White Working-class Women Research Articles

Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression

To cope with unemployment, poverty, and uncertainty during the Great Depression, working-class women devised many ingenious strategies. Flexibility and creativity defined their actions. Yet cooperation and increased female responsibilities did not always provide greater family cohesiveness or stave off the economic effects of the crisis; the Depression disrupted people's lives. The expectations and actualities of female self-sacrifice resulted in conflict between parents and daughters, between husbands and wives, among members of doubled-up households, and between unattached women and their children and siblings. Although families changed their form and structure and increased their responsibilities, they also fell apart from the strains of the Depression.

Prescribed Drug Use and the Management of Everyday Life: The Experiences of Black and White Working-Class Women

Social scientific studies of prescribed drug use have played an important part in heightening awareness that their use can best be understood when considered within a social context. From a sociological point of view, however, these studies often suffer from limitations which restrict their descriptive and explanatory power. This paper discusses these limitations before attempting to develop an alternative approach which focuses on the meanings attached to prescribed drug use, and relates these meanings to the ways in whch the users of these drugs manage their everyday lives as members of particular collectivities. In order to bridge the gap between structure and experience prescribed drugs are conceptualised as resources which, along with other material and socio-cultural resources, are both differentially available and variously experienced. Taking minor tranquillisers/hypnotics (e.g. Valium, Mogadon) as a test case attention is focused first on these drugs' availability to samples of black and white working-class women and the meanings which they attribute to these drugs. The different patterns of drug use which are found are then related to these women's varying access to and experience of a range of other resources (including paid work, social supports, leisure, cigarettes and religion). This provides a basis for explaining different patterns of drug use and hopefully illustrates the usefulness of ‘resource’ as a bridging concept between social structure and everyday life.

If All we Did was to Weep at Home: A History of White Working-Class Women in America. By Susan Estabrook Kennedy. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979. Pp. xx + 331. $17.50. - Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. New York, Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 266. $14.95.

If All we Did was to Weep at Home: A History of White Working-Class Women in America. By Susan Estabrook Kennedy. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979. Pp. xx + 331. $17.50. - Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. New York, Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 266. $14.95.

If All We Did Was to Weep at Home: A History of White Working-Class Women in America

If All We Did Was to Weep at Home: A History of White Working-Class Women in America

Earnings Prospects of Black and White Working-Class Women

Earnings of white, Puerto Rican, and black female graduates of a New York City vocational school are analyzed for a period of five years after graduation. Puerto Rican and black graduates who complete the same curriculum as whites earn considerably less upon entry into the labor market and thereafter for the next five years. Factors affecting these differences are analyzed. The findings cast doubt on the theory that equalizing training and education of whites and blacks will automatically result in equal job opportunities.

Job Opportunities of Black and White Working-Class Women

Entry employment of black, Puerto Rican and white graduates of the same vocational school and curricula are examined in order to assess how open the employment structure is for young working-class women. The data demonstrate that from the start minority women do not share the occupational success of their white counterparts. Factors affecting their career success are analyzed. First, the school and State Employment Service referral and placement activities restrict rather than expand the labor market opportunities available to them; the reasons are examined. Second, industrial patterns of recruitment are found to be racially discriminatory. Finally, the relationship between market place recruitment and school referral is explored. The findings concerning equality of opportunity among these working-class women are not optimistic.

Job Opportunities of Black and White Working-Class Women

Job Opportunities of Black and White Working-Class Women