Women in Non-Traditional Careers: Home

Despite the participation of African American women in all aspects of home-front activity during World War II, advertisements, recruitment posters, and newsreels portrayed largely white women as army nurses, defense plant workers, concerned mothers, and steadfast wives. This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. InBitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period. Mostly appearing for the first time since their original publication, the materials inBitter Fruit feature black women operating technical machinery, working in army uniforms, entertaining audiences, and pursuing a college education. The articles praise the women's accomplishments as pioneers working toward racial equality; the fiction and poetry depict female characters in roles other than domestic servants and give voice to the bitterness arising from discrimination that many women felt. With these various images, Honey masterfully presents the roots of the postwar civil rights movement and the leading roles black women played in it.

Ruth Milkman's research in women's labor history has contributed important perspectives on work and unionism in the United States. On Gender, Labor, and Inequality presents four decades of Milkman's essential writings, tracing the parallel evolutions of her ideas and the field she helped define.
Milkman's introduction frames a career-spanning scholarly project: her interrogation of historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the workplace, and the efforts to challenge those inequalities. Early chapters focus on her pioneering work on women's labor during the Great Depression and the World War II years. In the book's second half, Milkman turns to the past fifty years, a period that saw a dramatic decline in gender inequality even as growing class imbalances created greater-than-ever class disparity among women. She concludes with a previously unpublished essay comparing the impact of the Great Depression and the Great Recession on women workers.

The most inclusive book to date on U.S. women's collective history! A landmark work, The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History gathers together many articles to offer a diverse, rich, and often neglected panorama of the nation's past. Written by more than 300 contributors, drawn from various areas of expertise, these narrative and interpretive entries "effectively cover five centuries of women's experiences" (Bloomsbury Review). Here are articles on cowgirls and child care, on the daily lives of single women and the changing notions of motherhood, on the artistic contributions of women of color and the history of Jewish feminism. Wide-ranging in scope and wonderfully accessible, this unique resource reexamines with fresh clarity and brio the issues and concerns that color the lives of all women.

Susan Eisenberg began her apprenticeship with Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in 1978, the year president Jimmy Carter set goals and timetables for the hiring of women on federally assisted construction projects and for the inclusion of women in apprenticeship programs. Eisenberg expected not only a challenging job and the camaraderie of a labor union but also the chance to be part of a historic transformation, social and economic, that would make the construction trades accessible to women.That transformation did not happen. In this book, full of the raw drama and humor found on a construction site, Eisenberg gracefully weaves the voices of thirty women who worked as carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, painters, and plumbers to examine why their numbers remained small. Speaking as if to a friend, women recall their decisions to enter the trades, their first days on the job, and their strategies to gain training and acceptance. They assess with thought, passion, and twenty years' perspective the affirmative action efforts.

From her experiences as a young lesbian feminist in the 1970s, to her life as a trailblazing electrician and tradeswoman activist in the 80s and 90s, to 21st century remodeling, Molly Martin’s collection of essays and stories takes the reader on a journey filled with humor, political struggle and eye-opening adventures.

Since women started working in the trades in the 1970s, very little has been published about their experiences. In this provocative and important book, Kate Braid tells the story of how she became a carpenter in the face of skepticism and discouragement. In 1977 when Braid was broke and out of work, her male friends encouraged her to apply as a labourer on a construction site on Pender Island, off the coast of British Columbia. She’d never heard of a woman doing this kind of work, but she was hired because (she later found out) the boss hoped that a woman onsite would improve the men’s performance. For the next fifteen years Braid worked as a labourer, apprentice and journeywoman carpenter, building houses, bridges and high-rises. She was one of the first qualified women carpenters in British Columbia, the first woman to join the Vancouver local of the Carpenters’ Union, the first to teach construction full-time at the BC Institute of Technology and one of the first women to run her own construction company. Though she loved the work, it was not an easy career choice but slowly she carved a role for herself, asking first herself, then those who would challenge her, why shouldn’t a woman be a carpenter?

For more than two decades, Hilary Peach worked as a transient welder--and one of the only women-- in the Boilermakers Union. Distilled from a vast cache of journals, notes, and keen observations, Thick Skin follows Peach from the West Coast shipyards and pulp mills of British Columbia, through the Alberta tar sands and the Ontario rust belt, to the colossal power generating stations of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. At times edging up to the surreal, Thick Skin is a collection of strange stories carefully told, in tenderness and ferocity, for anyone who has spent time in a trade, or is curious about the unseen world of industrial construction.

In August 2003, one of the largest wildfires in Canadian history struck near Kelowna, British Columbia and the surrounding Okanagan Valley, causing unprecedented damage. As Shelley Pacholok observes in this innovative study, the turbulence and extreme conditions that followed in the wake of this disaster destabilized an important area of social life – that of gender relations.Into the Fire combines insights from gender studies and disaster studies to explore the extent to which notions of “masculinity” and “femininity” are challenged in the wake of crises. Pacholok focuses on how gender relations were simultaneously sustained and disrupted among those who fought the fire, drawing on media representations as well as interviews with firefighters. Into the Fire illuminates how disasters can serve as catalysts for new patterns of gender, even in highly masculine spaces.

The Women in Blue Helmets tells the story of the first all-female police unit deployed by India to the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia in January 2007. Lesley J. Pruitt investigates how the unit was originated, developed, and implemented, offering an important historical record of this unique initiative. Examining precedents in policing in the troop-contributing country and recent developments in policing in the host country, the book offers contextually rich examination of all-female units, explores the potential benefits of and challenges to women's participation in peacekeeping, and illuminates broader questions about the relationship between gender, peace, and security.

Beginning with a history of women in police work, Snow traces their rise through the ranks, focusing first on the first women to be given a patrol assignment. In their own words, policewomen describe the challenges and advantages of being a woman on the force, and demonstrate the perseverance many of them needed to make it in this mostly boys'club. Facing obstacles such as sex discrimination and harassment, requirements meant to block their ascent, and personal issues that arise when family members don't understand their call to duty, these women broke new ground and paved the way for others who would go on to leadership positions and other higher ranking roles.

As the first in-depth historical study of women's involvement in uniform, plain-clothes and undercover policing in the period before formal integration with male officers in the 1970s, it charts the relationship between gender, surveillance and penal-welfare strategies. For much of the twentieth century women police played a ‘specialist'role in the detection and prevention of child abuse and neglect, the investigation of sexual violence and, in London, the regulation of prostitution.

This book seeks to understand the complexities of talented and high-performing Black girls and women in STEM across the P-20 trajectory. Analogously, this volume aims to understand the intersections between giftedness, its identification, and racial, gender, and academic discipline identities. The dearth of literature on this subject suggests that Black girls and women have unique experiences in gifted programming, in large part because of factors associated with gifted programs in general.

This book provides a glimpse into the journeys that women from diverse backgrounds and ethnic differences take in their higher education undergraduate or graduate careers.

Researchers have revealed that there are several environmental and social barriers including stereotypes, gender bias, and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities that continue to block women's progress in STEM. In this book, the authors address the issues that encounter women of color in STEM in higher education.

Continuing to challenge American colleges and universities is the underrepresentation of women faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, particularly Latinas and other underrepresented women of color. Advancing Women in Academic STEM Fields through Dual Career Policies and Practices, comprised of scholarly essays, case studies, and interviews, argues that to address equity issues related to women faculty, academic institutions should consider work-life perspectives, including dual careers, when designing faculty recruitment, retention, and advancement strategies. By connecting the topic of dual career hiring to gender and ethnicity, the volume extends the current research on work-life integration by sharing best practices and approaches that have worked among institutions of higher education while incorporating issues related to intersectionality.

Training for and pursuing a career in science can be treacherous for women; many more begin than ultimately complete at every stage. Characterizing this as a pipeline problem, however, leads to a focus on individual women instead of structural conditions. The goal of the book is to offer an alternative model that better articulates the ideas of agency, constraint, and variability along the path to scientific careers for women

The Future of Tech is Female considers the paradoxes involved in women's ascent to leadership roles, suggesting industry-wide solutions to combat gender inequality. Drawing upon 15 years of experience in the field, Douglas M. Branson traces the history of women in the information technology industry in order to identify solutions for the issues facing women today.

In Sight is a memoir about how a love of science and discovery drove Julia Levy, a celebrated scholar and biotech CEO, to work her way through gender bias in order to achieve academic and professional recognition. Her story traces the unconventional invention of a breakthrough drug treatment from its development from laboratory research to its application as a medical treatment for vision loss. Told from a female perspective, In Sight is a unique and personal story covering Levy's early years as a refugee, her university training in the UK, and her appointment as professor at the University of British Columbia.

Focusing on STEM fields, where gender equity is most lacking, The book begins by outlining the need for a systemic approach to gender equity. Looking at the successful work being done by specific colleges and universities around the country, they analyze twelve strategies these institutions have used to create more inclusive working environments, including implementing inclusive recruitment and hiring practices, addressing biased evaluation methods, establishing equitable tenure and promotion processes, strengthening accountability structures, particularly among senior leadership, improving unwelcoming department climates and cultures, supporting dual-career couples, offering flexible work arrangements that accommodate personal lives, promoting faculty professional development and advancement

Diversity drives better business results; however, despite decades of effort, women make up only 15% of engineers. Retaining Women in Engineering: The Empowerment of Lean Development approaches the problem of women leaving engineering from a systems-level perspective to change the way engineering is done and level the playing field between men and women. This book utilizes the six principles of Lean Development and draws from the learnings of the field of medicine, recognizing that access to a vast amount of written knowledge is an important part of a physician’s learning process. Using these principles, the book provides leaders with concrete strategies and methods to change the way engineering is done and learning occurs. Integrated within the book are "gray box stories" which describe two different worlds that engineers work in: that of traditional development and that of Lean Development. These stories underscore the way that the gender confidence gap, bias, and stereotypes affect a female engineer’s career.