Article:
"From Servitude to Service Work"
Be able to understand and explain these quotes:
1) "Historically, race and gender have developed as separate topics
of inquiry, each with its own literature and concepts" p 57.
2) I argue that reproductive labor has divided along racial as well as gender lines and that the specific characteristics of the division have varied regionally and changed over time as capitalism has reorganized reproductive labor, shifting parts of it from the household to the market. P 58
3) In the domestic sphere, instead of questioning the inequitable gender
division of labor, they sought to slough off the more burdensome tasks
onto more oppressed groups of women." P. 60
4) The dominant group ideology in all these cases was that women of color --African-American women, Chicanas, and Japanese American women-- were particularly suited for service." P 63
5) "Housewives... expected domestics to devote long hours and hard work to help them succeed as wives, without, however, commensurate privileges and status." P. 64
6) Rather than challenge the inequity in the relationship with their husbands, white women pushed the burden onto women with even less power. They could justify this only be denying the domestic worker's womanhood, by ignoring the employee's family ties and responsibilities. P 65
7) If race and gender are socially constructed systems, then they must arise at specific moments in particular circumstances and change as these circumstances change. 66
8) In both household and institutional settings, white professional
and managerial men are the group most insulated from dirty work and contact
with those who do it. White women are frequently the mediators who
have to negotiate between white male superiors and racial-ethnic subordinates.
Thus race and gender dynamics are played out in a three-way relationship
involving white men, white women, and women of color. 67
9) Thus, to represent race and gender as relationally constructed is
to assert that the experiences of white women and women of color are not
just different by connected in systematic ways.
White womanhood has been constructed not in isolation but in relation
to that of women of color. Therefore, race is integral to white women's
gender identities. 68
10) Acknowledging the relational nature of face and gender and therefore
the interdependence between groups means that we recognize conflicting
interests among women. 69 (ie daycare and elderly care and comparable
worth)