Unbending gender : why family and work conflict and what to do about it / Joan Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Joan, 1952-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Work and family--United States.

Work and family.

Forecasting.

United States.

Sexual division of labor--United States.

Sexual division of labor.

Mothers--Employment--United States.

Mothers.

Mothers--Employment.

Families--Economic aspects--United States.

Families.

Families--Economic aspects.

Work and family--United States--Forecasting.

Physical Description:

xii, 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2000]

Summary:

Why do family and work increasingly conflict? Why do men as well as women feel under enormous strain, at home and at work? Why are nearly one-fourth of American children, and nearly forty percent of divorced mothers, poor?

Until now, these phenomena have been looked at in isolation. Williams treats them as integrally linked and shows how they are all consequences not of people's choices, intentional discrimination, or biological destiny, but of our system for organizing work. It is a system that values salaried work--most of all the "ideal" worker who can work full time and overtime without career interruptions--and that disparages family work, including the raising of children. Ideal workers must be supported by family work done by their spouses. Because women, unlike men, rarely receive such support, they are overwhelmingly excluded from good jobs, both professional and blue collar, and they--and their children--often experience poverty upon divorce.

Unbending Gender shows that the work/family conflict is gender discrimination, and that the current way of organizing work is terrible for men, still worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work so men and women can lead healthier and more productive work and family lives.

Williams's feminism returns its focus to the two institutions that dominate our lives, family and work. She explains why discussions of these issues needlessly exacerbate divisions between men and women, and those among women of different classes, races, and outlooks. She offers strategies for healing such divisions.

Unbending Gender digs deeply into the problems of work and family to provide a new framework for understanding and transforming them, which can improve all our lives. Accessible to the general reader, it is also a ground-breaking work of scholarship.

Contents:

Unbending gender in social life

Is domesticity dead?

From full commodification to reconstructive feminism

Deconstructing the ideal-worker norm in market work

Deconstructiong the ideal-worker norm in family entitlements

Unbending gender talk (including feminism)

How domesticity's gender wars take on elements of class and race conflict

Do women share an ethic of care: domesticity's descriptions of men and women

Do women need special treatment? Do feminists need equality?

New paradigm theorized: domesticity in drag.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-333) and index.

ISBN:

0195094646

OCLC:

40199933