Monday, April 11, 2011

Women's Roles, or Lack Thereof

Brit
In Elizabeth Faue’s essay, “Gender, Class, and History,” she addresses the issues that working-class women studies faces, and still faces today.  Often times, working-class studies ignore the concepts of gender and race in favor of trying to articulate the class struggles.  The problem with this is that class is structured even further to include gender and race, and in order to get as much of the big picture as possible, these things need to be acknowledged.  Faue did a good job of bringing these issues into perspective by highlighting the importance of gender, and women’s working-class history.  “At the same time, there are perspectives on class identity and categories of experience—the most important of which is gender—that cannot be ignored in any study.  The findings of the last forty years of work in labor history suggests—even demands—that gender and class (and, we also know, race) be seen as interlocking and interconnected categories” (31).  She brings up the point that these categories are all woven together to create a narrative, and without incorporating as much of each category as possible, the narrative is incomplete.  Further, throughout her essay she acknowledges that women are often overlooked, or gendered even within the studies as they often are within the working-class. 
Through working-class studies we are able to see the role that women were often forced to take on in their work, and their seemingly lack of importance in terms of the work force ideals. “Still, they raised issues about domestic ideology and its impact on class politics, analyzed the sex segregation of the labor force and sex typing of occupations, and located gender conflict in workplace competition and occupational practice” (23).  Women were gendered to specific jobs, such as nursing, and while these jobs were, and still are considered important, they were feminized to exclude men, just as certain skilled labor was attributed to masculinity to exclude women.  Even today, it is apparent that there is still a battle between feminine ideals and masculine ideals.  Men are still often excluded from nursing, although there are men who are nurses, just as women are still excluded from certain types of skilled labor thought to be too dangerous or labor intensive.  To add insult to injury, women are not even equal to men in the work place today, often making less money and overlooked for promotions in favor of a man.  Having working-class studies incorporate not only class, but also gender and race can open allow for a more historically accurate narrative that could, eventually, evoke change in ideals and workplace ideology.  

No comments:

Post a Comment