SUMMARY:Explores explanations of gender segregation at work, the changing forms and levels of segregation, and deliberate attempts to reduce it. Provides the general theoretical and historical background, a number of specific case studies, and a discussion of such issues as part-time work, the role of trade unions, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and racism in relation to gender segregation.
How pervasive is sex segregation in the workplace? Does the concentration of women into a few professions reflect their personal preferences, the "tastes" of employers, or sex-role socialization? Will greater enforcement of federal antidiscrimination laws reduce segregation? What are the prospects for the decade ahead? These are among the important policy and research questions raised in this comprehensive volume, of interest to policymakers, researchers, personnel directors, union leadersâ€"anyone concerned about the economic parity of women.
"By analyzing the process of work in both the electrical and the automobile industries, the supplies of male and female labor available to each, the varying degrees of labor-intensive work, the proportion of labor costs to total costs, and the extent of male resistance to female entry into the industry before, during, and after the war, Milkman offers a historically grounded and detailed examination of the evolution, function, and reproduction of job segregation by sex." -- Journal of American History "Analytic sophistication is coupled with a powerfully rendered narrative: the reader strides briskly along, enjoying one provocative insight after another while simultaneously absorbed by the drama of the events." -- Women's Review of Books
The Second Edition of this best selling book provides a comprehensive examination of the role that gender plays in work environments. This book differs from others by comparing women′s and men′s work status, addressing contemporary issues within a historical perspective, incorporating comparative material from other countries, recognizing differences in the experiences of women and men from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative data, the authors seek to link social scientific ideas about workers′ lives, sex inequality, and gender to the real-world workplace. This new edition contains updated statistics, timely cartoons, and presents new scholarship in the field. It also provides a renewed focus on reasons for variability in inequality across workplaces. In sum, the second edition of Women and Men at Work presents a contemporary perspective to the field, with relevant comparative and historical insights that will draw readers in and connect them to the wider concern of making sense of our dramatically changing world.
Features sociological research and theory on gender and sexuality in the workplace, and identifies how organizations can achieve a gender-balanced and sexually-diverse work force. This book discusses such topics as: gender discrimination and the wage gap; homophobic and 'gay friendly' workplaces; sexual harassment; and, sex in the workplace.
First published in 1994, Locating Gender combines a case-study approach with significant theoretical development to challenge explanations of occupational segregation. It examines the diversity of women’s employment experience, gender segregation within employment establishments, employment and domestic relations, and the place of gender in perceptions of inequality. The book develops the concepts of component-wage and full-wage jobs in the context of work histories and employment relations, and establishes their usefulness in the study of the social adequacy of wages. In doing so, it provides a close and critical examination of the power of gender as an explanatory concept in employment and domestic relations, including an in-depth analysis of the circumstances prior to, and following, changes to eliminate sex discrimination from official practices in a particular workplace. It will be of interest to students and researchers of gender studies, the sociology of work and social stratification, social policy, business studies, and labour economics.
Enacted nearly fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Act codified a new vision for American society by formally ending segregation and banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. But how much change did the legislation actually produce? As employers responded to the law, did new and more subtle forms of inequality emerge in the workplace? In an insightful analysis that combines history with a rigorous empirical analysis of newly available data, Documenting Desegregation offers the most comprehensive account to date of what has happened to equal opportunity in America—and what needs to be done in order to achieve a truly integrated workforce. Weaving strands of history, cognitive psychology, and demography, Documenting Desgregation provides a compelling exploration of the ways legislation can affect employer behavior and produce change. Authors Kevin Stainback and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey use a remarkable historical record—data from more than six million workplaces collected by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) since 1966—to present a sobering portrait of race and gender in the American workplace. Progress has been decidedly uneven: black men, black women, and white women have prospered in firms that rely on educational credentials when hiring, though white women have advanced more quickly. And white men have hardly fallen behind—they now hold more managerial positions than they did in 1964. The authors argue that the Civil Rights Act's equal opportunity clauses have been most effective when accompanied by social movements demanding changes. EEOC data show that African American men made rapid gains in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Similarly, white women gained access to more professional and managerial jobs in the 1970s as regulators and policymakers began to enact and enforce gender discrimination laws. By the 1980s, however, racial desegregation had stalled, reflecting the dimmed status of the Civil Rights agenda. Racial and gender employment segregation remain high today, and, alarmingly, many firms, particularly in high-wage industries, seem to be moving in the wrong direction and have shown signs of resegregating since the 1980s. To counter this worrying trend, the authors propose new methods to increase diversity by changing industry norms, holding human resources managers to account, and exerting renewed government pressure on large corporations to make equal employment opportunity a national priority. At a time of high unemployment and rising inequality, Documenting Desegregation provides an incisive re-examination of America's tortured pursuit of equal employment opportunity. This important new book will be an indispensable guide for those seeking to understand where America stands in fulfilling its promise of a workplace free from discrimination.
`This is both a smashing textbook and also an impressive contribution to thinking in a range of subjects. This book should influence the way we construct the undergraduate curriculum as well as rethink the polarizaton between political economy and cultural studies′- Frank Webster, City University `A wonderfully clear, insightful and original synthesis of work on the cultural industries, representing the perspectives of the new generation of researchers′ - James Curran, Goldsmiths College, University of London `The Cultural Industries is an indispensable guide to the main forces at work in the production of media today. This lucid, careful, and sophisticated book orders the entire field, for the US as well as Europe, and at one stroke becomes the state of the art, the standard′ - Todd Gitlin, New York University `David Hesmondhalgh offers us a valuable resource and a timely provocation... [A] very well organised and clearly written introduction to this increasingly important area of study. Students and teachers wanting a comprehensive and accessible guide to what we know and where we might be heading will welcome it with open arms... His book deserves to be required reading on every media and cultural studies course′ - Graham Murdock, University of Loughborough ′ The arguments within [this book] provide both a timely overview of current scholarship and offer a unique multidisciplinary approach to the topic in a clear and concise manner′ - TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies What are the ′cultural industries′? What role do they play in contemporary society? How are they changing? The Cultural Industries combines a political economy approach with the best aspects of cultural studies, sociology, communication studies and social theory to provide an overview of the key debates surrounding cultural production. The book: -Considers both the entertainment and the information sectors -Combines analysis of the contemporary scene with a long-range historical perspective -Draws on an range of examples from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and elsewhere. Hesmondhalgh′s clearly written, thoroughly argued overview of political-economic, organizational, technological and cultural change represents an important intervention in research on cultural production, but at the same time provides students with an accessible, indispensable introduction to the area.
