Breadwinners and citizens : gender in the making of the French social model / Laura Levine Frader.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frader, Laura Levine, 1945-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Employment--France--History--20th century.

Women.

Sex discrimination in employment--France--History--20th century.

Sex discrimination in employment.

Sex discrimination against women--France--History--20th century.

Sex discrimination against women.

Sex role in the work environment--France--History--20th century.

Sex role in the work environment.

History.

Women--Employment.

France.

Physical Description:

ix, 347 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Laura Levine Frader's synthesis of labor history and gender history brings to the fore failures in realizing the French social model of equality for all citizens. Challenging previous scholarship, she argues that the male breadwinner ideal was stronger in France in the interwar years than scholars have typically recognized, and that it had negative consequences for women's claims to the full benefits of citizenship. She describes how ideas about masculinity, femininity, family, and work affected post-World War I reconstruction, policies designed to address France's postwar population deficit, and efforts to redefine citizenship in the 1920s and 1930s. She demonstrates that gender divisions and the male breadwinner ideal were reaffirmed through the policies and practices of labor, management, and government. The social model that France implemented in the 1920s and 1930s incorporated fundamental social inequalities.

Frader's analysis moves between the everyday lives of ordinary working women and men and the actions of national policymakers, political parties, and political movements, including feminists, pro-natalists, and trade unionists. In the years following World War I, the many women and an increasing number of immigrant men in the labor force competed for employment and pay. Family policy was used not only to encourage reproduction but also to regulate wages and the size of the workforce. Policies to promote married women's and immigrants' departure from the labor force were more common when jobs were scarce, as they were during the Depression. Frader contends that gender and ethnicity exerted a powerful and unacknowledged influence on French social policy during the Depression era and for decades afterward.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction: gender in the making of the French social model

Reconstruction and regeneration after World War I

Gender division, the family, and the citizen-worker

Managing the human factor

Organized labor, rationalization, and breadwinners

Toward the social model: citizenship, rights, and social provision

Economic rights and the gender of breadwinners: the depression of the 1930s

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [301]-333) and index.

ISBN:

9780822341826

0822341824

9780822341987

0822341980

OCLC:

173659519