On Gender, Labor, and Inequality

Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at The CUNY Graduate Center. Her books include L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement and Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II.

"Milkman's book is a must read, not only to remind those of us influenced by her excellent work how significant her scholarship was and is, but also for new scholars who can trace the intellectual evolution of a labor studies author whose writing has always been grounded in painstaking empirical research, and simultaneously dedicated to analyzing the origins and operation of social inequality, even as specific topics, theories, and approaches have shifted over time."--Labour/ Le Travail"Milkman's collection will well serve scholars of the Great Plains with its comprehensive coverage, from a 1976 study of Great Depression female workers to an essay written for this volume that reprises the same questions for the 2008 Great Recession. The 11 essays constitute a history of women's relationships to both the workforce and unions across the twentieth century. . . . Milkman's decades of study provide a solid foundation for new work in Great Plains labor history."--Great Plains Quarterly  "A fascinating and timely set of articles. . . What Milkman's four decades of illuminating scholarship reveals is both the uphill battle the movement will face precisely because many of these fast-growing occupations have been sex-typed as 'women's work.' But there is hope in these chapters too."--Dissent

• CoverTitleCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction1. Women's Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression2. Redefining "Women's Work": The Sexual Division of Labor in the Auto Industry during World War II3 Organizing the Sexual Division of Labor: Historical Perspectives on "Women's Work" and the America4. Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Management's Postwar Purge of Women Automobile Workers5. Women's History and the Sears Case6. Gender and Trade Unionism in Historical Perspective7. Union Responses to Workforce Feminization in the United States8. Two Worlds of Unionism: Women and the Twenty-First–Century Labor Movement9. The Macrosociology of Paid Domestic Labor Co-authored with Ellen Reese and Benita Roth10. Class Disparities, Market Fundamentalism, and Work–Family Policy: Lessons from California11. Women's Work and Economic Crisis Revisited: Comparing the Great Recession and the Great DepressionIndex