First published in 1982, this pioneering work traces the transformation of "women's work" into wage labor in the United States, identifying the social, economic, and ideological forces that have shaped our expectations of what women do. Basing her observations upon the personal experience of individual American women set against the backdrop of American society, Alice Kessler-Harris examines the effects of class, ethnic and racial patterns, changing perceptions of wage work for women, and the relationship between wage-earning and family roles. In the 20th Anniversary Edition of this landmark book, the author has updated the original and written a new Afterword.
Are you (or a woman you love) being cheated out of 33 percent of your earnings? If you're a woman, over your working lifetime you will lose between $700,000 and $2 million -- simply because of your sex. Is that fair? No. Can it be stopped? Absolutely. The wage gap is a steady drain on the daily lives of women and our families. Rarely do we step back and add up what's missing -- better medical treatment, child care, housing, food, or retirement savings that women could have afforded if they were paid as well as men. Getting Even exposes the discrepancy between what women and men make -- and how it affects us all. It reveals that the wage gap is not going away on its own. And it explains how to close the wage gap -- and, finally, get women even. In this intelligently argued and startling book, Evelyn Murphy, Ph.D., humanizes the numbers through real-life stories and a wealth of data that has never before been examined. She shows how the wage gap pinches the daily lives of families throughout the country, at every economic level and in every industry. And she explains why, even though women have more opportunities than their mothers did, the wage gap persists: The American workplace still harbors an astonishing amount of discrimination, including blatant as well as complex hidden barriers, unspoken assumptions, unexamined attitudes, and habitual ways of behaving. But Murphy also brings good news: The wage gap can be closed. Having served as an economist, politician, public official, and corporate officer, she has a 360-degree view of the problem -- and of the solution. In a book that will explode into public debate, Murphy issues the indictment, rouses us to action -- and tells us exactly how to get even.
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A landmark manifesto" (The New York Times) that's a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential. In her famed TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than eleven million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg, COO of Meta (previously called Facebook) from 2008-2022, provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home.
In this pathbreaking book, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the meanings of women's wages in the United States in the twentieth century, focusing on three sets of issues that capture the transformation of women's roles: the battle over minimum wage for women, which exposes the relationship between family ideology and workplace demands; the argument over equal pay for equal work, which challenges gendered patterns of self-esteem and social organization; and the current debate over comparable worth, which seeks to incorporate traditionally female values into new work and family trajectories. Together these issues trace the many ways in which gendered meaning has been produced, transmitted, and challenged.
The groundbreaking classic that explores how women can and should negotiate for parity in their workplaces, homes, and beyond When Linda Babcock wanted to know why male graduate students were teaching their own courses while female students were always assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask." Drawing on psychology, sociology, economics, and organizational behavior as well as dozens of interviews with men and women in different fields and at all stages in their careers, Women Don't Ask explores how our institutions, child-rearing practices, and implicit assumptions discourage women from asking for the opportunities and resources that they have earned and deserve—perpetuating inequalities that are fundamentally unfair and economically unsound. Women Don't Ask tells women how to ask, and why they should.
Documents the little-discussed truth about the differences between the choices men and women make with regard to work and how these differences yield different results in earned income.
Distributional issues may not have always been among the main concerns of the economic profession. Today, in the beginning of the 2000s, the position is different. During the last quarter of a century, economic growth proved to be unsteady and rather slow on average. The situation of those at the bottom ceased to improve regularly as in the preceding fast growth and full-employment period. Europe has seen prolonged unemployment and there has been widening wage dispersion in a number of OECD countries. Rising affluence in rich countries coexists, in a number of such countries, with the persistence of poverty. As a consequence, it is difficult nowadays to think of an issue ranking high in the public economic debate without some strong explicit distributive implications. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, taxes, monetary or trade union, privatisation, price and competition regulation, the future of the Welfare State are all issues which are now often perceived as conflictual because of their strong redistributive content. Economists have responded quickly to the renewed general interest in distribution, and the contents of this Handbook are very different from those which would have been included had it been written ten or twenty years ago. It has now become common to have income distribution variables playing a pivotal role in economic models. The recent interest in the relationship between growth and distribution is a good example of this. The surge of political economy in the contemporary literature is also a route by which distribution is coming to re-occupy the place it deserves. Within economics itself, the development of models of imperfect information and informational asymmetries have not only provided a means of resolving the puzzle as to why identical workers get paid different amounts, but have also caused reconsideration of the efficiency of market outcomes. These models indicate that there may not necessarily be an efficiency/equity trade-off; it may be possible to make progress on both fronts. The introduction and subsequent 14 chapters of this Handbook cover in detail all these new developments, insisting at the same time on how they tie with the previous literature on income distribution. The overall perspective is intentionally broad. As with landscapes, adopting various points of view on a given issue may often be the only way of perceiving its essence or reality. Accordingly, income distribution issues in the various chapters of this volume are considered under their theoretical or their empirical side, under a normative or a positive angle, in connection with redistribution policy, in a micro or macro-economic context, in different institutional settings, at various point of space, in a historical or contemporaneous perspective. Specialized readers will go directly to the chapter dealing with the issue or using the approach they are interested in. For them, this Handbook will be a clear and sure reference. To more patient readers who will go through various chapters of this volume, this Handbook should provide the multi-faceted view that seems necessary for a deep understanding of most issues in the field of distribution. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes
