A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (Blazer Lectures) - Softcover

Kessler-Harris, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813145139 ISBN 13: 9780813145136

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 2014

Synopsis

In this updated edition of a pathbreaking classic, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the meanings of women's wages in the United States in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, focusing on three 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 concerning equal pay for equal work, which challenges gendered patterns of self-esteem and social organization; and the debate over comparable worth, which seeks to incorporate traditionally female values into new work and family trajectories. Together, these topics and social organization; and the debate over comparable worth, which seeks to incorporate traditionally female values into new work and family trajectories. Together, these topics illuminate the many ways in which gendered social roles have been produced, transmitted, and challenged.

About this title

About the Author:

Alice Kessler-Harris is R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History and professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. She is the author of numerous books, including In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America; Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States; and A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman.

Review:

"Poses hard, pressing questions about wage justice and provides the historical perspective that is needed to answer them."―New York Times Book Review

"Argues persuasively for a feminist viewpoint grounded in intense historical analysis. A challenging, thought-provoking book."―Library Journal

"A rich collection of essays about the gendered construction of the wage in the twentieth-century United States."―Women's Review of Books

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0813145139
• ISBN 13: 9780813145136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196