Woman's Work in America

Woman's Work in America
Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Total Pages: 476
Release: 1856-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1465523855

A comprehensive view of the attainments made by American women in this century, and especially during the last fifteen years, cannot but be of great importance and value. The cruel kindness of the old doctrine that women should be worked for, and should not work, that their influence should be felt, but not recognized, that they should hear and see, but neither appear nor speak,—all this belongs now to the record of things which, once measurably true, have become fabulous. The theory that women should not be workers is a corruption of the old aristocratic system. Slaves and servants, whether male or female, always worked. Women of rank in the old world were not necessarily idle. The eastern monarch who refused an army to a queen, sent her a golden distaff. The extremes of despotism and of luxury, undermining society and state, can alone have introduced the theory that it becomes the highly born and bred to be idle. With this unnatural paralysis of woman’s active nature came ennui, the bane of the so-called privileged classes. From ennui spring morbid passions, fostered by fantastic imaginations. A respect for labor lies at the very foundation of a true democracy. The changes which our country has seen in this respect, and the great uprising of industries among women, are then not important to women alone, but of momentous import to society at large. The new activities sap the foundation of vicious and degraded life. From the factory to the palace the quickening impulse is felt, and the social level rises. To the larger intellectual outlook is added the growing sympathy of women with each other, which does more than anything else to make united action possible among them. A growing good will and esteem of women toward women makes itself happily felt and will do even more and more to refine away what is harsh and unjust in social and class distinctions and to render all alike heirs of truth, servants of justice. The initiative is now largely taken by women in departments in which they were formerly, if admitted at all, entirely and often unwillingly under the dictation of men. Philanthropists of both sexes, indeed, work harmoniously together, but in their joint undertakings the women now have their say and, instead of waiting to be told what men would have them think, feel obliged to think for themselves. The result is not discord but a fuller and freer harmony of action and intention. In industrial undertakings they still have far to go, but women will enter more and more into them and with happy results. The professions indeed supply the keystone to the arch of woman’s liberty. Not the intellectual training alone which fits for them, but the practical, technical knowledge which must accompany their exercise puts women in a position of sure defense against fraud and imposition. In the volume now given to the public the progress of women in all of these departments is presented by persons who have made each of them a special study, and who have done good and helpful work in them, with, moreover, the outlook ahead which is the important element in all labor and service. The world, even the American world, is not yet wholly converted to the doctrine of the new womanhood. Men and women who prize the ease of the status quo, and the imaginary importance conferred by exemption from the necessities which prompt to active exertion, often show great ignorance of all that this book is intended to teach. They will aver, men and women of them, that women have never shown any but secondary capacities and qualities. Women who take this ground often secretly flatter themselves that what they thus say of other women does not apply to themselves. A speaker representing this class lately asked at a legislative hearing in Massachusetts why women did not enter the professions? why they did not become healers of the sick, ministers, lawyers? One might ask how he could escape, knowing that in all of these fields, so lately opened to them, women are doing laborious work and with excellent results? A book like the present will furnish chapter and verse to substantiate what is claimed for the attainments of women. It will not, indeed, put an end to foolish depreciative argument, based upon erroneous suppositions, but it will furnish evidence to confute calumny, to convince the doubtful.

Women's Work

Women's Work
Author: Megan K. Stack
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0525431950

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Dehli, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made? Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility—and on the cost to the children who were left behind. Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
Author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1995-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0393285588

"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.

Smithsonian American Women

Smithsonian American Women
Author: Smithsonian Institution
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 158834665X

An inspiring and surprising celebration of U.S. women's history told through Smithsonian artifacts illustrating women's participation in science, art, music, sports, fashion, business, religion, entertainment, military, politics, activism, and more. This book offers a unique, panoramic look at women's history in the United States through the lens of ordinary objects from, by, and for extraordinary women. Featuring more than 280 artifacts from 16 Smithsonian museums and archives, and more than 135 essays from 95 Smithsonian authors, this book tells women's history as only the Smithsonian can. Featured objects range from fine art to computer code, from First Ladies memorabilia to Black Lives Matter placards, and from Hopi pottery to a couch from the Oprah Winfrey show. There are familiar objects--such as the suffrage wagon used to advocate passage of the 19th Amendment and the Pussy Hat from the 2016 Women's March in DC--as well as lesser known pieces revealing untold stories. Portraits, photographs, paintings, political materials, signs, musical instruments, sports equipment, clothes, letters, ads, personal posessions, and other objects reveal the incredible stories of such amazing women as Phillis Wheatley, Julia Child, Sojourner Truth, Mary Cassatt, Madam C. J. Walker, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie Till Mobley, Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta, Phyllis Diller, Celia Cruz, Sandra Day O'Connor, Billie Jean King, Sylvia Rivera, and so many more. Together with illuminating text, these objects elevate the importance of American women in the home, workplace, government, and beyond. Published to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, Smithsonian American Women is a deeply satisfying read and a must-have reflection on how generations of women have defined what it means to be recognized in both the nation and the world.

This Woman's Work

This Woman's Work
Author: Kim Gordon
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2022-05-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0306829029

Edited by iconic musician Kim Gordon and esteemed writer Sinéad Gleeson, this powerful collection of award-winning female creators shares their writing about the female artists that matter most to them. This book is for and about the women who kicked in doors, as pioneers of their craft or making politics central to their sound: those who offer a new way of thinking about the vast spectrum of women in music. This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music is edited by iconic musician Kim Gordon and esteemed writer Sinéad Gleeson and features an array of talented contributors, including: Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li, and Zakia Sewell. In this radical departure from the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman’s Work challenges the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Women have to speak up, to shout louder to tell their story—like the auteurs and ground-breakers featured in this collection, including: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson; Megan Jasper on her ground-breaking work with Sub Pop; Margo Jefferson on Bud Powell and Ella Fitzgerald; and Fatima Bhutto on music and dictatorship. This Woman’s Work also features writing on the experimentalists, women who blended music and activism, the genre-breakers, the vocal auteurs; stories of lost homelands and friends; of propaganda and dictatorships, the women of folk and country, the racialized tropes of jazz, the music of Trap and Carriacou; of mixtapes and violin lessons.

What Works for Women at Work

What Works for Women at Work
Author: Joan C. Williams
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1479871834

A mother-daughter legal scholar team “offers unabashedly straightforward advice in a how-to primer for ambitious women . . . [A]ttention-grabbing revelations” (Debora L. Spar, The New York Times Book Review) What Works for Women at Work is a comprehensive and insightful guide for mastering office politics as a woman. Authored by Joan C. Williams, one of the nation’s most-cited experts on women and work, and her daughter, Rachel Dempsey, this unique book offers a multi-generational perspective into the realities of today’s workplace. Often women receive messages that they have only themselves to blame for failing to get ahead. What Works for Women at Work tells women it’s not their fault. Based on interviews with 127 successful working women, over half of them women of color, What Works for Women at Work presents a toolkit for getting ahead in today’s workplace. Distilling over thirty-five years of research, Williams and Dempsey offer four crisp patterns that affect working women. Each represents different challenges and requires different strategies—which is why women need to be savvier than men to survive and thrive in high-powered careers. Williams and Dempsey’s analysis of working women is nuanced and in-depth, going beyond the traditional one-size-fits-all approaches of most career guides for women. Throughout the book, they weave real-life anecdotes from the women they interviewed, along with advice on dealing with difficult situations such as sexual harassment. An essential resource for any working woman. “Many steps beyond Lean In (2013), Sheryl Sandberg’s prescription for getting ahead . . . .[F]illed with street-smart advice and plain old savvy about the way life works in corporate America.” —Booklist, starred review) “A playbook on how to transcend and triumph.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

Women's Work and Chicano Families

Women's Work and Chicano Families
Author: Patricia Zavella
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2018-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501720066

At the time Women’s Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley was published, little research had been done on the relationship between the wage labor and household labor of Mexican American women. Drawing on revisionist social theories relating to Chicano family structure as well as on feminist theory, Patricia Zavella paints a compelling picture of the Chicano women who worked in northern California’s fruit and vegetable canneries. Her book combines social history, shop floor ethnography, and in-depth interviews to explore the links between Chicano family life and gender inequality in the labor market.

Lean In

Lean In
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-03-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385349955

#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.

Woman's Work

Woman's Work
Author: Lisa Frederiksen Bohannon
Publisher: Morgan Reynolds Publishing
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2004
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781931798419

Betty Friedan's seminal work, The Feminine Mystique, is often credited with launching the women's rights movement. The book was published in 1963 and was informed by Betty's difficult relationship with her own mother, her training in psychology (she graduated summa cum laude from Smith College), and her experience raising three children in an unhappy marriage. Betty's unwillingness to accept the status quo led her to challenge traditional notions about women's roles and she became an outspoken leader in the feminist movement, co-founding the National Organization for Women along the way. Yet Friedan also became a lightning rod for controversy, eventually leaving NOW to pursue other interests that included helping women from other countries achieve equality and advocating for the rights of the elderly. Woman's Work: The Story of Betty Friedan presents the multi-faceted life and work of this complicated, fascinating woman, offering insight into the determination and dedication that shaped her into an icon to those who have followed in her wake. Book jacket.