Working Women in America: Split Dreams

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Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema

Navigating office politics: How do self-concept and upward voice influence women's workplace well-being?

Sport is a gendered environment that legitimizes and celebrates the prioritization of men. Sport media mirrors these inequities, evident through the sustained underrepresentation of women in this space. We sought to identify the gendered organizational logics of sport media organizations and their resulting impact on women's experiences. We also aimed to understand the role of intersectional factors (i.e., age, race/ethnicity, family status, and socioeconomic status) on women's experiences. Through semi‐structured interviews with 23 women working in sport media in the United Kingdom and United States of America, we found that gendered organizational logics include demanding work schedules and content production expectations, assumptions about the inferiority of women, and fiscal responsibility justifications. Additionally, findings reveal that women's work experiences are also impacted by the organizational logics of sport organizations, including gatekeeping access and workspace design and working conditions. The logics of sport media and sport organizations intersect and result in women navigating a gendered workspace through managing their appearance, grappling with lack of work–life balance, the need for privilege for career sustainability, questioning their belonging, and working through imposter syndrome. Sociodemographic factors provide insights to the racialized and classed experiences of women working in sport media. Study findings have implications for sport media and other types of organizations, including the impact of nonemploying organizations' practices on workplace gender inequity.

Reviewed by: The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I by Lynn Dumenil Anita Anthony Vanorsdal (bio) The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I. By Lynn Dumenil. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xi, 340. $39.95 cloth; $38.99 ebook) [End Page 272] As Americans observe the centennial of the Great War, historians are exposing more about the lives of various actors in wartime mobilization and participation. Lynn Dumenil's history of American women's experiences during World War I provides both field experts and an interested general public an engaging narrative that encapsulates the political and cultural contexts, working lives, and national service opportunities that shaped women's abilities to contribute to the war effort. Dumenil weaves a carefully crafted synthesis of secondary sources on women's progressivism, wartime opportunities, political motivations, and personal desires to underscore her new avenues of research on what the war meant for American women in particular. While her focus is on "the way in which diverse women used the war for their own agendas of expanding their opportunities, sometimes economic ones, sometimes political, sometimes personal," she arranges her chapters to expose how women sought opportunities while encountering challenges from employers and unions, military and government policies, and cultural components that hindered their activism (p. 4). Dumenil does an exemplary job at weaving her new research and theories with a wide variety of secondary sources and reveals the nuances in women's lives that both helped and hindered their wartime participation. She employs a variety of contemporaneous accounts from newspapers, magazines, personal correspondence, films, photographs, and wartime posters alongside official government documents and war committees' reports to reveal that women's hopes for substantial long-term changes in politics, military service, professional advancement, and work opportunities would not last long after the armistice in November 1918. Dumenil does emphasize, however, that although long-term advancement in women's opportunities was not accomplished, the war did help to accelerate changes for women that would impact later generations during the New Deal and in the women's movement of the 1970s. While Dumenil's epilogue does provide an excellent explanation of the First World War's short-term impact on American women, [End Page 273] she does not offer much information on the state and local laws passed during the war, such as mothers' pensions, food benefits, state-supported health care for women and children, which shaped many women's daily lives into the 1920s and 1930s. She does a careful job of delineating the differences among women by class and race (concentrating on white and black women's different experiences), but leaves this reader desiring more information on how age, regional location, access to technological improvements, and club membership may have also segregated women and altered their wartime opportunities. Dumenil does underscore, however, that class and race shaped women's wartime experiences and activism, and she presents a careful analysis of the different ways gender dynamics complicated class and race. While focusing her analysis on racial and class divisions during the war, she also explores some of the subcategories that splintered politically active women in the 1920s and uses these experiences to highlight the lack of long-term change. Dumenil does an excellent job of providing a nuanced understanding of women's wartime experiences, including the political divisions among women, traditional gender role issues that were under siege during the war, economic concerns and the expansion of women's work opportunities, women who served overseas as nurses and aid workers for Allied soldiers, and the depictions of wartime women in popular culture. Rather than focusing on a single aspect of wartime experiences of American women, Dumenil offers a more complete, and more complex, view of women's war experiences that also offers potential for further research by scholars who seek to understand the Great War's impact on Americans, especially American women. [End Page 274] Anita Anthony Vanorsdal ANITA ANTHONY VANORSDAL recently completed her PhD at Michigan State University. Her current research focuses on the Woman's Committee for the Council of National Defense and women's social welfare activism during the Great War...

Women have been long absent from important white‐collar positions in large Japanese organizations. Two approaches have been made to understand women's work experiences and career outcomes in these organizations, namely, the structuralist and the rational choice approaches. The underlying assumption of both approaches is that individual women's career orientations are basically fixed and larger factors outside the workplace play central roles to determine women's career outcomes. In order to understand women's work experiences and perspectives more realistically, however, we need to turn our attention to the workplace itself and to examine the mechanisms through which women are constantly marginalized, if inadvertently, in everyday interactions with others. Drawing on a developing perspective that focuses on the dynamic nature of women's career experiences. this paper, based on a case study, demonstrates a major way in which the influences of outside factors, specifically of women's attitude toward work, are in fact reinforced within the workplace. A major component of this mechanism is women's sense of uncertainty generated through their day‐to‐day work lives.

SYNOPSIS Historically, the mining industry, on a global level, was male-dominated, as many governments had prohibited women from working at mines, particularly underground. In South Africa, the government introduced the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (No. 28 of 2002) (MPRDA) and the Broad-based Socio-economic Empowerment Charter to address the imbalances and rectify previous inequalities in the mining industry. Since the inception of MPRDA, women's representation in the South African mining industry has increased, from 3% in 2002 to 15% in 2018. Although government has good intentions, gender equality in the mining industry remains a challenge. Research on women employed in South African mines revealed that women still face barriers to some extent. This research explores women's current workplace experiences in the South African mining industry. A literature review and an empirical study were conducted. The study followed a positivistic research approach, and a quantitative research design was used. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed at the 8th Annual Women in Mining Conference in February 2017. Based on the data obtained, it became evident that several aspects must still be addressed to successfully accommodate women in the mining workplace. The study offers practical recommendations that can be implemented by mining organizations to improve women's workplace experiences in order to encourage and foster transformation in the mining industry. Keywords: gender, mining industry, mining legislation, South Africa, women in mining.

ObjectivesEarly menopause or premature ovarian insufficiency (POI), menopause occurring before age 45 and 40 years respectively, occur at the age when most women are establishing or consolidating their careers. Studies of older postmenopausal women indicate an adverse bidirectional relationship between menopause and work. However, data are lacking regarding the work experiences of women with early menopause or POI. We explored the experiences of women with early menopause or POI in relation to work. Study designUsing maximum variation sampling, 30 women (median age 44 years and 38 years at menopause diagnosis) of diverse backgrounds and menopause causes (16/30 iatrogenic) participated in qualitative interviews to explore experiences of early menopause/POI in the context of their overall lives, work and career. Dual thematic (themes identified across interviews) and thematic narrative (themes identified within individual interviews) analysis was done using NVivo 12 software. Main outcome measuresThemes related to work experiences and influencing factors. ResultsTwo major themes were identified: ‘on-the-job’ experiences (work performance, bodily presentation and disclosure) and career trajectories (intact and altered). Factors impacting the interaction between work and early menopause/POI included: career (type of work, environment, working conditions), personal (age, socio-economic background, family arrangements, migration history) and menopause experience (spontaneous versus iatrogenic, treatment complexity). ConclusionsEarly menopause/POI has multiple impacts on women's work experiences and career trajectories. As with older postmenopausal women, career and personal factors influence younger women's work experience. However, this research highlights differences associated with menopause occurring at an earlier, often unexpected age compared with menopause at the usual age.

Abstract: This paper introduces and proposes a policy application for a new Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Index. The index is comprised of multiple measures of employers' human resource management outcomes and is designed to reflect employers' systemic EEO efforts. The index is applied to industry data from the Current Population Survey, and the tenets of Total Quality Management (TQM) theory are used for interpretation of results. It is found that the mining/construction industry provides a relatively inhospitable climate for women in the form, primarily, of a high degree of gender-related occupational segregation. The financial industry demonstrated the overall greatest gains for women during the 1990s. Closer examination of these industries with very good and very poor outcomes highlights the importance of addressing of industry performance on the index. JEL classification: J71, J78, J31, M11 Key words: discrimination, Total Quality Management, glass ceiling, occupational segregation, gender wage differentials The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how policy makers can make use of a new Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Index to evaluate various industries' employment environments for women. An industry application of the EEO Index identifies gender disparities in employment outcomes across industries. Firms operating in poorly-performing industries might be slated for greater enforcement efforts by agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). In addition, policy makers may choose to direct training and other assistance to poorly-performing industry groups to assist them in improving their EEO performance. The impetus behind the use of a single index to measure and compare the experience of female workers is multi-faceted. First, a comprehensive index permits assessment of systemic employment discrimination. Employers' human resource management activities (e.g., compensation, recruitment, and evaluation of workers) are inter-related systems that should be designed and evaluated together (Becker, Huselid, and Ulrich 2001). This suggests that pay, hiring, and promotion outcomes should also be assessed together. The EEO Index in this paper allows distinct human resource management activities to be evaluated as a system. Relatedly, race and gender employment discrimination often go hand-in-hand, and the EEO Index provides a means to consider the systemic employment experience across multiple groups. Second, summarizing an employer's EEO performance in a single index provides a common measure with which to compare the performance of different employers and industries, and it allows quantification and tracing of EEO progress over time. This search for a common index that describes the overall employment experience from the perspective of women and/or minorities is similar to the long-standing search by development economists for a single index to quantify, compare, and trace over time the social development of a country. (1) Third, the single EEO Index used in this paper serves as a more reliable and valid indicator of women's work experiences than previously available because it is rooted firmly in anti-discrimination laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in any employment decision. There are no other existing measures that capture women's work experiences so systematically, or that provide such meaningful benchmarks such as the EEO performance of other industries or EEO performance over time. Variation in the EEO Index across industries will be interpreted within the framework of Total Quality Management (TQM) (Latzko and Sanders, 1995). In part, theories of TQM suggest that there will exist some random or common variation in industries' EEO performances that occur as part of the economic system in which they operate, and there will exist some assignable or special causes of variation that are attributable to particular industries (Stevenson, 2002, chs. …

Introduction:Physiological, anthropometrical and thermal perceptual are the most important factors affecting thermoregulation of men and women in workplaces. The purpose of this study was determining the validity of a questionnaire method for assessing women's heat strain in workplaces.Methods:This cross-sectional study was carried out on 96 healthy women. Data were continuously collected over a period of 3 months (July-September) in 2012. Mean ± (SD) of age was found to be 31.5 ± 7.48 years, of height 1.61 ± 0.05 m, of weight 61.55 ± 10.35 kg, and of body mass index 23.52 ± 3.75 kg/m2 in different workplaces. Heart rate and oral temperature were measured by heart rate monitoring and a medical digital thermometer, respectively. Subjects completed a draft questionnaire about the effective factors in the onset of heat strain. After collecting the questionnaires, the data were analyzed by applying Cronbach’sa calculation, factor analysis method, Pearson correlation and receiver operator characteristic curves using the SPSS 18 software.Results:The value for Cronbach's α was found to be 0.68. The factor analysis method on items of draft questionnaire extracted three subscale (16 variables) which they explained 63.6% of the variance. According to the results of receiver operator characteristic curve analysis, the cut-off questionnaire score for separating people with heat strain from people with no heat strain was obtained to be 17.Conclusions:The results of this research indicated that this quantitative questionnaire has an acceptable reliability and validity, and a cut-off point. Therefore it could be used in the preliminary screening of heat strain in women in warm workplaces, when other heat stress evaluation methods are not available.

This paper examines Muslim women's work experiences in the Iranian broadcast media (IRIB) through a study of their motivations, challenges, and achievements. These women have resisted family and social constraints that prevent them from working in broadcast media; (re)constructed a new identity for themselves as Muslim women active in modern media; reformed some restrictions and pushed back conservative norms and regulations in the organization; and improved the representation of women in the broadcast media. Before the 1979 revolution, many religious communities and families were deeply skeptical about film and broadcast industries. It was deemed that such media were instruments of decadence and “Westernization.” For many practicing Muslim women, working in the broadcast media at that time was not an option. Since the 1979 revolution, and the assumption that the media has become “Islamic,” many religious women have begun working in broadcast media. Using data from thirty semi-structured interviews with these women, it can be seen that Iranian Muslim women have negotiated a better space in IRIB, although they are still far from equal with men. These women have constructed new, complex identities that go beyond simplistic dichotomies such as traditional/modern, submissive/liberated, and religious/secular.

Reviewed by: Working Girls in the West: Representations of Wage-Earning Women Linda Kealey (bio) Lindsey McMaster . Working Girls in the West: Representations of Wage-Earning Women. UBC Press. xii, 210. $32.95 There is much to like in this revised doctoral thesis on representations of working women in Western Canada. As a literary scholar, the author examines how women are portrayed in periodicals, newspapers, fiction, poetry, and autobiography. She argues that there was an intense debate around the turn of the century involving the role of working women. McMaster, however, is not content merely to analyze the discourse that surrounds Western working women; she asserts in the introduction that she has 'tried to retain a sense of the real and material as well, so that the importance of women's agency and experience is recognized.' Working girls, she says, ignited 'society's imagination and its storytelling urges,' but they also helped to shape narratives of domesticity and resistance to them. Chapter 1 examines the ways that white women were represented as carrying out the ideals of colonial settlement, while chapter 2 analyzes [End Page 580] how working girls were represented in Canadian writing. In the latter the author draws on the often-cited poem by Marie Joussaye, 'Only a Working Girl,' first noted by historian Wayne Roberts in the 1970s and discussed in my own 1998 study, Enlisting Women for the Cause: Women, Labour and the Left in Canada, 1890-1920. The author also features three novels and a collection of short stories dealing with working women for this chapter, though these particular selections are never explained. In chapter 3 McMaster delves into moral issues, noting that morality was always part of the debate on women's work. Here she uses white slave narratives and an autobiography of a prostitute who had a long career in the business to illustrate society's obsession with the vulnerability of working women. Women's agency comes to the fore in chapter 4, where the author looks at women's labour activism through two well-known labour disputes: the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 and the Vancouver Laundry Workers Strike of 1918. Although the author has some interesting observations on the role of working women's leisure activities as integral to the labour movement's sense of solidarity, the chapter fails to place the labour unrest in the context of war and postwar labour conditions. The fifth chapter dissects the mixed race workplace and contemporary views, particularly anti-Asian prejudice, through a Vancouver murder case and subsequent attempts to prevent Chinese employers from hiring white women. Although the author mentions Native women workers in British Columbia's canneries in this chapter, there is no discussion of their work or how it was represented. In the concluding chapter, McMaster argues that the representations of working women differed from east to west, using only the works examined in chapter 2; one wonders if a different selection of titles would alter her conclusions. One important point she does make is the central importance of the figure of the working girl as a 'symbolic figure of social transformation.' As the West became settled and new industries took root, young working women represented a new era and their presence piqued the public's curiosity. On the other hand, working women's problematic exploitation also concerned those aware of the low wages and poor working conditions, yet few took their plight seriously, preferring to see them as 'just girls' who were temporary and transient employees. One cannot help but wish that McMaster's discussion had been more securely tied to the historical context and to the existing scholarship on the history of Canadian women's work and labour activism. Nevertheless, readers will find that this is an engaging text that could be used in classes in Canadian and women's literature and in women's history. The figure of the working woman continues endlessly to fascinate us and reverberates even today in popular culture. [End Page 581] Linda Kealey Linda Kealey, Department of History, University of New Brunswick Copyright © 2010 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

This study presents new knowledge about women's work, health and ill health. The point of departure is a lack of knowledge and understanding in medical research and practice of women's work and experiences of ill health. The study is qualitative and based on the life histories of 20 elderly women. What can be learned from them is often of use also in the encounter with younger female patients. The research constitutes a part of feminist science. The women taught us about invisible and heavy work, paid and unpaid, and often carried out for the benefit of others. The relationship between the married women and their husbands had a strong impact on both the women's work and their health. Being responsible for other people's well being, and with little sway over their working conditions, the women often had difficulty looking after their own health. The results point to the necessity of asking women thorough questions about their everyday life when they seek primary health care. Great parts of their work and working conditions, crucial to their health, might otherwise be overlooked.

The recent surge in online movements challenging the culture of silence surroundingsexual harassment has created new spaces for women to share their stories. This researchemployed a qualitative, exploratory design to study 199 comments on a public onlinecommunity forum: “What's The Wildest Thing That Happened To You As A Working Woman?”.Inductive thematic analysis was performed on the data which resulted in three overarchingthemes: “a harassment endemic,” “the (im)balance of power,” and“it's in the culture”. Sexual harassment was centered as a normal partof women's workplace experience, as was lack of affirmative action from employers whichincreased the severity of experiences. Organizations must commit to challenging thestructures and individuals that perpetuate unsafe working conditions for women.

Reed, K.Gender and Genetics: Sociology of the Prenatal. London: Routledge. 2012. 198pp. £34.99 ISBN 978‐1‐138‐82289‐4 (pbk)