1. GENDER, WORK and the WORKPLACE

2. The Home as a Workplace -in US, family required services of all family
-Women’s work roles traditionally have been
closely tied to the home
-Older children took care of younger siblings
-Paid domestic helpers /
female slave labor
-Married women engage in
home-related work

3. The Industrial Revolution
-Women flocked from farm to factories as wage laborers
-Women and female children continued to be producers of
cloth (in the factory rather than home)
-”Lowell gils” - Lowell Mills, MA- female employment in textile mills
Video: Lowell Mills, Mass.

5. The Victorian Myths
”Feminine Frailty” – the Victorian norms ascended to define middle class women as physically and mentally incapable of working in the factories
Frailty– moral weakness; liability to yield to temptation
”White women” – more competitive advantage
“Women of color” – were
employed in factories
in times of work surplus at
lower wages and
less desirable jobs

6. War and Jobs Women controlled in occupations like nursing and teaching
Viewed as extension of motherhood

7. POST COLONIAL LEGACIES

8. Some Contemporary Configurations:
Women’s Work:
Some Contemporary Configurations:
I. Formal
1. Agricultural
1.1. Rice Farming
1.2. Sugar Production
1.3. Banana Export
1.4. Fishing
1.5. Raising Livestock

9. 2. Industrial 1.1. Manufacturing 1.2. Garments 1.3. Textile
1.4. Handicrafts
1.4. Microelectronics
1.5. Export-directed industrialization and women as
preferred labor

10. 3. Administrative and Clerical Work
1.1. Professional
1.2. Entrepreneurial
1.3. Managerial and executive work

11. II. Informal 1.1. Subsistence Commerce 1.2. Sex Trade
1.3. Servicing the servicemen: Prostitution an the
American Bases
1.4. Sex Tourism
1.5. Bride Trade

12. Work and Migration Work migration is female dominated
Migrant workers (from province to Manila) tend to be young (between 15-25) and with secondary education, the most
Mid 1960s until mid 1970s – many women left the country to become health workers , then live and work permanently in the US
By ,000 out of 160,000
licensed Filipino nurses went abroad