WORK General Definition: What people are paid to do. Synonymous with employment and income. Women’s Definition: What people do for pay, the benefit of self or others, or what one considers to be work.

Women’s Work Housework –The Second Shift Emotional work Mothering Volunteering Paid Labor

The Wage Gap Wages for women consistently fall behind men across all occupations and education levels. A 25-year-old woman who works full time year-round for the next 40 years will earn $523,000 less than the average 25-year-old man, if current wage patterns continue. About 60% of the improvement in the wage gap during the last 15 years can be attributed to the decline in men's real earnings. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the gender wage difference cannot be explained by differences in experience, education, or other legitimate qualifications.

Women’s Work and the Law 1963 Equal Pay Act differential pay based on gender for the same job is illegal 1964 Civil Rights Act 1970 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

Horizontal Segregation The clustering of people into certain job categories on the basis of gender.

Occupational Distribution: horizontal segregation While women are the majority of professional employees, their occupational distribution remains different from men: –Women make up 92% of registered nurses, 82% of all elementary and middle school teachers, and 98% of all preschool and kindergarten teachers employed in 2003 –Women make up less than 9% of all civil engineers, 7% of electrical and electronics engineers and 3% of all aircraft pilots and flight engineers.

Vertical Occupational Segregation Segregation within job/occupational categories. –Women are most heavily concentrated in low pay, low status positions.

Vertical Occupational Segregation

Comparable Worth The principle of paying women and men equivalent wages for jobs involving comparable levels of skill. Goes beyond equal pay for equal work by creating systems that assess the degree of similarity between different jobs. This works to destroy notion of Women’s work and shows how labor is labor.

Sexual Harassment Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when: –submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment –submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual –such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating hostile, or offensive working environment.

Women’s Work and the Law Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act: outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or sex (pregnancy & sexual harassment), in any terms, conditions, or privileges of employment. Sex can be used as a criterion in employment only in “those certain instances where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification.”

Sexual Harassment The Laws on Sexual Harassment Quid Pro Quo –Something for Something Hostile Environment –Verbal, physical or visual conduct that is unwelcome, based on protected status and adversely alters the work environment