The role of gender in the history of the working class world

Working with Paper builds on a growing interest in the materials of science by exploring the gendered uses and meanings of paper tools and technologies, considering how notions of gender impacted paper practices and in turn how paper may have structured knowledge about gender. Through a series of dynamic investigations covering Europe and North America and spanning the early modern period to the twentieth century, this volume breaks new ground by examining material histories of paper and the gendered worlds that made them. Contributors explore diverse uses of paper—from healing to phrenological analysis to model making to data processing—which often occurred in highly gendered, yet seemingly divergent spaces, such as laboratories and kitchens, court rooms and boutiques, ladies’ chambers and artisanal workshops, foundling houses and colonial hospitals, and college gymnasiums and state office buildings. Together, they reveal how notions of masculinity and femininity became embedded in and expressed through the materials of daily life. Working with Paper uncovers the intricate negotiations of power and difference underlying epistemic practices, forging a material history of knowledge in which quotidian and scholarly practices are intimately linked.

In tobacco fields, auto and radio factories, cigarmakers' tenements, textile mills, print shops, insurance companies, restaurants, and bars, notions of masculinity and femininity have helped shape the development of work and the working class. The fourteen original essays brought together here shed new light on the importance of gender for economic and class analysis and for the study of men as well as women workers. After an introduction by Ava Baron addressing current problems in conceptualizing gender and work, chapters by leading historians consider how gender has colored relations of power and hierarchy—between employers and workers, men and boys, whites and blacks, native-born Americans and immigrants, as well as between men and women—in North America from the 1830s to the 1970s. Individual essays explore a spectrum of topics including union bureaucratization, protective legislation, and consumer organizing. They examine how workers' concerns about gender identity influenced their job choices, the ways in which they thought about and performed their work, and the strategies they adopted toward employers and other workers. Taken together, the essays illuminate the plasticity of gender as men and women contest its meaning and its implications for class relations. Anyone interested in labor history, women's history, and the sociology of work or gender will want to read this pathbreaking book.

TRACES THE INVOLVEMENT OF POOR, MINORITY, AND MIDDLE CLASS AMERICAN WOMEN IN HOUSEHOLD WORK, WAGE LABOR, SOCIAL REFORM, AND DEPRESSION AND WARTIME LABOR FORCES.

This book explores gendered aspects in the memory of work by looking at auto/biographical narratives and political writings of women workers in the garment industry. The author draws on cutting edge theoretical approaches and insights in memory studies, neo-materialism and discourse analysis, particularly looking at entanglements and intra-actions between places, bodies and objects. Tamboukou aims to enrich our appreciation of the role of women’s labour history in the wider realm of cultural memory, as well as in the politics of women’s work. The book addresses a significant gap in the literature by focusing on the memory of work from a gendered perspective. It also examines the relationship between workspaces and personal spaces: the intimate, intense and often invisible ways through which workers occupy workspaces and populate them with their ideas, emotions, beliefs, habits and everyday practices. The book will be a theoretical and methodological toolbox for students and researchers in the interface of the social sciences and the humanities, as well as a vital resource in women’s labour history. It will be particularly relevant for sociologists, cultural theorists, feminist scholars and social historians.

To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together experts from both sides of the Atlantic. Through case studies, it demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

A major new work by a leading women's historian and a study of how a "gendered imagination" has shaped social policy in America. Illustrations.

In the past quarter-century, gender has emerged as a lively area of inquiry for historians and other scholars. This text looks at the issue in the context of modern Japanese history, considering topics such as sexuality, gender prescriptions and same-sex and heterosexual relations.

An illuminating investigation into a class of enterprising women aspiring to “make it” in the social media economy but often finding only unpaid work Profound transformations in our digital society have brought many enterprising women to social media platforms—from blogs to YouTube to Instagram—in hopes of channeling their talents into fulfilling careers. In this eye-opening book, Brooke Erin Duffy draws much-needed attention to the gap between the handful who find lucrative careers and the rest, whose “passion projects” amount to free work for corporate brands. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork, Duffy offers fascinating insights into the work and lives of fashion bloggers, beauty vloggers, and designers. She connects the activities of these women to larger shifts in unpaid and gendered labor, offering a lens through which to understand, anticipate, and critique broader transformations in the creative economy. At a moment when social media offer the rousing assurance that anyone can “make it”—and stand out among freelancers, temps, and gig workers—Duffy asks us all to consider the stakes of not getting paid to do what you love.

As the inaugural volume of the new Brill book series Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire, and Race, this anthology presents an emergent interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field that highlights the inextricable link between gender and the trans-Pacific world. The anthology features twenty-one chapters by new and established scholars and writers. They collectively examine the geographies of empire, the significance of intimacy and affect, the importance of beauty and the body, and the circulation of culture. This is an ideal volume to introduce advanced undergraduate and graduate students to Transpacific Studies and gender as a category of analysis. Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire, and Race is now available in paperback for individual customers.