Working Women in America: Split Dreams studies the dynamic growth in women's labor force participation with an eye to understanding what the actual experience of working women is today. The book offers a broad perspective on the diversity of women and their work, and it raises the need torethink ideas concerning work, family and gender roles in order to help solve women's work and family lie dilemmas. It utilizes a structural approach to rethink these ideas and resolve these dilemmas. The book's central argument is that to understand the position of women in the work world, one mustanalyze women's situation in the economy, the family, education, and the polity -- in short, within society as large -- because these various social institutions connect, reflect and influence one another. The authors begin with an historical perspective on women at work which recognizes theimportance of the economic and legal dimensions of women's work lives. This broad perspective lays the groundwork to a further examination of the particular work situations of women and a recognition of the fact that diversity of women's work experiences are formed by racial, class, and otherinequalities (sexual, age, etc.).

Models of women and work - A brief history of working women - Gender inequality : economic and legal explanations - Gender inequality and socialization : the influences of family, school, peers, and the media - Women in everyday jobs : clerical, sales, service, and blue-collar work - Professional and managerial women - Working women and their families - Changing the lives of working women.

A narrative history of women's work from pre-colonial times to the present.

A narrative history of women's work from pre-colonial times to the present.

Contains primary source materials and sections on black slaves, Lowell, women on the Oregon trail, nursing, white slavery, letters from black migrants, the Lawrence textile strike, the Triangle fire, and child care.

This book examines working women in realistic and naturalistic literature. By addressing intersecting issues of race and class and including a study of domestic work, it contributes to the fields of multiculturalism, feminism, and working-class studies and to the increasing research interests in these areas.