A history of working women in our country from the colonial period to the present told in excerpts from original sources.

Working Women in America: Split Dreams studies the dynamic growth in women's labor force participation with an eye to understanding what the actual experience of working women is today. The book offers a broad perspective on the diversity of women and their work, and it raises the need torethink ideas concerning work, family and gender roles in order to help solve women's work and family lie dilemmas. It utilizes a structural approach to rethink these ideas and resolve these dilemmas. The book's central argument is that to understand the position of women in the work world, one mustanalyze women's situation in the economy, the family, education, and the polity -- in short, within society as large -- because these various social institutions connect, reflect and influence one another. The authors begin with an historical perspective on women at work which recognizes theimportance of the economic and legal dimensions of women's work lives. This broad perspective lays the groundwork to a further examination of the particular work situations of women and a recognition of the fact that diversity of women's work experiences are formed by racial, class, and otherinequalities (sexual, age, etc.).

Working Women in American Literature, 1865–1950 consists of eight original essays by literary, historical, and multicultural critics on the subject of working women in late-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century American literature. The volume examines how the American working woman has been presented, misrepresented, and underrepresented in American realistic and naturalistic literature (1865–1930), and by later authors influenced by realism and naturalism. Points explored include: the historical vocational realities of working women (e.g., factory workers, seamstresses, maids, teachers, writers, prostitutes, etc.); the distortions in literary representations of female work; the ways in which these representations still inform the lives of working women today; and new perspectives from queer theory, immigrant studies, and race and class analyses. These essays draw on current feminist thought while remaining mindful of the historicity of the context. The essayists discuss important women writers of the period (for instance, Ellen Glasgow, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rachel Crothers, Willa Cather, and the understudied Ann Petry), as well as canonical writers like Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, and William Dean Howells. The discussions touch on a variety of literary and artistic genres: novels, short stories, other forms of fiction, biographies, dramas, and films. In the introductory essay and throughout the collection, the term “working women in the United States” is deconstructed; the historical and cultural definitions of “work,” and the words “work in America” are redefined through the lens of genders.

A narrative history of women's work from pre-colonial times to the present.

Rich in detail, filled with fascinating characters, and panoramic in its sweep, this magnificent, comprehensive work tells for the first time the complete story of the American woman from the Pilgrims to the 21st-century In this sweeping cultural history, Gail Collins explores the transformations, victories, and tragedies of women in America over the past 300 years. As she traces the role of females from their arrival on the Mayflower through the 19th century to the feminist movement of the 1970s and today, she demonstrates a boomerang pattern of participation and retreat. In some periods, women were expected to work in the fields and behind the barricades—to colonize the nation, pioneer the West, and run the defense industries of World War II. In the decades between, economic forces and cultural attitudes shunted them back into the home, confining them to the role of moral beacon and domestic goddess. Told chronologically through the compelling true stories of individuals whose lives, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman’s experience, Untitled is a landmark work and major contribution for us all.

Looks at the works of women historians, from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II, and their impact on the social and cultural history of the United States.

A narrative history of women's work from pre-colonial times to the present.