In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America

by Alice Kessler-Harris

Overview

In this volume, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the transformation of some of the United States' most significant social policies. Tracing changing ideals of fairness from the 1920s to the 1970s, she shows how a deeply embedded set of beliefs, or "gendered imagination" shaped seemingly neutral social legislation to limit the freedom and equality of women. Law and custom generally sought to protect women from exploitation, and sometimes from employment itself; but at the same time, they assigned the most important benefits to wage work. Most policy makers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women would not be breadwinners. Kessler-Harris shows how ideas about what was fair for men as well as women influenced old age and unemployment insurance, fair labor standards, Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II. Only in the 1960s and 1970s did the gendered imagination begin to alter--yet the process is far from complete.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198020899
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/20/2001
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University, where she also teaches in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. A leading advocate of women's rights in the United States, she has been a featured speaker at a special White House symposium and an expert guest on the PBS documentary "The Measured Century." She is the author of Out to Work, A Woman's Wage, and Women Have Always Worked.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	3
Chapter 1	The Responsibilities of Life	19
	The Mere Fact of Sex	22
	A Practical Independence	34
	A Man-Run Company	45
	Marriage: A Defining Condition	56
Chapter 2	Maintaining Self-Respect	64
	Self-Help Is the Best Help	66
	Have We Lost Courage?	74
	A Sieve with Holes	88
	A Foundling Dumped upon the Doorstep	101
Chapter 3	Questions of Equity	117
	Matters of Right	121
	The Hardest Problem of the Whole Thing	130
	They Feel That They Have Lost Citizenship	142
	It Would Be a Great Comfort to Him	156
Chapter 4	A Principle of Law but Not of Justice	170
	Apportioning the Income Tax	172
	More Than Money Is Involved	178
	To Confer a Special Benefit on the Marital Relationship	193
Chapter 5	What Discriminates?	203
	How're You Going to Feel?	206
	The President's Commission on the Status of Women	213
	Calling into Question the Entire Doctrine of Sex	226
	Equal Pay for Equal Work	234
Chapter 6	What's Fair?	239
	Constructing an Equal Opportunity Framework	241
	Standing with Lot's Wife	246
	Divided Women	267
	At First Glance, the Idea May Seem Silly	275
	History Is Moving in This Direction	280
	Epilogue	290
	Notes	297
	Index	365

Editorial Reviews

A leading scholar on women's history and public policy, Kessler-Harris expands the work she began in her previous book, Out to Work: The History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States, to examine not just women's employment history, but also the forces that have shaped economic policy for the past 100 years. In the introduction, she says, "For generations, American women lacked not merely the practice but frequently the idea of individual economic freedom." For anyone even remotely familiar with employment trends, this doesn't seem like a revelatory comment, but Kessler-Harris proceeds to make it one. By looking at crucial pieces of legislation and important court cases, she reveals the subtle shifts in language that marked progress for women and changed the work landscape. She points out that some employment areas, like Social Security legislation and tax laws, proved to be particularly resistant to equality for women, and changed very slowly over decades. Others, like the corporate glass ceiling, have yet to budge in some industries. Although focused on the larger issues of gender and economic policy, the book is also a refreshingly compact and useful primer on 50 years of employment legislation, detailing the crucial arguments and heated congressional debates that brought both men and women from the depths of the depression to the brink of equal economic citizenship. Historical perspective is especially important in later chapters, as she describes the effects of legislation that gave many middle-class women economic freedom, but had unforeseen negative consequences for poor women and women of color. But Kessler-Harris's cautious optimism about our shared economic future is hard toresist. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

One of America's leading scholars on the economic impact of gender bias on women, Kessler-Harris (history, Columbia Univ., Columbia Inst. for Research on Women and Gender; A Woman's Wage) offers a vigorous historical analysis of the 20th-century U.S. social policies that produced differential access to resources for men and women. Beginning in early 20th-century America, she explains how the gendered conception of the right to work emerged differently among men and women and then follows the unfolding of this conception during the New Deal era. She concludes this solid, erudite, heavily noted history by exploring notions of fairness in early federal income-tax policy, issues of equal employment policy in the 1950s and 1960s, and the newly witnessed women's rights movement after World War II. Kessler-Harris succeeds in showing how gender has shaped the rules by which we live, how gendered habits of mind have been inscribed in social policies that continue to frame our lives, and how, once these habits are embedded in the legislative, judicial, and policymaking mechanisms of society, only such a critical, penetrating analysis as this can challenge them and begin to advance the cause of modern feminism. Highly recommended for all academic libraries supporting labor law, economics, and women's studies. Dale Farris, Groves, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"Broad in scope and enriched by detailed research.... In Pursuit of Equity is a fine work, with an important and nuanced argument, the kind of book that forces one to rethink assumptions about gender, politics, citizenship, and the struggle for social justice."—Miriam Cohen, Evalyn Clark Professor of History, Vassar College, Business History Review

"A vigorous historical analysis of the 20-century U.S. social policies that produced differential access to resources for men and women.... Kessler-Harris succeeds in showing how gender has shaped the rules by which we live, how gendered habits of mind have been inscribed in social policies that continue to frame our lives, and how, once these habits are embedded in the legislative, judicial, and policymaking mechanisms of society, only such a critical, penetrating analysis as this can challenge them and begin to advance the cause of modern feminism."—Library Journal

"In Pursuit of Equity is a sensitive and illuminating exploration of the manifold ways in which gendered habits of mind shape social action. It is a contribution not just to the history of the past but to the history of the future." —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"In one of the most brilliant books of recent years, Alice Kessler-Harris explains how modern feminism has been grounded in the changing meanings of work. Formidable research and eloquent writing make it clear why gender difference as a rationale for distributing jobs, taxes, and entitlements came to a screeching crash in our own lifetimes. This is a book for everyone who cares about social policy and democratic citizenship."—Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

"Alice Kessler-Harris's brilliant research and analyses create a heartening, galvanizing alternative to these cruel times. Armed by this splendid book, we have the tools finally to move beyond America's disgraceful economic traditions of employment injustice, rampant poverty, contempt for women—and on to gender equity, empowerment, and dignity for all."—Blanche Wiesen Cook, University Distinguished Professor, John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1933 and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Defining Years, 1933-1938

"In Pursuit of Equity is the latest testament to Alice Kessler-Harris' original scholarship. Professor Kessler-Harris brilliantly documents the often subtle ways that women have been historically denied economic citizenship in the United States. This book enhanced my awareness of the impact of what she calls 'the gendered imagination' in the shaping of policies that lead to enduring forms of economic inequality."—William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University, author of When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor

"Anyone interested in envisioning what 'liberty and justice for all' might really look like will benefit from learning this book's robust concept of economic citizenship. The long tradition of sex differentiation in law and policy—and the forces enabling it to be re-seen as sex discrimination—gain stunning clarity through Kessler-Harris's measured, probing, insistent analysis. She reopens assumptions about what is 'normal' and what is 'in the public interest' in matters of gender and work and family."—Nancy Cott, Sterling Professor of History and American Studies at Yale, and author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

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