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

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 PhD. 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.