How were male / female power relations determined in Indigenous communtities?
The more important hunting
was to a community’s survival, the more extensive the male power within the community;
If more dependent on agriculture = more female power
How could women exert power in Indigenous agricultural communities?
ex. if Iroquois women opposed war on certain occasions, they might refuse to let the men have the cornmeal they would have needed to feed their raiding parties or armies
In general, how did many Indigenous societies shift after the US government took over?
From matrilineal societies to become more like that of the Europeans, with less emphasis on the matrilineal extended family and more on the nuclear family and
the husband-wife relationship
How did women’s work shift at the very start of Industrialization?
When factories first emerged, women were contracted to create clothes from the home
- Like extra paid work
How did the rise of factories effect separate spheres?
Gap between them got wider
Explain the expectations on women during “cult of true womanhood”
Men went out to provide
women expected to:
- maintain a smooth and orderly household
-Comfort and support husband
-
More and more middle-class women
could now aspire to the status formerly reserved for the upper classes-that of “lady.”
What is a “lady” (an ideal)?
a fragile, idle,
pure creature, submissive and subservient to her husband and to domestic needs. Her worth was based on her decorative value (beauty)
During the early years of industrialization, many men were still busy with agricultural work and were unavailable or unwilling to enter the early factories
How did they get workers?
Single white women
- Their employment was viewed as a fulfillment of their family responsibilities, during an interlude before marriage
Were black women apart of “the cult of true womanhood”?
No
What fields were black women concentrated in? Why?
in service work-especially domestic work
- limited opportunities available to them
following the Civil War. (only experience was labouring / not too many paid jobs valued that)
Were black women higher in women’s labor-force participation rate?
Yes! by around double white women
How did world war 1 influence white women workers?
Women replaced men
at jobs in factories and business offices, and, in general, they kept the nation going, fed, and clothed
- Most didn’t leave their homes to do this, but factories just reshuffled the women they already had working
How did world war 1 influence black women workers?
Although World War I opened up some factory jobs to them, these were
typically limited to the most menial, least desirable, and often the most dangerous jobs (hot glass etc)
Did ww1 create a lasting change in womens employment?
no
Women working: 1920 was actually a bit lower (20.40/o) than in 1910 (20.9%)
How did white labour shift when men returned from ww1?
Men prioritized and given jobs back
women pushed to low-paying, low-prestige jobs they were in before
How did WW2 shift womens labour?
Women entered factories
Now the pressure for married women to not work faded
What is the “feminine mystique”? (Important)
Right after Ww2
drew in social workers, educators, journalists, and psychologists, all of whom
tried to convince women that their place was again in the home.
How did the labour force change after WW2?
Rise of married women entering the factory
What pushed married women into work?
- Low birthrates (single women getting married younger)
- Older women who married earlier and had fewer children were now avalible
What changed in the 1960’s with married women workers?
young married mothers with preschool- or school-age children began to enter the workforce (usually women with super young children didn’t)
With the rise of white women entering the workforce, what did women of colour do?
Many entered domestic service
- Less white women in domestic work, so more WOC
Eventually shifted to “white collar work” (Clerical and sales positions, as well as professional jobs in business, health care, and education)
How did Indigenous women’s labour shift?
From:
Low skill /farm work and domestic jobs
to
more white collar jobs
How did Latina women’s work shift?
Also started off as farming
migrated to urban areas and found work as domestics and factory workers
How were mexican workers treated in WW2?
Mexican migrants, their labor was needed to offset wartime labor shortages.
Mexican workers comprised a
“reserve army” of exploited labor. (Given temp. visas)
Where did Latina women find work in the later half of 1900’s?
entering professional and managerial occupations (primarily non-college teaching, nursing, librarianship, and social
work)
But still secondary to white ppl
What is the issue with Asian women and education?
Often presumed Asian women were higher educated then other races
But: they were 2 half times more likely-
to be grade-school dropouts: in 1996,12.5 percent of Asian women had not gone beyond the eighth grade,
compared to only 5.2 percent of their non-Latina white counterparts.
Where are Asian women concentrated?
commonly employed as sewing machine operators at home or in small sweatshops
Also in microelectronics industry (assembly line)
Do educated Asian American women experience workplace barriers?
often restricted to the less prestigious jobs
more likely to remain marginalized in their work organization, to encounter a ‘glass ceiling,’ and to earn less than:
- white men,
- Asian American men,
- white women
with comparable educational backgrounds
