In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century AmericaIn this volume, Alice Kessler-Harris explores the transformation of some of the United States' most significant social policies. Tracing changing ideals of fairness from the 1920s to the 1970s, she shows how a deeply embedded set of beliefs, or "gendered imagination" shaped seemingly neutral social legislation to limit the freedom and equality of women. Law and custom generally sought to protect women from exploitation, and sometimes from employment itself; but at the same time, they assigned the most important benefits to wage work. Most policy makers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women would not be breadwinners. Kessler-Harris shows how ideas about what was fair for men as well as women influenced old age and unemployment insurance, fair labor standards, Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II. Only in the 1960s and 1970s did the gendered imagination begin to alter--yet the process is far from complete. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 89
Page 5
... married women with and without children and parents to support ; widowed , divorced , and deserted female heads of families ; and intact African - American and other poor families whose male heads could not find jobs or earn sufficient ...
... married women with and without children and parents to support ; widowed , divorced , and deserted female heads of families ; and intact African - American and other poor families whose male heads could not find jobs or earn sufficient ...
Page 8
... women accepted the notion that men had superior claims to eco- nomic property even as the dissident or outspokenly ... married women , assigning divorced women custody of their own children , and giving married female wage earners the ...
... women accepted the notion that men had superior claims to eco- nomic property even as the dissident or outspokenly ... married women , assigning divorced women custody of their own children , and giving married female wage earners the ...
Page 11
... women , or at least of married women , was in some important respects peculiar . " 18 And American courts persistently applied the notion as if women's liberties fell into a different cate- gory than those of men . Under the equal ...
... women , or at least of married women , was in some important respects peculiar . " 18 And American courts persistently applied the notion as if women's liberties fell into a different cate- gory than those of men . Under the equal ...
Page 17
Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America ... married couples that consumed much energy in the 1930s and 1940s , and ... women's rights that emerged after World War II . In this period of rapid and ...
Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America ... married couples that consumed much energy in the 1930s and 1940s , and ... women's rights that emerged after World War II . In this period of rapid and ...
Page 26
... Women that achieving " the just equality of women " required their admission " to all the functions and occupations ... married women from passing auto- matically to the control of their husbands , and after 1860 , when New York extended ...
... Women that achieving " the just equality of women " required their admission " to all the functions and occupations ... married women from passing auto- matically to the control of their husbands , and after 1860 , when New York extended ...
Contents
3 | |
19 | |
CHAPTER 2 Maintaining SelfRespect | 64 |
CHAPTER 3 Questions of Equity | 117 |
CHAPTER 4 A Principle of Law but Not of Justice | 170 |
CHAPTER 5 What Discriminates? | 203 |
CHAPTER 6 Whats Fair? | 239 |
Epilogue | 290 |
Notes | 297 |
Index | 365 |
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Common terms and phrases
Advisory Council advocates African-American Altmeyer American argued benefits bill black women civil rights commission Committee community property Congressional contributions Court debate Dewson domestic workers earned economic citizenship Edith Green EEOC employers employment equal pay equal rights amendment equity Esther Peterson excluded fairness federal female feminists File Fourteenth Amendment gender groups Hearings on Social House husbands Ibid idea individual industry issue labor force labor market male mandatory joint marriage married couples married women maternalist ment mothers Murray National numbers old age insurance opportunity Pauli Murray PCSW Collection pension percent political protective labor legislation race racial roles Security Act Amendments Senate sex discrimination social insurance Social Security Act Status of Women Theda Skocpol tion Title VII U.S. Congress unemployment insurance unions University Press wage wage-earning women Welfare widows wife Witte wives woman women workers Women's Bureau women's rights York