Synopses & Reviews
There are fundamental tasks common to every society: children have to be raised, homes need to be cleaned, meals need to be prepared, and people who are elderly, ill, or disabled need care. Day in, day out, these responsibilities can involve both monotonous drudgery and untold rewards for those performing them, whether they are family members, friends, or paid workers. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced, because they involve the most intimate spaces of our everyday lives--our homes, our bodies, and our families.
Mignon Duffy uses a historical and comparative approach to examine and critique the entire twentieth-century history of paid care work--including health care, education and child care, and social services--drawing on an in-depth analysis of U.S. Census data as well as a range of occupational histories. Making Care Count focuses on change and continuity in the social organization along with cultural construction of the labor of care and its relationship to gender, racial-ethnic, and class inequalities. Debunking popular understandings of how we came to be in a "care crisis," this book stands apart as an historical quantitative study in a literature crowded with contemporary, qualitative studies, proposing well-developed policy approaches that grow out of the theoretical and empirical arguments.
Review
andquot;In an exemplary application of intersectional analysis to Black womenandrsquo;s labor history, Branch convincingly demonstrates that the 100- year legacy of racial and gender exclusion explains Black womenandrsquo;s poverty today.andquot;
Review
“This is an important story to tell and Branch’s Opportunity Denied makes a significant contribution to the study of black women’s work.” author of Emerging Intersections: Race, Class and Gender in Theory Policy and Pr
Review
andquot;This is a wonderful, well-written and carefully argued book. Branch does an excellent job of demonstrating how historical inequalities can take hundreds of years to remedy.andquot;
Review
andquot;Branch has done an excellent job analyzing a very complex and loaded topic. This book will surely required reading for scholars interested
in intersectionality and labor-market inequalities.andquot;
Review
andquot;Branchandrsquo;s thesis is a powerful one. What does opportunity and economic progress really mean for black women as mothers, sisters, partners, and caretakers? For Branch, and the majority of black women, it indicates an occupational structure that maintains and protects the status quo and offers little promise of change.andquot;
Review
"Duffy brings careworkers to the foreground through detailed analyses of census and other data from 1900 to 2007. Her extensive use of scholarship on careworkers' functions and others' attitudes toward them adeptly provides historical and social explanations for the numbers. A valuable, informative, historical overview of an important issue. Recommended."
Review
"Duffy offers a sweeping history of paid care work, from the hired girls of the pre-industrial period through nannies, maids, and home care workers, to today's doctors, teachers, and nurses.
Review
"At last, a great 'big picture' book on paid care! Based on census data, Mignon Duffy traces the mid-century rise in nurturant care-teachers, nurses, social workers, childcare workers, and others. She shows how despite-and partly due to-the women's movement, such jobs became ever more feminized. Along with that, she also traces abiding patterns of race and ethnicity. All told, Duffy gives us a fascinating read and a new basic text."
Review
"Duffy's work provides a valuable framework for understanding the organization of care work over time and its connection to larger patterns of inequality."
Review
"This book provides a brilliant and beautiful account of the ways in which social inequalities have fractured care provision in the United States."
Review
"Mignon Duffy has written a pathbreaking and foundational work in the study of the place of care in American society.
Making Care Count provides the most detailed and most nuanced account to date about how care work has been performed in the United States over the
past century. Duffy debunks several leading care narratives and offers a more complex view of caring and its relationship to class, racial-ethnic categories, and gender. The book is thus important both for its empirical analysis and its conceptual challenges to existing ways to think about care."
Review
"
Making Care Count packs a lot of data and analysis into a concise form. It is a great volume for feminist scholars and activists that want to contribute to social change through academic work. It challenges us to rally around the emotional and relational aspects of care work as essential at a time when austerity and cost-cutting put them at risk."
Review
andldquo;This is an important story to tell and Branchandrsquo;s Opportunity Denied makes a significant contribution to the study of black womenandrsquo;s work.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Blacks and Whites. Men and Women. Historically, each group has held very different types of jobs. The divide between these jobs was starkandmdash;clean or dirty, steady or inconsistent, skilled or unskilled. In such a rigidly segregated occupational landscape, race and gender radically limited labor opportunities, relegating Black women to the least desirable jobs. Opportunity Denied is the first comprehensive look at changes in race, gender, and womenandrsquo;s work across time, comparing the labor force experiences of Black women to White women, Black men and White men. Enobong Hannah Branch merges empirical data with rich historical detail, offering an original overview of the evolution of Black womenandrsquo;s work.
From free Black women in 1860 to Black women in 2008, the experience of discrimination in seeking and keeping a job has been determinedly constant. Branch focuses on occupational segregation before 1970 and situates the findings of contemporary studies in a broad historical context, illustrating how inequality can grow and become entrenched over time through the institution of work.
About the Author
Mignon Duffy is an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty associate of the Center for Women and Work at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Hierarchies of Preference at Work: The Need for an Intersectional Approach
2. As Good as Any Man: Black Women in Farm Labor
3. Excellent Servants: Domestic Service as Black Women's Work
4. Existing on the Industrial Fringe: Black Women in the Factory
5. Your Blues Ain't Nothing Like Mine: Race and Gender as Keys to Occupational Opportunity
6. The Illusion of Progress: Black Women's Work in the Post-Civil Rights Era
and#160;