Women in Labor

by Hepler, Allison L.

• ISBN13: 9780814250556
• ISBN10: 0814250556
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Ohio State Univ Pr

Summary

Early in the twentieth century, states and courts began limiting the workplace hours of wage-earning women in order to protect them from fatigue and ill health. It was felt that a woman's role was to be a mother and that working too many hours in an often unhealthy and dangerous workplace created risks to the performance of that task. In the 1970s, many Fortune 500 companies began implementing "fetal protection policies" to prohibit women from working in areas deemed risky to reproductive capacity. Again, assumptions about motherhood were the driving force behind employment regulations.

Women in Labor examines how gender norms affected the workplace health of men and women. Did the desire to protect women result in a safer workplace for all workers? Did it advance or hinder the status of women in the work-place? In answering these questions, Hepler describes a complex network of medical experts, state bureaucrats, business owners, social reformers, industrial engineers, workers, and feminists, many with overlapping interests and identities. This overlap often

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(10)
The Effects of Double Duty	11	(17)
Industrial Poisons: The Two-Percent Solution	28	(18)
Industrial Health in an Industrializing World	46	(21)
Women in Wartime Industries: ``We Want Steel Toes like the Men''	67	(16)
Alice Hamilton and the Equal Rights Amendment	83	(19)
Women and the Environment: ``The Pathology and Hygiene of Housework''	102	(11)
Factories, Feminism, and Fetal Protection Policies	113	(18)
Epilogue	127	(4)
List of Abbreviations	131	(2)
Notes	133	(28)
Bibliography	161	(10)
Index	171