Although both Virginia Woolf in "Three Guineas" and Betty Friedan in "The Second Stage" address the role of women as "outsiders" in a male-dominated society, their attitudes towards the issue--despite certain similarities--differ in at least one important way. "Three Guineas," a feminist-pacifist satire on…

This historic overview of Millersville State Normal School in Pennsylvania looks at the separate but equal treatment of male and female students and faculty during the late 19th and early 20th century. Although early school administrators were progressive in acceptance of both male and female students and careful to treat men and women equal in…

Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the…

Only by recognizing that class is not gender neutral can the processes of class formation and reproduction be understood. Class is defined as a process in which human beings take an active part, rather than a structure of categories into which individuals may be inserted. Gender organizes or structures class in many different ways. For example,…

An ethnographic study examined the sense of the social world as a natural order produced by the organizational members of one sales team at a New York media representation firm. Communication was observed and recorded over a ten-week period, and members of the sales team were interviewed during an additional two-week period. Results indicated that…

Women's participation in the workforce is increasing, spurred by inflation, the rising level of consumer aspirations, the increasing number of families headed by women as a consequence of divorce, and the declining birth rate. However, the work women do continues to be segregated from men's and comparatively poorly paid, while women still carry…

This paper addresses the diverse facts that influence the information seeking behavior of women in India, including: (1) the type of information women need; (2) social factors (i.e., caste, class, urban/rural, literate/illiterate, educated/uneducated); (3) economic factors (i.e., employed, unemployed, employed in organized sector, employed in the…

In an "Esquire" magazine column, John Simon attempts to trivialize, through visual satire, the articulation by Wayne O'Neil of the linguistic position that teaching standard English perpetuates oppression and is itself oppressive; but his attempt provides, instead, a vivid representation of the political relationship between the teaching of…

The culture in a female-managed residential college that focused on communication studies was examined. The college, which was opended in 1981, is a unique living unit under the supervision of a head and associate master, in which 107 students live in a collection of suites representing the academic disciplines of journalism,…

Research on economic and employment opportunities for men and women has not focused enough on structural features of the labor market. Structural features, which influence worker's capacities to translate their human resources into labor market achievements, include profitability of industries, strength of worker organizations, skill requirements,…

This paper compares the influence of state policies on gender roles and women's empowerment in China, India, and South Korea. In 1950, these newly formed states were largely poor and agrarian, with common cultural factors that placed similar severe constraints on women's autonomy. The three countries followed very different paths of development,…

Increases in the divorce rate, decreases in women's childbearing, and increases in women's participation in the labor force represent three major trends that have had a great impact on women and on the family as a setting in which to work, raise children, and control resources. Although women's employment is clearly related in part to their…