Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor / Edition 1

by Ava Baron

Overview

In tobacco fields, auto and radio factories, cigarmakers' tenements, textile mills, print shops, insurance companies, restaurants, and bars, notions of masculinity and femininity have helped shape the development of work and the working class. The fourteen original essays brought together here shed new light on the importance of gender for economic and class analysis and for the study of men as well as women workers.

After an introduction by Ava Baron addressing current problems in conceptualizing gender and work, chapters by leading historians consider how gender has colored relations of power and hierarchy—between employers and workers, men and boys, whites and blacks, native-born Americans and immigrants, as well as between men and women—in North America from the 1830s to the 1970s. Individual essays explore a spectrum of topics including union bureaucratization, protective legislation, and consumer organizing. They examine how workers' concerns about gender identity influenced their job choices, the ways in which they thought about and performed their work, and the strategies they adopted toward employers and other workers. Taken together, the essays illuminate the plasticity of gender as men and women contest its meaning and its implications for class relations.

Anyone interested in labor history, women's history, and the sociology of work or gender will want to read this pathbreaking book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801495434
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	08/13/1991
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.88(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ava Baron is Professor of Sociology at Rider College.

What People are Saying About This

Joan W. Scott

A first-rate collection of essays. Ava Baron's introduction beautifully sets forth the terms of what should become a new labor history.

David Montgomery

This book will provoke basic reading for social historians of the future. Its fascinating case studies effectively highlight the many meanings of gender and gendering in modern class conflict.

Editorial Reviews

Work Engendered, required reading for all labor historians and fascinating for everyone else, encourages a reconceptualization of the history of workers and work.

-- "The Women's Review of Books"

The author repeatedly reminds us in her astute readings of More, Bacon, and Cavendish that it is more important to relish what a narrative provides than to lament the history that is not yet written.

--Amy Boesky, Boston College "Modern Philology"

From the Publisher

Work Engendered, required reading for all labor historians and fascinating for everyone else, encourages a reconceptualization of the history of workers and work.

The Women's Review of Books

The author repeatedly reminds us in her astute readings of More, Bacon, and Cavendish that it is more important to relish what a narrative provides than to lament the history that is not yet written.

Modern Philology - Amy Boesky

"This book will provoke basic reading for social historians of the future. Its fascinating case studies effectively highlight the many meanings of gender and gendering in modern class conflict."

David Montgomery

"A first-rate collection of essays. Ava Baron's introduction beautifully sets forth the terms of what should become a new labor history."

Joan W. Scott