Women and Men at Work / Edition 2

by Irene Padavic, Barbara F. Reskin

Overview

The Second Edition of this best selling book provides a comprehensive examination of the role that gender plays in work environments. This book differs from others by comparing women's and men's work status, addressing contemporary issues within a historical perspective, incorporating comparative material from other countries, recognizing differences in the experiences of women and men from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative data, the authors seek to link social scientific ideas about workers' lives, sex inequality, and gender to the real-world workplace. This new edition contains updated statistics, timely cartoons, and presents new scholarship in the field. It also provides a renewed focus on reasons for variability in inequality across workplaces. In sum, the second edition of Women and Men at Work presents a contemporary perspective to the field, with relevant comparative and historical insights that will draw readers in and connect them to the wider concern of making sense of our dramatically changing world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761987109
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	07/09/2002
Series:	Sociology for a New Century Series
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Irene Padavic is an Associate Professor at Florida State University. Before becoming a professor, she worked in a variety of service-sector jobs: candy seller at a movie theater, waitperson, telephone solicitor, door-to-door promoter of real estate, paralegal, and marketing researcher. Her dissertation project provided experience in the industrial sector, where she worked as a coal-handler in a power plant. Her research has been in the areas of gender and work, race differences in campus peer culture, economic restructuring, and changes in childcare arrangements.

Barbara Reskin is a Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and, when this book went to press, President of the American Sociological Association. As a student, she supported herself in a series of female-dominated clerical jobs in such disparate settings as radio and TV stations, trucking firms, temp agencies, insurance companies, and universities. The fact that most jobs for women were boring, low-paid and deadend encouraged her to get a Ph D. Her research examines how workers’ sex, race, and ethnicity affect their work opportunities. She is especially interested in strategies that minimize discrimination, the focus of her most recent book, The Realities of Affirmative Action.

Table of Contents

Work and Gender
What Work Is
Sex and Gender
Gendered Work
Summary
Gendered Work in Time and Place
The Sexual Division of Labor in Preindustrial Europe
The Industrial Revolution
The Sexual Divison of Paid and Unpaid Work
The Sexual Division of Labor Around the World
Summary
An Overview of Sex Inequality at Work
Sex Inequality in the Contemporary American Workplace
Explanations for Sex Inequality in the Workplace
Summary
Sex Segregation in the Workplace
Consequenses of Sex Segregation
A History of Sex Segregation in the United States
Trends in Sex Segregation
Explanations and Remedies for Sex Segregation
Summary
Moving Up and Taking Charge
Women, Men, and Promotions
Women, Men, and Authority
Explanations and Remedies for the Promotion Authority Gaps
Summary
Sex Differences in Earnings
The Cost of Being Female
Explaning the Pay Gap
Employers' Discriminatory Actions
Summary
Paid Work and Family Work
The Decline of the Stay-at-Home Wife and Mother
Work-Family Conflict
The Sexual Division of Labor and Work-Family Conflict
Responses to Work-Family Conflicts
Summary
References

Editorial Reviews

Examining the impact of gender on the experiences of men and women in the workplace, and considering the impact of economic matters on the relative status and well-being of men and women, this book provides a brief introduction to the intersection of two systems of inequality. The book describes gendered work, details its history, and considers its causes and consequences. Maps, graphs, charts, and cartoons offer visual representations of the findings. Padavic teaches at Florida State university. Reskin teaches sociology at Harvard University. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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