Gender and Work: Exploring Intersectionality, Resistance, and Identity 1443889822, 9781443889827

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Historical Underpinnings of the Gendered Workplace
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
II. Case Studies and Social Scientific Approaches
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
III. Gendered Work in Literature and Popular Culture
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Contributors

Citation preview

Gender and Work

Gender and Work: Exploring Intersectionality, Resistance, and Identity Edited by

Miglena Sternadori and Carrie Prentice

Gender and Work: Exploring Intersectionality, Resistance, and Identity Edited by Miglena Sternadori and Carrie Prentice This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Miglena Sternadori, Carrie Prentice and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8982-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8982-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 I. Historical Underpinnings of the Gendered Workplace Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 What’s Wrong With Leaning In? Alice Kessler-Harris Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 19 Shifting Markets, Shifting Meanings: Repositioning the ERA in Feminist Dialogues Allison Schwartz Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 42 Work, Work, Work: Women’s Paid, Unpaid, and Literary Labors in a Historicized Reading of Diana Garcia's Labor Poetry Kristina Popiel Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 59 The Unique Environment for Women’s Work in Institutions for the Feeble-minded, 1876-1916: Prestige, Authority, and Respect Katrina Jirik Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 76 Whose “Y” Is It? Defining Meaningful Work in the Competition for Women’s Souls, 1865-1907 Thomas James Harlow II. Case Studies and Social Scientific Approaches Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 90 Policies and Practices to Level the Playing Field for Women Faculty: The Case of North Dakota State University Canan Bilen-Green, Karen Froelich, and Charlene Wolf-Hall

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 111 The Unfinished Work of Feminism: An Analysis of Online User-Generated Comments Responding to Public Opinion Polls about Gender Equality Kelly McKay-Semmler and Shane Semmler Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 127 When Your Spouse is Your Co-Worker: Managing the Work-Life Boundaries in Academic Couples Carolyn Prentice, Ilmira Dulyanova, and Laura Pollom Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 145 Explaining the Gender Wage Gap: The Role of Discrimination and the Mining Industry Blessing Ugwuanyi and Chian Jones Ritten Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 167 Taking Time “Off”: Gender and Race as Factors affecting Young Adults’ Attitudes toward Workers Requesting Parental Leave Kayla R. Nalan-Sheffield, S. Jean Caraway, Haley N. Schwenk, Renata J. Surette, and Justin Fang III. Gendered Work in Literature and Popular Culture Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 184 Women’s Work: Motherhood and the Modern Woman in Barbara Kingsolver Kiera Ball Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 198 The Intersection of L. T. Meade’s Professional and Domestic Victorian Celebrity Jacqueline H. Harris Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 211 The Class-Bending Love Affair with the Factory Girl: Rejecting the Western Capitalist Fantasy in Clara Viebig’s “The Cigar Factory Girl” and “Margret’s Pilgrimage” Rebecca Elaine Steele

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Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 228 The Value in Women’s Education and Employment in post-Revolutionary America: Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette and The Boarding School Caroline Martin Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 242 Weaving Expectations and Bonds in Women’s Work: Teaching Queenship in Brave Sarah Chase Crosby Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 254 Women’s Production and Reproduction in Downton Abbey: Parallels across Time and Space Lara Carlson Contributors ............................................................................................. 268

INTRODUCTION: ON MODERN WORKPLACES AND OLD-FASHIONED SISTERHOOD MIGLENA STERNADORI TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

AND CAROLYN PRENTICE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

One needs only glance at a few news magazines to see the resurgence of an old culture war in the West—namely, the question of women’s work outside the home. It is in some ways hard to believe that this issue, debated as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries, continues to hold our attention in 2016. The foci have clearly changed, considering that few people nowadays emphasize the supposedly deleterious effects of a mother’s work on her offspring or point to women’s alleged emotional instability as an obstacle to career success. Still, the conversation remains stubbornly gendered: Is it possible for a woman to “have it all,” in the sense of combining family and work? How feasible is it to marry, have kids, and be a well-paid professional in a position of authority? There are more than two sides in this culture war, but to simplify things, the debate is frequently cast as a battle between the stances of two empowered women: Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, who advised working women to “lean in” (the title of her homonymous book1), and Anne Marie Slaughter, who quit her top post in the State Department because of trouble at home and wrote a much-cited essay challenging the notion that women can “have it all.”2 Both women were attacked and criticized—most often by other women—for what they purportedly meant, sidelining their argument that the modern workplace is not welcoming to women because it reflects an outdated assumption: that

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Sandberg, S. (2013). Lean in: Women, work, and the will to lead. Random House. Slaughter, A. M. (2012, July/August). Why women still can’t have it all. The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com.

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Introduction

employees are men with stay-at-home wives or no familial obligations. The “options” most often discussed—“Should women make the sacrifices needed to earn a place in a masculine work culture?” or “Should they quit in protest of the system’s rigged nature?”—ignore the fact that for many women, as well as men, work is not a choice but a matter of financial necessity and a crucial source of personal, creative fulfillment. Cognizant of this newly re-erupted culture war, the steering committee of The University of South Dakota’s biennial conference on women’s and gender studies picked “Gender and Work” as the theme of the 2015 event. For some of us, this subject was deeply personal. It was a committee member who had experienced a hostile work environment and was set to leave the institution before the conference dates who offered the initial and strongest arguments for this theme. Others soon agreed, pitching in ideas about how to explore all the nuanced meanings of “work” in the context of feminism and gender equality. The call for papers ultimately identified the following six subthemes: (1) The work of feminism: What are the main tasks still facing feminism? How do various feminist groups construct their identities through the lens of “work to be done”? How does feminism’s work intersect with the goals of other social movements, such as sustainability and eco-feminism? (2) Gendered meanings of work: What is women’s work? What is men’s work? What is a work of art? What is a work of heart? (3) Work-related intersections of gender, class, and race: What creative negotiations of gender, race, and class occur in various work environments? How do class and race influence gendered definitions of women’s and men’s work? How are these gendered meanings being resisted or re-defined? (4) Gendered pay: How do class and race influence the wage gap? How have these influences changed over time? What other social and cultural factors influence compensation? What is fair compensation for work outside the formal workplace, including childcare, housework, and research work (especially conducted by graduate students)? (5) Labor, unionization, and Title IX: How does the unionization of college athletes affect colleges’ Title IX enforcement and compliance? How does Title IX apply to the academic workplace, and does it protect pregnant graduate students and faculty? (6) Work and stress: How do gendered work environments affect women’s and men’s health? How do gendered ways of coping with stress affect long-term health outcomes? How does the stress

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resulting from gender, race, and class discrimination affect decisions to leave the formal workplace or transition to part-time work? What are the effects of telecommuting on the dynamics of the gendered workplace? The call for papers was intentionally interdisciplinary and broad, but most of the submissions were discipline-specific and reflective of the general lean-in-versus-lean-out discourse. The conference’s keynote speaker, Alice Kessler-Harris—a distinguished professor of American history at Columbia University—offered an engaging exploration of the meaning of “leaning-in,” concluding that women’s work success must serve as an impetus for far-ranging and sweeping changes to make workplaces more welcoming. The plenary session featured the efforts of a team of dedicated female academics at North Dakota State University, who emphasized awareness of implicit biases against women and a slew of decisive actions to level the playing field for women faculty. NDSU’s gender-equity project, described in the sixth chapter of this collection, was supported by a $3.8-million grant from the National Science Foundation, with far-reaching implications. Sadly, at the plenary session we saw no administrators, whom we had wistfully imagined listening and contemplating ways to change the culture at our own institution. In spite of the theme’s far-reaching implications, the audience was limited; most attendees were feminist scholars from the Upper Plains. The goal of the present collection is to share some of the most interesting and worthwhile presentations with a wider audience in the U.S. and internationally. The selected manuscripts contain thought-provoking perspectives and findings. Some, concentrated in the first section of the book, add much needed historical context and perspectives. Allison Schwartz’s chapter exploring the failure of the ERA campaign as a function of women’s economic insecurities and skepticism about law’s power to eliminate gender inequalities provides unusually perceptive insights into the discrepancy between highly publicized political battles and the immeasurable subtleties of actual public opinion. Kristina Popiel’s historicized reading of Diana Garcia’s labor poetry follows the plight of female migrant workers, whose “unfinished lines to tend” represent the brutal reality of waged work and compulsory labor of care for others. Thomas Harlow’s chapter on the origins and philosophy of the Young Women’s Christian Association offers food for thought and more reasons to feel grateful to any parent who has ever utilized YWCA’s affordable childcare and after-school services. And Kate Jirik’s chapter about women’s surprising leadership in institutions for the care of the feeble-

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minded more than a century ago reminds us that women’s work successes may have been hindered but also occasionally facilitated by assumptions about their nurturing nature. The second part of the collection comprises several insightful manuscripts from the fields of communication, economics, and management. For anyone who thought the gender wage gap is mostly reflective of career interruptions for motherhood, Blessing Ugwuanyi and Chian Jones Ritten’s paper is an eye-opening read. It offers quantitative evidence that when educational attainment, years of workforce experience, and choice of occupation and industry are taken into account, in states like Texas and North Dakota women should be making more—not less—than men. We also learn from the chapter by Carolyn Prentice, Ilmira Dulyanova, and Laura Pollom that working alongside one’s academic spouse makes work-life balance more achievable for some, but also comes with a reputational cost, especially for female scholars. The chapter by Kayla Nalan-Sheffield and colleagues offers mostly optimistic findings, suggesting there are few differences in young adults’ attitudes toward male and female employees requesting parental leave. The third section of the collection consists of chapters exploring how female characters in literary and popular texts (including Disney’s film Brave and the PBS TV series Downton Abbey) have created and resolved their own fictional lean-in-versus-lean-out choices, offering both inspiration and caution to female readers. Unsurprisingly, this section reminds us that motherhood and work have long been cast as mutually exclusive; yet, there is nothing inherently unmotherly about women’s work or inherently unworkable about motherhood. As Kiera Ball emphasizes in her chapter on Barbara Kingsolver’s literary characters, sometimes seeming impossibilities are resolved when women work together instead of competing with one another. Being communityoriented is what is usually expected of women, but it apparently pays to play along. Little wonder that, as Jackie Harris emphasizes in her chapter on writer’s L.T. Meade’s celebrity, even the most industrious professional may end up stereotyped in the public eye as nothing more than an Angel of the House. Sadly, sometimes the only way a woman manages to “have it all” (read: sexual reproduction and satisfying work) is by carefully managing the public perceptions of her life, as Lara Carson suggests in her close reading of Downton Abbey. It is important to remember, however, as Caroline Martin reminds us in her analysis of Hannah Webster Foster’s novels, that women’s employment was not always defined as paid work or domestic labor but as any activity (preferably useful but sometimes pleasurable) with which a

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woman might choose to occupy her time. Sometimes, women’s work is to weave peace in families and kingdoms, wisely effecting change through what seems like gendered labor, as Sara Chase notes in her analysis of Disney’s film Brave. And sometimes, women’s most important work is her own journey—such as freeing herself from sexual repression—as Rebecca Steele suggests in her chapter about Clara Viebig’s novels challenging the idealized trope of the poor, chaste working girl, whose main “commodity” is her virtue. The scholarly interest in women’s work and the implicit obstacles they face—often dubbed “glass floor,” “glass ceiling,” and “glass walls”—is not a fad, considering that the next several decades are seen as crucial to eliminating gender inequality. One of the most ambitious (and probably unrealistic) goals on the United Nations’ global agenda is to achieve gender equality worldwide by 2030.3 In the U.S., the Institute for Women’s Policy Research predicts that the gender pay gap will close in 2058 for the nation; however, in some states, it may take until the 2100s for women to earn as much as men.4 In the context of this social change, this collection offers valuable insights into the work-related intersections of gender, class, and race by using a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Case studies of the gendered workplace are presented side by side with manuscripts that weave the literary and historical contexts needed to understand contemporary patterns of labor market discrimination and equity. We hope these essays will inspire new research agendas and spark future scholarship that embraces and theorizes social justice for women and men alike.

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Kaufman, E. (2015, September 28). United Nations sets goal to achieve gender quality by 2030. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com. 4 www.statusofwomendata.org.

I. HISTORICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE GENDERED WORKPLACE

CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS WRONG WITH LEANING IN?1 ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

I have discovered in the last 30 or 40 years that the perspectives through which historians look at history change dramatically—not just from generation to generation, but sometimes from year to year, or from graduate-student generation to graduate-student generation, that is, every six or seven years. My favorite illustration of how perspectives change comes from a story a kindergarten teacher told me. She walked into class one day, and because she wanted to teach the class about the evils of alcohol, she brought a little wiggly worm, a tumbler of water, and a tumbler of pure alcohol. She popped the worm into the water, and it swam around happily, and the six-year-olds sitting around her giggled. Then, she took the worm out of the glass, and popped it into the glass of alcohol, and the worm shriveled, crumbled, and disappeared. She looked at the class, which was staring at her horrified, and to a little boy standing in the back she said, “So what does this mean, Danny?” He looked at her and said, “Well, it means if you drink alcohol, you don’t get no worms!” Now, that wasn’t quite the lesson that she wanted to teach, but it is a lesson that works nevertheless for what I want to say. I would like to start by describing an event that occurred a few months ago. I went to a conference in New York City, organized by The Baffler, a magazine that covers controversial topics, called “Feminism for What? Equality in the Workplace after Lean In.” You all know about Lean In—the book that Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, wrote to encourage women to take charge, put themselves forward, and take leadership positions. What I heard at the conference was a debate between and among feminists—those who supported individual strategies for

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Dr. Kessler-Harris delivered this keynote address at the 2015 Women and Gender Studies conference at the University of South Dakota. She retains copyright of this talk, which is printed with permission.

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getting ahead, on the one side, and, on the other side, feminists who argued that those strategies were counterproductive, that supporting those strategies was negative. They would, argued the naysayers, encourage some women to get ahead, and that would be fine, but the cost of getting ahead would be to draw attention away from collective strategies that would ameliorate some of the larger problems faced by all women—or many women—in our society. These big issues include things like poverty, unemployment, family disintegration or dysfunction, and rising inequality—the spreading gap between rich and poor. To my mind, the biggest problem of them all is the loss of dignity that comes with the limits on the democratic voice faced by people who live in poverty, on unemployment insurance, or on transfer payments. These problems, argued one large group in that meeting, required collective solutions—solutions that came from the bottom up, that were encompassing rather than derived from the interests of individual women. These collective solutions are indirectly referenced in Lean In, but Sheryl Sandberg sees them as pipe dreams that are never going to happen. She favors encouraging women to make the best of themselves, to go after top positions, and she argues that only when women have power will they be able to change the conditions of the world in which they live. We women, she argues, should have three concerns: how we can climb to the top; how we can balance family and work; and how we can reduce the stress level involved in getting to leadership positions. Now, that is a very different perception of feminism than the one that many in my generation embraced a few decades ago. I finished graduate school in 1968, and by 1969, I was deeply involved in the women’s movement. I am part of the generation that saw and participated in the second wave’s efforts to transform the society. Many in my generation started out not by thinking about individual solutions, but by thinking more collectively. Among the panelists at the conference “Feminism for What?” many would have disagreed with me, with each other, and with Sheryl Sandberg. Linda Hirshman, a lawyer and a journalist, who is the author of Get to Work (2007), asked what was really the crucial question, “Well, who could object to leaning in? Who could object to women pushing themselves up to the top?” But then she paused, and said, “What’s the harm in leaningin? What harm does it impose?” She had answers to that question. She argued that leaning-in supported the social stratification of women in that it encouraged those women who wanted to get ahead to lean on and rely on poorer, less privileged, women, whom they needed to hold down to achieve the top positions they wanted. Leaning-in, in other words, would

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encourage people to adopt strategies that not only supported themselves but also supported the economic and social causes responsible for undermining the collective well-being of all women or of most women. The very idea of leaning-in derived from the notion that capitalism and the marketplace could and should benefit from competition instead of from cooperation and a sense of the collective good. There is, of course, some truth in the notion that competition is beneficial. But if so, then perhaps leaning-in is incompatible with feminism; arguably, the pushing forward of an individual undermines collective well-being—which is exactly the opposite of what many in our generation hoped to accomplish. I am, you will notice, here attacking capitalism, but not all of it. I am attacking what you might call the excesses of free-market capitalism, which argues that the only thing that matters is an individual’s relationship to the marketplace and, also, that the marketplace will govern what is fair and what is just. That debate reflects a huge division among women. It is a debate that we had in the 1970s and which, to some extent, at least, continues today. It goes to the roots of our sense of ourselves as a nation, and perhaps even further than that. Are we, I want to ask, individuals—each pursuing our own interests, and in the manner of Jeremy Bentham, hoping that in the end, the pursuit of selfinterest will enhance the collective good—the good of all of us as a nation? Philosophers call that negative liberty. Isaiah Berlin makes the argument that individuals who are allowed to pursue their own good require simply to be left alone; they want liberty, but they want negative liberty; they want no intervention in what they can do. That reasoning, you will recognize, of course, underlies and sustains the current widespread support for a free market. “Just keep your government hands off my Medicare” is one of its favorite slogans. Just keep your hands off, and the market will take care of everything; everything will take care of itself. But second-wave feminism had another root as well; that root was vested in a much more shared notion—you might call it a collective notion of what the nation as a whole might accomplish. Isaiah Berlin calls this positive liberty, an active effort to make sure that everybody has sufficient economic resources and economic security to participate effectively in public life. We feminists believed in something that we called sisterhood, the idea of solidarity, the notion that we were in some sense each other’s keepers, that our struggle was to be inclusionary, not exclusionary. We can put this another way. In the 20th century, T.H. Marshall, a British social theorist who has become very influential in welfare state theory, argued that the extension of what he called social rights would be necessary to preserve the civil and political rights we had won and

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benefited from in the 19th and the earlier part of the 20th century. These civil and political rights—freedom of speech, of religion, of association, and the right to vote we all take for granted—had extended formal democracy to almost everybody. But, he argued, to activate and make those rights real would require an extension of what he called social rights. There was no way, he thought, that a nation could maintain democracy unless its citizens shared in a modicum of equality. To preserve and extend real democracy, a society had to be prepared to provide citizens with sufficient food, decent housing, jobs as needed, and a good or at least, a reasonable education. In short, society had to provide those things that would enable individuals to function effectively as political and civil citizens. It was no good to offer democratic freedoms without the education and the economic security that would enable people to participate fully in their government and their polity. Women activists have embraced the idea of social rights for all for more than a century. Female abolitionists, for example, identified the sisterhood of all women in the persona of the mother. They argued that no mother should be enslaved—that in their shared motherhood resided the capacity of all women to identify with each other. During the Progressive Period women like Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and the founders of the social settlements believed that only reforming municipal politics as a whole could provide the children of immigrants with healthy environments that included clean water, sanitation, and safe playgrounds. Children, they believed, had a right to access kindergartens to give them a good start in life. And educating immigrant women would encourage them to learn American standards of cleanliness and care, to consume healthy foods, and to raise children strong enough to serve their new country. Intuitively, generations of women have understood that protecting the general wellbeing-- maintaining what Berlin calls positive liberty—would enhance the capacity of individuals to participate as citizens in the polity. Exercising political and civil liberty, in short, required that housing, safety, and health first be protected. Insofar as women, in various movements and combinations, have attempted to provide the resources to promote these social ends, they have done their share to honor a vision of collective progress as the heart of democracy. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, questions of positive liberty rose to the surface. The economic crisis prompted a pioneering president to ask how, in the face of 25% unemployment rate, family desertion, housing evictions, and bread lines, democracy could be preserved. A rising Communist Party was only one of many forms of radicalism that sought answers to confront the challenges posed to American liberty by the

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tearing apart of its social fabric. To respond to the challenge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed what he called a New Deal—a social framework that would provide some of the collective needs of a desperate people and thus shore up the foundation stones of a continuing democracy. It was the genius of New Dealers to argue that paying attention to social needs would require restraining capitalism. For the moment, at least, the idea of negative liberty was abandoned. Corporate leaders were asked to limit their freedom of operations for the collective good, their profits deemed momentarily less important than providing wider employment for the population. Higher corporate taxation, regulated wages, and government-sponsored work programs followed. So did old-age pension, aid to families with dependent children, and unemployment insurance. It was no accident that when the federal government stepped into the position of providing positive liberty, many of its new programs were designed by women who had come out of the Progressive Period’s tradition of collective responsibility. These women included secretary of labor Frances Perkins; Mary Dewson, who had worked in the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission; Grace Abbott, the head of the Children’s Bureau, who designed the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program; Edith Abbott, a designer of the Social Security Act; and Eleanor Roosevelt herself, who had been a part of the Women’s Trade Union League. Out of the New Deal came the notion of maintaining a reasonable standard of living for all. The idea of an American standard of living survived the presidency of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and lasted for some 60 years. Eisenhower, as he took office in 1953, committed himself to participating in what has become known as the welfare state. In his decade and into the following years, a consensus arose as to identifying all of America’s citizens as brothers and sisters, committed to a shared and prosperous survival. That commitment fueled the rejuvenation of an active civil rights movement. It prompted President Lyndon Baines Johnson to support civil rights legislation in the face of still active racism, and it inspired his war on poverty. To paraphrase Johnson, “You need an even space at the starting gate to have an even competition.” Many, especially activists in civil rights and the women’s movement believed that the government could and should help to foster equality by providing that even space through programs such as Headstart, job training, more effective and more generous welfare benefits for single mothers, and affirmative action programs. In spite of this widespread support for the equalization of opportunity, an overwhelming tension remained, and remains, in American society—a

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tension between collective responsibility and individual success that many women felt as the women’s movement was beginning. On the one hand, a large part of the women’s movement emerged in the early 1960s out of a desire to provide women with opportunities they had previously lacked. The 1963 report of John Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women said as much. The 1963 Equal Pay Act emerged from the combined efforts of policymakers and female members of Congress. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which started work in 1965, only slowly included policing gender discrimination as part of an agenda that it initially limited to race. When it did so, it acted under pressure from the newly organized National Organization for Women. At the same time, an equally important feminist sensibility insisted on the collective good: a just and fair society for all women, they argued, would involve eliminating poverty, providing better schools for all; altering the patriarchal structure of the family; re-shaping gendered sensibilities. By the early 1970s, the feminist demand to open up the starting gate— then called liberal feminism—encouraged women to break down barriers to graduate and professional education. In 1968, only 2.5 percent of the nation’s physicians and 3.5 percent of the nation’s lawyers were female. For the most part, law, architecture, medical and dental schools had been closed to women. As women clamored at the gates, admissions barriers began to fall. Legislative pressure (including the infamous Title IX) pried open the gates of prestigious Ivy-League institutions and professional schools. Women, in numbers, soon began to benefit from the new openings, and to use their newly won education to make strides in the labor market. These gains especially benefited white, middle-class women who were positioned to succeed in the free-market competitive race to which they had, at last, been admitted. As women increasingly became educated, as their numbers in colleges increased to more than 50 percent of college enrollees throughout the U.S. (they started at about 37-39 percent and were initially channeled into very narrow directions), many of us women eagerly took advantage of liberal feminism. I am one of the people who benefited from this. We moved forward in our chosen fields. And, as we challenged the stereotypes and caricatures that had kept us in limited jobs, some of us moved to the top. In my History Department at Columbia University, there was only one tenured woman as late as the mid-1970s. But by the early 1980s, the number of women in the pipeline began to expand, and women are now about a third of the tenured faculty and full professors. At every step of our progress, and in every field, we benefited from affirmative action legislation, which forced employers to report the

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numbers of women and minorities they hired, and which prevented trade unions and union members (still an important segment of the workforce), from discriminating against women. We benefited as well from Title IX, of the Education Amendments of 1972, which mandated that any university that took advantage of federal funding had to provide equal opportunity for women in sports and other activities. And we were already beginning to fight for equality in pensions, for medical insurance that covered pregnancy and childbirth, and for fair child-support payments for divorced women. As the 1980s and the Reagan years opened, we were positioned to fight for something we could call economic equality— something that would include family medical leaves, comparable pay for comparable worth, and an end to glass ceilings. If we had not yet won, we thought we were on the way to winning. We were wrong. We were just plain wrong because, by the 1990s, it was clear that whatever our victories were, they were limited to a relatively privileged group of women—those educated well enough to take advantage of the open opportunities and those willing or able to sacrifice family lives for labor-market satisfactions. For most women, the old rules still applied. They were channeled into limited segments of the labor market (teaching, food service, low-level office work, cleaning homes and offices, child care). For these jobs, pay remained low—often minimum wage—and collectively less than 80 percent of the pay of comparable male workers. Single mothers with small children were increasingly expected to contribute to their own support, at wages that could not sustain families and without adequate childcare, public transportation, or housing. In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act abruptly terminated the right of individuals to government help, even in the face of dire necessity. For two decades, the numbers of children in poverty climbed. For women with children, even judicial decisions preventing discrimination did not guarantee an even playing field. Their futures were constrained by explicit and implicit sanctions against “employees” thought to be unable to commit fully to the workforce. A woman (single or partnered) with children under 18 might find that her wages lagged somewhere between 7 and 10 percent below the wages of a comparable woman with no children. Economists called this a maternal penalty. Fathers, in contrast, benefited from a paternal boost. Their wages tended to fall some 5 percent above those of men without small children. The continuing wage gap illustrated the good and bad results of liberal feminist efforts. In 1968, a fully employed woman might expect to earn 59 cents for every dollar earned by a fully employed man. By 1980, she was

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making 73 cents to his dollar, and then 77 cents in 1990. The numbers climbed a little higher—to 79 cents in the year 2000—and then started to fall. We are now back down to 77 cents to the male dollar. And then, there was the glass ceiling. While occupational segregation —that is, the channeling of men and women into different kinds of jobs— had diminished dramatically over the years, with women entering formerly male enclaves, in the trades, in the financial industry, and in law and medicine, they still had difficulty advancing to the highest slots. They had entered middle management; they were getting jobs in the academic community, in hospitals (even as doctors), in law firms, and in banks. In each field, the data showed that women disproportionately occupied its lowest rungs. They lagged as neurosurgeons, cardiologists, law partners, and chaired professors in prestigious institutions; they remained only marginally represented among chief executive officers and chief financial officers. In the lowest-paid rungs, women still constituted some 95 percent of cleaning personnel, some 97 percent of child care providers, and more than 80 percent of home health aides By the year 2000, a new set of concerns had entered the fray. Instead of recognizing that women had in some sense won a victory and opening the doors to welcome them, employers, and then women themselves began to raise questions about children. Some opted for the “mommy track” in law firms. This allowed women to work only 40 hours a week instead of the usual 60 or 70, but at the cost of an eventual partnership. Academic women asked to delay the tenure clock for those who gave birth or adopted infants. The price was to demonstrate a more robust vita when the clock chimed a year or two later. Such compromises struck a painful chord among many. People began to talk about the “opt-out” revolution as some of the most affluent decided to withdraw from the labor force to spend time with children. Liberal feminists imported nannies if they could afford it, or paid for expensive childcare. Those solutions were available only to the affluent. Some argued that men should stay at home, but that, too, was a solution available only to high-income earners in a world where a twoincome family had become the norm. And, even though by 2010 almost 30 percent of two-income families boasted female breadwinners, who earned more than their male partners, in few of those families could women alone support the unit. A patchwork of unpaid family and medical leave, of employer-provided paid days off for care, of juggling family and child care options, and of part-time work have offered temporary solutions. In the face of this continuing problem, Sheryl Sandberg suggests that women “lean in.” By making the most of themselves, she suggests, by moving up

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the ladder, women will not only make progress in the workforce, but they will be able to shape their life circumstances. The historical evidence suggests the many problems with this kind of thinking. Making a few women better off, opening the doors so that some women who are individually motivated can take advantage of the opportunities before them is, indeed, a very good thing. But we have seen over the past 40 years that it is not enough. It is not enough by a long shot. The larger solutions to the problems of family-work balance, to who is going to take care of the children, and to how women are going to become full democratic citizens of this country lie in shared or collective responsibility. To make that happen, we have to begin to acknowledge the social and political barriers that prevent women from getting to the starting gate. We need, for example, to struggle with the broader question of inequality; we need to work at eliminating poverty; we need to invest in low-cost housing, safe neighborhoods, and an infrastructure of public transportation that will enable poor people to get to work. We need to think about community-controlled, inexpensive child care as well as care for the sick and elderly, and we need to provide good health care for all. We need to think about expanding access to first class education for the poor, and providing job training or retraining programs for the unemployed. We need to work on creating real jobs, and we need to raise the minimum wage to a level on which a family can, at least, survive. In short, we need adequate support systems for not just a few women, but for everyone. About two years ago, I was a guest at a rather large dinner in Sheryl Sandberg’s home—a beautiful, elaborate home, as you can imagine. While we were all having drinks, the nanny brought down Sandberg’s two children to greet the guests. They very politely shook all our hands and then the nanny whisked them off. “Oh, yes,” I thought. “You can lean in if you have a nanny—if we all had nannies.” How, then, do we think about caring for the children? Well, maybe we need to think about it in the way that some European countries have. The French have a system where every child over nine months—not just the child of the poor and not just the child of the working mother—is entitled to a place in a crèche; families pay a little bit if they can afford to, but for the most part, the system is state-supported. Such universal programs create a footing promising some level of equality. We still live in a country where maternity leave is mostly unpaid. That is great if male providers take care of families, but that hardly exists anymore. The number of families with a sole male breadwinners is down to about 6 percent. We need job-related benefits that do not target a

What Is Wrong With Leaning In?

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few individual women but apply universally—in other words, universal benefits. And here I think of another “leaner-in”—Marissa Mayer, the president of Yahoo—who famously turned the office next to hers into a nursery, so she could work next door and nurse her baby. Everybody said, “Isn’t that’s wonderful! That’s how women can do it.” And in the very next breath, literally within a week after that became public, she as the chief executive made the decision to prohibit Yahoo’s employees from working from their homes, which they had been able to do for a certain number of hours a week. She could bring her baby to the office, but they had to leave their babies at home. There is a fundamental question of democracy when some women can work and care for children in very privileged ways and others have no way to find childcare. This struggle is especially true for poor women and only marginally less so for most middle-class women. There have been efforts to resolve this for a long time. In 1973, a group called Union Wage, originating in California, decided that it—with the mandate for collective responsibility behind it—was going to put forth a platform around which it would organize union women and try to persuade unions to take the lead. What was its platform? Union Wage proposed a minimum wage of $4 an hour, equal to about $20 an hour in today’s money, It advocated a guaranteed annual income (initially proposed by President Richard Nixon, passed by Congress in 1972, and then vetoed by Nixon, for complicated reasons). Union Wage also wanted a family assistance program (another of Nixon’s programs, which he then abandoned because he feared that poor people who took advantage of its benefits would alienate the middle classes on whose taxes government depended), and federally legislated, paid maternity leaves that every employer would have to provide. They asked for parental leaves, to benefit new fathers as well as new mothers. They also suggested attaching an inflation escalator to social security benefits—a proposal that was actually enacted and that particularly helped to bring elderly widows, who often lived on half of their deceased husbands’ Social Security, out of poverty. Union Wage’s multiple requests for universal (not means-tested) benefits stemmed from a conception of shared responsibility to children, and a notion that some degree of equality would be essential to a healthy democratic society. Presciently, that ephemeral organization acknowledged that depriving poor and undereducated women, of economic security, puts them and their children at a permanent disadvantage, excluding them from exercising a voice and a role as citizens.

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We return then to our earlier question: what harm does leaning-in do? “Leaning-in” I suggest, commits us to a particular competitive imagination. It encourages us to believe that if we individually get ahead, if we push our children or some women forward, we are fulfilling a feminist dream. Leaning-in engages us in a world where the market rules, and where women—if they make it—will succeed by promoting a world of expanding inequality. Such a world inevitably values the self-interest of individuals over the well-being of many. If we all lean in, we will have made the world better for ourselves, but we won’t have made a better world. If that is good, it is not good enough. I want to hope, as Sheryl Sandberg says, that if women become powerful, they will engage in constructing a more humane world, in which we all want to live. But the historical record belies that hope. Think of Margaret Thatcher, for example, or Marissa Mayer—women who achieved power and did not use it to spread the wealth, to benefit women, and to create a more humane world. How much better would it be if, in addition to leaning in, we also decided that we would participate in a larger program—perhaps environmental feminism, or what we used to call social feminism—that reflected the collective, shared mentality that we inherited from our feminist foremothers. In thinking of these women, I am led to optimism and to the hope that this notion of collective responsibility still exists somewhere at the bottom of our consciences. As male and female feminists who value inclusionary, anti-racist, and genderencompassing policies we might still hope to create the increasingly humane world that we all seek.

CHAPTER TWO SHIFTING MARKETS, SHIFTING MEANINGS: REPOSITIONING THE ERA IN FEMINIST DIALOGUES ALLISON SCHWARTZ UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. —Complete Text of the Equal Rights Amendment I recently had the opportunity to teach U.S. Women’s History for the first time.1 Several weeks into the course, eager to engage my students in the issues that had captivated me as a college student, we took up a debate about whether the Equal Rights Amendment should have passed in the 1920s. As we reflected on students’ positions and the historical implications of the ERA debate, a student spoke up: The ERA never passed? She was not the only one with this question. Others had never heard of the amendment until that day. I have since come to think of her

 1

I am especially grateful to my co-advisors, Barbara Welke and Elaine Tyler May, for their continued feedback and support. I am thankful for the comments I received from the participants in the Biennial Women and Gender Research Conference, as well as the workshops at the University of Minnesota. I am incredibly grateful to the Wall Street women who allowed me to interview them. Thank you to Martha McDonald, who read drafts and whose perspective I always appreciate.

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question as a powerful metaphor for the uneasy position the ERA maintains within historical narratives of women’s labor and legal history. My students’ uncertainty was not unlike the ERA itself. The competing narratives surrounding the ERA have prevented scholars and students from converting the distinct struggles over the constitutional amendment into a usable past. 2 Rather than reading the ERA as a strong indicator of the shifting relationship among a changing capitalist economy, the labor women performed, and the legislation they supported, the ERA evokes confusion and defeat. My students’ confusion reflected the complicated (and, at times, contradictory) responses that battles for legal equality provoke from women themselves. Instead of focusing on the 19th Amendment that day, the ERA exercise seemed useful for showing the often slippery but instrumental role law had in shaping gender equality. Students engaged with the same questions that have haunted debates surrounding the ERA. Some argued the amendment would only protect employers, while others struggled with the implications of casting women, to borrow from the language of the 1908 Brandeis Brief supporting restrictions on the length of women’s work shifts, as “wards of the state.”3 Most agreed that the working conditions women faced in factories during the 1920s demanded legislation that protected their wages and their safety. The debate ended with all students reconsidering their original positions. One Continuing Education student in the class lingered.4 She was rethinking her position from many years ago. “I remember the ERA,” she said. At the time, it seemed irrelevant to her. She remembered her friends saying the ERA was not for black women. They said it was for white women. We discussed the ways in which race was eclipsed in ERA struggles beginning in the 1920s, and how that erasure persisted in most narratives of the ERA in the 1970s. I was struck by how her perspective was squandered because feminists had cast aside the ERA as a loss. Despite wage labor being a necessity for most black women during the 1920s and 1970s, rarely was their or this woman’s perspective captured in feminist ERA narratives. Shirley

 2

Robert G. Moeller uses the term usable past to describe how Germans transformed their past into public memory. The prominence of the ERA in public and historical discourses offers a key site for feminists to create a usable past. See: Robert G. Moeller War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 3 Nancy Woloch, Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Cultural Editions Series) (St. Martin’s Press, 1996). 4 Through the School of Continuing Education, the University of Minnesota offers residents who are 60 years or older the opportunity to audit courses for free.

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Chisholm, Pauli Murray, and larger organizations, like the National Black Feminist Organization, are typically cited in scholarship on the ERA. 5 These names and organizations are incited to represent the views of all black women—yet, this woman conveyed a perspective that had been lost because of the assumption of monolithic support. The ERA did not speak to the needs of some black women. Similarly, prominent feminist leaders and organizations—NOW, Betty Friedan, the National Federation of Professional and Business women, women in the welfare movement and, eventually, the AFL-CIO—all used to underscore widespread support for the ERA in the face of conservative opposition. This simplification conceals the nuances of women’s views and the ways in which their labor imbued the law with a new meaning. Unlike my class, this essay does not return to the debates surrounding the ERA. Its defeat and polarizing history have shrouded the proposed amendment in uncertainty and blame. By focusing on women’s labor rather than their political views, this essay explores how and why the ERA’s passage was less certain than feminists once perceived. The portrayal of the ERA as gaining widespread support has tended to reinforce views of the amendment as a metaphor for an emerging New Right rather than one that highlights the complexities surrounding the regulation of gender equality in the workplace. My essay steers away from debates that hoist blame on feminists or Phyllis Schlafly’s followers, to perceive the ERA not as a loss, but as lost. Amidst high unemployment, a fluctuating dollar, a rising cost of living, and declining wages, many women were expected to work to support their families during the 1970s. By using work as a lens, the ERA campaign is recast as critical to not only the narratives of the New Right, but also to those defining an era that made women’s wages vital to economic survival. Through analyzing women’s labor, their complicated relationships to one another and the legislation become visible. From that perspective, homemakers no longer appear as a static, monolithic symbol of traditional values but rather as economic

 5

Some works that discuss the relationship between black women and the ERA include: Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City (Women in American History) (University of Illinois Press, 2014); Serena Mayeri, Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011); Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin, eds., Sisters in the Struggleࣟ: African-American Women in the Civil Rights & Black Power Movements (New York: New York University Press, 2001).; and Winifred Breines, The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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actors responding to a turbulent market that was busily remaking their labor within the home. This essay takes the law to be a dynamic system that both reflects and constitutes society. 6 Contextualizing women’s attitudes toward the ERA within the changing labor market illuminates law’s fluid nature and disadvantaged groups’ ability to infer power from it. Although gendered assumptions have always shaped America’s legal system, the ERA campaign demonstrates the role women played in enacting laws that redefined their social position.7 When Congress passed the ERA in 1972, ratification seemed like a matter of common sense. By 1982, as women had continued to experience inequality in the workplace, in spite of ostensibly feminist legislation, many no longer saw a change to the Constitution as the best means of guaranteeing equality. The ERA’s status as a “lost law” (and not a loss) can reveal the law’s unstable and unpredictable power in shaping and reconfiguring the constraints that limited women within society. Laws that are typically used to delineate women’s history are those forced upon women or those that they fought for and won. But women’s fight for gender equality was tied to hundreds of forfeited laws; laws that have, in a sense, been lost to

 6

The idea of law and society as mutually constitutive was one of the operating principles of Critical Legal History as laid out in Robert W. Gordon’s now seminal 1984 Stanford Law Review article. See, Robert W. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories,” Stanford Law Review 57 (1984): 57-125. Recent influential works in legal history that treat law and society as mutually constitutive include, Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); and Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York, 2008). 7 I am drawing from an important group of scholars who make connections between gender and the making of law. Some of these works include: Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Barbara Young Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long Nineteenth Century United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Felicia Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), and Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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historians.8 Lost laws—legislation women wrote and defended but which have never been, and never will be, enacted as law—remain critical to revealing the limits of women’s strategies. The ERA, a lost constitutional amendment, illuminates the clashes women had both among themselves and with those who held the power to create law. Laws that are written and campaigned for by women, but which do not pass, can reveal how women’s perceptions of themselves and their society change within moments of social and economic transformation. The 1970s was a moment of significant social upheaval in the midst of an emerging neoliberal economy, which reconfigured hierarches of class, race, and gender. My essay recovers the ERA in this moment of social and economic turmoil, to examine the unstable relationship between the labor women performed and the laws they supported. To reorient narratives of the ERA, I focus on who is lost in current ERA narratives rather than who lost the ERA. Women’s labor, rather than their politics, can better illuminate the role of race and class in shaping their relationship to the ERA. While scholars have written on AfricanAmerican women’s widespread support of the ERA, the literature has overlooked divergent views among women of color—like the views of my student. For the purposes of this essay, I focus on three categories of women’s work that reflected the changing contours of women’s labor during the 1970s: domestic labor; industrial labor; and new forms of labor in an expanding banking industry. I conclude with potential areas that future scholarship could explore to develop a deeper understanding of how the ERA figured in relation to women of color. To secure the ERA’s passage, feminist rhetoric sought to unite women across broad spectrums of society. However, the campaign itself appeared to divide women—and not just between working women and women who primarily identified themselves through their housework. Summing up the complicated relationship between women and the ERA, a Harper’s article explained: “Women, not men, defeated the amendment for equal rights.”9 Though narratives of the ERA typically portray Schlafly and her followers as the women who defeated the ERA, this essay repositions women’s

 8

Nancy Cott and Riva Siegal both reread the ERA as a way to contend with how law was articulated to meet women’s needs. See, Nancy Cott, “The Equal Rights Amendment Conflict in the 1920s,” in Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Kellers, eds., Conflicts in Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1990) and Riva Siegal, “Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The Case of the de Facto ERA,” Faculty Scholarship Series, 2006. 9 Andrew Hacker, “E.R.A.-R.I.P. Women, Not Men, Defeated the Amendment for Equal Rights,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1980.

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changing experience of work as the ultimate root of their disparate positions. Massive economic change reconfigured women’s position in the labor force and the obstacles they faced in the workplace. As a massive feminist movement transformed conceptions of women workers, and as women’s experiences in the labor market changed, their relationship to the ERA changed with it. Economic change was central to shifting women’s politics of work and family. Yet an overemphasis on the economy elides the ways in which women’s views were informed by new workplaces they entered and the labor they performed. For a woman on Wall Street, the ERA was perceived through the lens of a masculine finance culture, but a woman working in a factory would perceive the ERA through the prism of very different workplace politics. Due to labor demands and the spotlight that feminist discourse placed on the male-dominated practices of the corporate world, women gained unprecedented access to a wide spectrum of professions that also exacerbated class and racial differences.10 The economic gains made by black and white women were not equal, reflecting not only their diverging labor experiences but also a different set of barriers they faced in entering the labor market.11 With increasing numbers of married women supporting their families and a growing number of white-collar jobs available to women, the diverse motivations for women’s labor made it even more difficult for feminists to articulate a universal strategy for supporting women in the workplace. Women spanned the employment gamut: from the many who entered low-wage retail jobs and lived below the poverty line to those who were able to scale the corporate ladder and expand the number of women executives. 12 Women constituted a highly diverse

 10

During the 1970s, the EEOC investigated a larger number of women’s complaints, especially around AT&T and banks on Wall Street. These investigations and hearings opened the doors to jobs that had typically been maledominated and sought to remedy gender wage gaps. Melissa Fisher has written on the influence the EEOC had on Wall Street hiring practices: “Soon after the suit, men on Wall Street—some well-intentioned, others deathly scared of being sued— began to actively recruit women and minorities.” Melissa Fisher, Wall Street Women (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 51. 11 Studies have shown that the wage status of black women improved during the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, white women were making far greater gains in the labor market than black women. See, Francine D. Blau and Andrea H. Beller, “Black-White Earnings Over the 1970s and 1980s: Gender Differences in Trends.” The Review of Economics no. 74 (1992): 276-286. 12 Feminist scholars have pointed to the increase in women’s poverty, see: Alice Kessler-Harris, Gendering Labor History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

Shifting Markets, Shifting Meanings

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laboring class, and thus faced a diverse range of issues at work. Women in factories, for example, faced different forms of discrimination than those who wore their power suits to the office. One size did not—and could not—fit all. Despite the momentum that women’s increased visibility in the labor force produced, it also generated more divisions in an already fractured feminist movement. Conservative rhetoric framed women’s massive entry into the labor force as indicative of the increasing influence of feminist ideas, which encouraged women to cultivate an identity outside their domestic duties. Yet, during the 1970s, it was principally a changing market economy that made women’s work inside and outside the home essential to sustaining American families. One-earner households were becoming an anomaly. Reflecting on this new trend, Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder stated: “The primary reason women are entering the labor force in such unprecedented numbers is to maintain their family’s standard of living.”13 Hard statistics supported her assertion. From 1960 to 1980, the number of families dependent on one breadwinner declined from 49.6 percent to 22.4 percent.14 Although the number of married women had steadily increased in the postwar economy, in 1976, for the first time, the proportion of married women with school-age children competing in the labor force surpassed 50 percent. The increasingly partisan nature of the ERA debate served to sever feminist demands from the very thing—a volatile 1970s economy—that was intimately shaping them. Before and during the ERA campaign, feminists successfully pushed for legislation to redistribute social and economic power as a way to improve women’s autonomy. 15 These legal victories narrowed some

 2007) and Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 4. 13 Jay Cocks, “How Long Till Equality?” Time, July 12, 1982. 14 Ibid. 15 The 1970s saw the passage of: Title IX (1972); the Fair Housing Act Amended (1974) to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex; and The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974) which made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender or race regarding any credit transaction; Nebraska became the first state to throw out its marital rape exception law (1976); and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978), which prohibited employment discrimination against pregnant women. Feminists also won a number of key appeals and Supreme Court cases: Schultz V. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970) ruled that jobs held by men and women need to be “substantially equal” but not “identical” to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act; Roe v. Wade (1973); Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974) ruled that a wage differential occurring "simply because men would not work at the low rates

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inequalities with men. And yet, economic crises and a reconfigured market increased inequality among women themselves. Though the 1970s marked the first time the labor movement embraced a constitutional amendment mandating gender equality, the ERA’s longer history reveals women’s conflicting and changing perspective of the relationship between law and women’s struggle for economic equality. From the ERA’s inception in the 1920s, feminist strategies diverged over the best way to promote the needs of women workers. Alice Paul and her supporters believed women’s equality was best ensured through defining women as equal to men; others, like Florence Kelley, believed equality could only stem from recognizing and protecting women’s differences.16 While the longstanding divisions over the ERA are instructive, the 1970s campaign offers a useful narrative for understanding how women’s labor informs and shapes the law. The tensions women expressed around the ERA were not solely defined by debates around protective legislation. Unlike prior struggles to ratify the ERA—where feminists were divided over what kind of law was needed to protect women—there was a deep questioning of laws ability to engender equality. That questioning occurred simultaneously with a rise in the market’s influence—which purportedly located power in the capriciousness of demand and supply rather than the law. Women’s ambiguous relationship to the law was indeed part of the complex role they played in shaping an emerging neoliberal society. To reframe the ERA around women’s labor, it is also necessary to incorporate an analysis that links women’s changing relationship to capital. As male unemployment rates increased in tandem with women working in the service sector, the boundaries of the market were redrawn—subsequently reconfiguring the social bonds of the market economy. Consumers’ debt was central to this reconfiguration. Debt functioned as the market’s gravitational force, producing new fault lines by pulling individuals into the market’s expanding orbit, and dragging down American families struggling to survive the substratum shifts that occurred beneath their feet. While loans had been the bedrock of capitalist development, the 1970s set in motion an all-encompassing credit system that placed debt at the nexus of capital transformations.17

 paid women" is unacceptable; and Taylor v. Louisiana (1975) ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny women jury service. 16 Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity and Woloch, Muller v. Oregon. 17 For a general discussion about the changes in debt during this period, see: Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

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The ERA campaign coincided with American families’ increasing dependence on this intricate system of credit and debt. Women’s roles as both laborers producing capital and borrowers consuming it were essential to lifting the American economy out of a downturn and saving their families from financial ruin. By defining women’s work as related to their ability to access capital—for example, to take out a mortgage loan—we can better understand how debt and the increasing need for women’s labor would have impacted women’s anxieties and, subsequently, their views on the ERA. As capital became less fixed, wage-earning women were expected to maintain the home, work a low-paying job, and finance their family by leveraging their wages to create new sources of capital. ERA supporters initially sought to build a campaign around these very issues, but in responding to Schlafly’s campaign, their energy was rechanneled into partisan issues, such as reproductive rights and military obligations. Feminist claims that presented the ERA as a way to safeguard women’s economic status were thus diluted, and the campaign became increasingly disconnected from the original aim of ensuring women’s economic autonomy. When Schlafly appeared on William Buckley’s Firing Line to debate Ann Scott, vice president for legislation for the National Organization for Women (NOW), the focus was not on whether the ERA would destroy the social bonds of the family but on whether it would erode the foundations of the family by altering a woman’s financial obligations to her husband and her family. Schlafly and Scott’s ERA debate revolved around radically different conceptions of how women experienced freedom and of the pivotal concerns surrounding the ERA’s impact on women’s financial status.18 Schlafly tied women’s economic freedom to the financial support she received from her husband and the freedom this gave her to choose whether or not she pursued a wage. In 1973, she argued, a woman could go to any store and charge the purchases she made to her husband. A wife could choose to spend her husband’s money however she desired, and the store would allow it. This was permitted, as Schlafly explained to Buckley’s viewers, because the store could collect against her husband. Since the store would collect against her husband, a wife would never have to go to court over unpaid bills. Though Schlafly’s perspective on the realities surrounding women and credit was skewed, her comments would have reassured women who were anxious about financial support.

 18

“Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. ‘The Equal Rights Amendment’” (Southern Educational Communications Association, March 30, 1973).

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In contrast to Schlafly, Scott argued that equal rights required equal responsibilities. “For us not to be part of the responsibilities and difficulties of what citizenship entails in this country," she claimed, “is to lower our status as human beings in this country.” Responding to Schlafly, Buckley turned to Scott and said: “You make this sound, Dr. Scott, sort of like a men’s liberation movement.”19 Buckley’s comments conveyed the persuasiveness of Schlafly’s tactics, which played on women’s fears about financial ruin during a decade where unemployment, divorce, and debt reached historic highs. As Scott and Schlafly debated the ERA in April of 1973, America was in the midst of a deep recession. It was not a coincidence that support for the ERA among women waned as American families were becoming even more steeped in debt. Historians tend to emphasize the ERA showdowns as rooted in either a cultural or feminist backlash. Yet, in 1973, when Newsweek and other magazines referred to the “private civil war” brewing in middle-class households or “the American domestic dream and its dissolution,” that was not a reference to Schlafly’s culture war. Rather, this was the very language used to describe a stagnated economy and the increasing inaccessibility of the American dream. When Schlafly and others spoke about the need to return to traditional values amidst the cultural war feminists were waging, the rhetoric obscured the underlying economic anxieties that proved critical in shaping women’s interpretation of the ERA. By 1980, the ERA opposition was highlighting the amendment’s potentially negative impact on a husband’s financial obligation to his wife. Conservative activist Beverly LaHaye wrote a letter to the constituents of Schlafly’s organization demonstrating how anti-ERA advocates magnified the ideas Schlafly expressed in 1973: the ERA “will invalidate all state laws which require a husband to support his family. You suddenly have an equal responsibility to support your family.” 20 In privileging the rhetoric that located anti-ERA sentiment firmly within the cultural realm, scholars have missed an opportunity to emphasize the intimate way in which economic concerns deeply influenced women’s perceptions and reactions to the ERA. These economic anxieties become further obscured when approaching the ERA from a class perspective rather than one tied to the specificity of women’s labor. Though historians have written on labor’s turn toward supporting the ERA, it has often been disconnected from the reality of

 19

Ibid. Beverly LaHaye, “A critical Issue,” July/Aug 1980, Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Archives Project (ERACAP) Records, 1970-1985, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 20

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organized labor’s decline during the 1970s—even if, incidentally, women’s visibility within unions had increased. By focusing mainly on political leaders in labor movements, scholars have also reinforced a narrative that conceals the increasing diversity of women’s waged work and, subsequently, the range of responses to the ERA.21 When Sandra Gill conducted a study in the 1980s on women’s responses to the ERA, she concluded that working-class women were more likely not to support the ERA. Though this may have captured the conservative drift among working-class communities, she utilized survey instruments informed by the very categories that Schlafly used to wage her anti-ERA campaign.22 Rather than focus on how women’s labor influenced their opinions, she assessed working-class women’s position based on their religious views and their political conservatism. By focusing her analysis around their political and religious identities, her questions concealed how their position as workers motivated their opposition to feminist rhetoric. A discussion between an ERA advocate and a group of Ridgeview Mills Hosiery factory workers in North Carolina demonstrated a rejection of the ERA unrelated to conservative values. When the advocate interviewed this group of women workers on their views of the ERA in 1981, the conversation quickly raised questions over whether the law could ameliorate not only inequality between men and women, but also economic disparities among women. One minute into the conversation, a woman quickly explained that she strongly believed in equal pay, but that she did not believe in the ERA. This triggered another woman’s reaction

 21

Nancy Maclean’s Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace focuses on the important role trade women played in articulating a need for the ERA, but historians have focused less on women in the service industry. See: Nancy Maclean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). For other scholarship on working-class women during this period see: Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Dorothy Sue Cobble, “Recapturing Working-Class Feminism: Union Women in the Postwar Era,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945- 1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994); Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Martࣟ: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2009); Katherine Turk, Equality on Trial Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 22 Sandra K. Gill, “Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment: Influence of Class and Status,” Sociological Perspectives 28, no. 4 (October 1985): 441–62. Also see: Rebecca Klatch, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

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to the ERA campaign: “All these women wanting to be equal to men. Women have to be equal to women before they can be equal to men.” Her comments revealed a different rejection of the ERA than some of the laboring women of the 1920s. Factory workers in the 1920s highlighted class differences as a way of emphasizing the need for protective legislation. This woman in the early 1980s was highlighting the inability of law to ameliorate class, as well as gender inequalities. When asked to elaborate on her statement, she said: “You got these women who don’t do nothing and just walk around looking nice. Then you have these other girls working their butt off. Like us, we are production workers. We have to work for what we make.” Another woman agreed, by saying that “some women have the same problems and some of them don’t.”23 Although the ERA appeared to gain the support of trade women, these workers had doubts about what feminist legislation meant for them. As the ERA advocate articulated a need for sweeping legislation to overturn state laws that curtailed women’s legal equality, one woman expressed the skepticism of her peers: “What is the ERA going to do to change all of that? Is ERA going to say, now, Tim, you’re going to do the dishes. When I get home from work, and I have worked as hard as he has, regardless of the money. Leave the money alone for a moment. What else besides the money is ERA going to do for me? This is what we don’t understand. Why should we worry about it? Why should we fight for it? It’s not going to tell Ridgeview to pay us any more than minimum wage.”24 Questioning the power of new laws to remedy gender inequality, she further argued that they already had the right to find work at another factory, where they would be paid more. Despite the equality promised by ERA advocates in 1981, their campaign defining emancipation through work had less appeal for women who saw no source of liberation in working low-paying jobs. For nearly twenty years, feminists had been initiating and supporting legislation that not only guaranteed equal pay but also created new professional opportunities for women. Although the ERA campaign was the culmination of these legal victories, structural inequality persisted. The vision of gender equality that had motivated feminist legal strategies no longer held the same power. The Ridgeview women captured a growing skepticism surrounding feminists’ claims that a constitutional amendment would guarantee gender equality.

 23

DVD 55, Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Collection, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 24 Ibid.

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Despite the workers’ reticence, the advocate pushed. She contrasted her status with that of the factory workers because she was not on the payroll, and lacked the ability to show an income to a court. For instance, she explained, if her husband died, in order to inherit her home, she would have to prove her earning capability to a court. The advocate continued that the ERA could not force the factory worker’s husband to do the dishes, but it would ensure equal treatment under the law. Returning to law’s power (or lack thereof) to make broader transformations in American society, the factory worker brought up current laws that were intended to protect “not just women but people.” She protested that these laws “get shoved aside all the time. And what makes this law any different?” When the ERA advocate asked her to give an example, the woman worker described a situation in which she was slightly more qualified for a job than a man competing for the same position. Instead of hiring her, the employer hired him. While she could go to court, the worker perceived this as a dead end. Instead of passing laws that banned discrimination and created a process to protect women from it, the worker felt women needed laws that ensured discrimination “should not happen to begin with.” She argued that there were “so many laws that protect not just equal rights, but a lot of things. But no one ever enforces them. So, we’ll just have one more law on the books that may be enforced but it may not.” While feminists believed that the ERA was the quickest way to overturn laws that maintained women’s inequality, the workers’ perspective summed up the reality for most women in the workplace. The law could not compel equality; rather, the burden to enforce anti-discrimination laws fell onto the women themselves: “In order to get it enforced, you will have to go through a lot of hassle to get it to work for you personally.”25 For these workers, the heart of the dispute lay not with abortion or the moral decay of American families but in the power of the ERA to remedy the unfair treatment women received at home and in the factory. Moreover, these women workers demonstrated a very different view than the one being espoused by the ERA advocate—that is, laws only created a system that permitted women to formally fight for equality. Unlike feminists—who viewed the ERA as necessary to catalyze a broader transformation of ideas and practices across American society—the workers saw the limits of feminist legal change. They believed a law itself



25 DVD 55, Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Collection, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

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was incapable of abolishing those very ideas and practices that were the cause of women’s inequality in the workplace.26 By rigidly analyzing ERA rhetoric around class lines, feminists have not only concealed differences among working-class women, but they have also inadvertently silenced women’s ambiguous relationship to the ERA resulting from their new professional identities. At the beginning of the 1980s, as a new cohort of Wall Street and businesswomen entered their offices, women’s identities were also informed by the market-oriented practices they were performing in the workplace. When the media covered the ERA, they often cited polls that portrayed the majority of Americans as supporting the ERA. Yet, these commonly cited polls prevented a deeper reading of how the complexity of women’s opinions may have translated into active support for the ERA. For instance, the opinions of Ann Short, who joined Wall Street in the late 1970s, reflect those of a cohort of women who worked for the rapidly expanding finance industry.27 When asked about her initial view of the ERA, she said she was ambivalent. Short recalled thinking that “nothing was really going to change. I just thought I had to go for my best shot at doing something that I might be good at.”28 Another woman I interviewed, Diane Klein, who joined the finance industry later than Short, felt the heavy lifting had been done. “As long as you were in there, and you were contributing your best,” she said, “somehow things would work out.”29 Short attended an all-women’s college and articulated support for feminist ideas, but her immersion in the free-market culture on Wall Street shaped her perception of the ERA. Wall Street culture celebrated free-

 26

The exchange between the factory worker and the ERA advocate also reveals the role of law in structuring and defining power relations, which have proved an important area of scholarship. As articulated by Robert W. Gordon, critical legal history was guided by several overarching principles: law as an arena of conflict; law as fundamentally indicative of power relations; law as deeply contingent, historically situated, and radically indeterminate; law and society as mutually constitutive. See Robert W. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories,” Stanford Law Review 57 (1984): 57-125. These ideas have continued to have an influence on a broader discussion of the law. For a useful overview, see the pieces by Christopher Tomlins, Laura F. Edwards, Susanna L. Blumenthal, Hendrik Hartog, and Robert W. Gordon in “Symposium on Gordon’s Critical Legal Histories,” Law & Social Inquiry 37, no. 1 (Winter 2012). 27 This section rests on oral histories I collected of first- and second-generation Wall Street women. 28 Interview with Ann Short, in person, February 22, 2014. 29 *Klein, Diane. Interview with Diane, April 10, 2014(Last name has been changed)

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market values, minimizing the role of race, class, and gender in one’s position in the market. When asked about her stance on the ERA during this period of her life, she concluded: “I guess I implicitly thought that if I went somewhere that was more of a meritocracy that the politics would matter less and being a woman would not matter as much from a career standpoint.”30 Working in an office that emphasized individual merit as the only way promotions were measured, Short viewed the ERA with skepticism. “[E]ven in the late 1990s,” she continued, “you didn’t want someone to look at you and think: ‘she’s a woman.’ You just wanted someone to look at you and say, ‘she’s a good professional woman.’ So, it was kind of hard not to have some ambivalence about something that implied I was only here because you have to hire me.”31 Although Short’s background may have led some to assume that, if asked, she would indicate her support for the ERA in a poll, her ambiguity on the issue would have made her less likely to encourage those around her to actively promote the legislation. While Short may have worn a different uniform than the Ridgeview worker, she also demonstrated a shift in women’s understanding of the law, which occurred alongside her experience in the labor market. Short represented a cohort of women who worked on Wall Street thanks to feminists’ successful lawsuits against the banking industry. Many Wall Street women, once seated inside banks, downplayed the significance of pay difference and gender discrimination. When Diane Klein worked at a brokerage firm during the 1980s, a woman in human resources told her that she was making $3,000 less than the new male hires. She did not complain. Klein explained: “They weren’t hiring a lot of women. I was the only one in that office. I was happy to have the job—and I was happy to be doing what I was doing.”32 Describing Wall Street during this period, Sue Herera, a journalist, wrote: “Nowhere are the lines between the sexes drawn more clearly than in the crisscrossing avenues of money and power in lower Manhattan.”33 Herera’s interview with Linda Branford Raschke, a prominent trader on Wall Street, captured the underlying attitudes toward those who might confront gender hierarchies. When asked if she, or women in a more general sense, were treated unfairly in the workplace, Rasche balked at the suggestion. “[I]f you chose to take it personally,” she explained, “that it’s

 30

Ibid. Ibid. 32 Klein, Interview with Diane, April 10, 2014. 33 Sue Hera, Women of the Street: Making It on Wall Street in the World’s Toughest Business, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 6. 31

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because you’re a woman, I think you were barking up the wrong tree. There are certain people out there who might have a victim mentality for whatever reason, and it’s not a successful attitude.”34 Raschke’s comment was emblematic of a workplace that promoted a culture of meritocracy by downplaying the ways in which gender discrimination structured the workplace. Women not only steered away from legal language, but also tended to reinforce a perception of protest as weakness. In the hypermasculine Wall Street culture, this rhetoric may have operated as a survival strategy. For women on Wall Street, the law did not appear as the best means to ensure they had equal opportunity to reach the corner office. Sandra Gill’s study also suggested that professional and highly educated women supported the ERA, which is the common perception of how ERA support was grouped.35 Yet, Wall Street women privileged their professional identity over a gendered one, which did not always translate into clear support for the ERA. When a New York Times reporter asked Muriel Siebert, the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, about her feelings on the feminist movement, she replied that she did not regard her presence on the floor as akin to women’s liberation. She stated that she was “motivated by business necessity, and so was the personnel department of the New York Stock Exchange.”36 Women like Siebert and Short were motivated by a desire to improve their position in the market rather than to improve the position of their gender. As these women made prominent plays for power, downplaying their gender and the barriers they faced, they also deemphasized the need for the ERA. Whether as homemakers, financial analysts, or factory workers, women increasingly felt that the movement behind the ERA did not speak to their identity or ability to gain economic autonomy. By the late 1970s, African-American women leaders expressed their clear support for the ERA. Yet, Cathy Sedwick and Reba Williams wrote for The Black Scholar that the media portrayal of the women’s movement as solely for the middle class pushed black women away from the ERA. Writing in 1976, they described how anti-ERA forces tried to dissuade black women from supporting the amendment by reinforcing the ERA as part of a “white, elitist movement.”37 The authors noted how economic

 34

Ibid.,171. Sandra K. Gill, “Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment: Influence of Class and Status,” Sociological Perspectives 28, no. 4 (October 1985): 441–62. 36 Marilyn Bender, “Big Board’s Female Pages Take up Slack,” The New York Times, Dec. 7, 1970. 37 Cathy Sedwick and Reba Williams, “Black Women and the Equal Rights Amendment,” The Black Scholar July-August (1976): 24–29. 35

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crises were fueling “campaigns of reactionary anti-black, anti-women, anti-labor groupings.” Though the ERA has been cast within narratives of a feminist backlash, we need a greater exploration of the perceptions of African American women in different occupations. This would allow us to achieve a deeper understanding not only of how economic crises recast the gendered meaning of the ERA, but also of how the ERA was used to combat legislation that sought to expand opportunities for women and African-Americans. While this essay has centered on domestic economic transformations that influenced women’s interpretation of the ERA, feminists should also analyze the campaign within the context of transnational developments. When American manufacturers increasingly sought cheap labor and low overhead costs in the 1970s, they outsourced jobs to Mexico’s Maquiladora factories (which employed mostly women). Placing the analysis in relation to global outsourcing and the new racialization of women’s labor could reveal how transnational developments may have weakened women’s mobilization around the ERA. Since the ERA was defeated, scholars of the New Right have tended to present the ERA as an inevitable feature of America’s rightward turn. As the ERA initially presented an effective way for second-wave feminists to enshrine their social and legislative impact in the Constitution, women’s daily experiences in the home and the economy altered the law’s perceived meaning. Instead of jettisoning the ERA, feminists and scholars should consider it an example of how feminist laws and strategies are informed by women’s lived experiences. Moreover, viewing the ERA through women’s labor repositions women in the emergence of a neoliberal order. As businesswomen privileged their professional identity over a gendered one, they reinforced market-oriented ideologies that minimized the role of race, class, and gender in defining one’s status. 38 Though neoliberalism provokes images associated with Reagan’s erosion of women’s citizenship, the nuances of the ERA opposition reveal the complex roles women have played in destabilizing and reinforcing the free-market ideologies that lie at its core. Examining how women interpreted the ERA at the dawn of the neoliberal era raises deeper questions about how women’s thinking evolved to perceive the market and the private sphere—and not the law—

 38

Scholars have increasingly discussed how free-market ideologies reproduced a white male heteronormative ideal in business and finance communities. For instance, see Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

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as the most important means of achieving equality and economic autonomy. When a Mill Hosiery worker explained that the ERA appeared meaningless, she argued that the effort being poured into it should be redirected “into teaching employers and teaching the children from the time they are in kindergarten to respect people.”39 Speaking in 1981, after a decade of feminists’ revolutionizing the legal system, she believed the law could only require individuals to treat women equally, not make them equals. She emphasized a need to change values that would engender greater respect between individuals; this reflected a view that women would have to work outside the purview of the law to remake the values that dictated practices within the workplace. This skepticism displayed by women was compatible with the free-market logic that construed the market and the private sphere as superior mechanisms—unlike the government—for creating a democratic society. The ERA, at times, appears lost in the social and economic currents that shaped a neoliberal order. Adrift in feminist politics and scholarship, the ERA became associated with battles over abortion and women in the military rather than basic issues surrounding women’s economic equality. Schlafly’s anti-ERA campaign unmoored the ERA from its historical origins, preventing it from serving as a useful barometer of women’s changing labor in a neoliberal order. As a neoliberal society took root, the ERA presented an opportunity for grounding the analysis of the vastly different ways in which women encountered inequality in the workplace. Women’s responses to the ERA reveal valuable nuances: while some fought to break a glass ceiling, others struggled to earn a living wage. In returning to the ERA, scholars can better grapple with how women’s labor influenced their perceptions of the law and the role they played in making it. Lost laws, like the ERA, were crucial to shaping the pivots that women made to ensure legal progress. By uncovering the forgotten narratives of women who occupied vastly different positions in an emerging neoliberal order, scholars and feminists will be better able to contend with how laws become lost, whether they should be lost, and how new laws might recover their latent possibilities.



39 DVD 55, Equal Rights Amendment Campaign Collection, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

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Bibliography Bayh, Birch. “The Question Of Ratification Of The Equal Rights Amendment PRO.” Congressional Digest 56, no. 6/7 (July 6, 1977): 170. Berry, Mary. Why ERA Failed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Bingaman, Anne. A Commentary on the Effect of the Equal Rights Amendment on State Laws and Institutionsࣟ: Prepared for the California Commission on the Status of Women’s Equal Rights Amendment Project. Sacramento: The Project, 1975. Blanchard, Christine. “Attitudes of Southern Women: Selected Group Comparisons.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 1.2 1, no. 2 (1976): 160–71. Boles, Janet. The Politics of the Equal Rights Amendment: Conflict and the Decision Process. United Kingdom: Longman Group, 1979. Brady, David, and Kent Te. “Ladies in Pink: Religion and Political Ideology in the Anti-ERA Movement.” Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press) 56, no. 4 (1976): 564–75. Brandzel, Amy L. “Haunted by Citizenship: Whitenormative CitizenSubjects and the Uses of History in Women’s Studies.” Feminist Studies 37, no. 3 (Fall 2011). Brown, Barbara. “The Equal Rights Amendment: A Constitutional Basis For Equal Rights Women.” Yale Law Journal, no. 80 (1971): 871–985. Brown, Sydney T. “Viewpoints on the ERA: Women Against Women.” Journal of Current Social Issues 15, no. 1 (1978): 88–91. Burris, Val. “Who Opposed The Era? An Analysis Of The Social Bases Of Antifeminism.” Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press) 64, no. 2 (June 1983): 305–17. Cowie, Jefferson. Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York: The New Press, 2010. Critchlow, Donald. Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Current Employment Statistics. “Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls by Industry and Selected Industry by Detail.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1968 to 1982. Delsman, Mary. Everything You Need to Know about ERA. Riverside: Meranza Press, 1975. Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Public Affairs, 2008.

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Eisenstein, Hester. Feminism Seduced. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009. Eisler, Riane Tennenhaus. The Equal Rights Amendment Facts and Action Guide. Washington, D.C.: National Women’s Conference Committee, 1986. “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. ‘The Equal Rights Amendment.’” Southern Educational Communications Association, March 30, 1973. Flippen, J. Brooks. Jimmy Carter: The Politics of Family, and The Rise of the Religious Right. The University of Georgia Press, 2011. Ford, Lynne. Women and Politics: The Pursuit of Equality. Cengage Learning, 2010. Fraser, Nancy. “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History.” New Left Review 56 (April 2009). —. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. New York: Verso, 2013. Frenier, Mariam Darce. “American Anti-Feminist Women: Comparing the Rhetoric of Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment with that of Opponents of Women’s Suffrage.” Women’s Studies International Forum 7, no. 6 (1984): 455–65. doi:10.1016/0277-5395(84)90017-7. Friedan, Betty. The Second Stage: With a New Introduction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Gasper, Jo Ann. “Pro-Family Petition and Statement of Principles.” The Right Woman, November 1979. Sophia Smith Collection. Gibb, Gerald D., and Thomas T. Lambirth. “Who Are The Equal Rights Amendment Defenders And Opposers?” Psychological Reports 51, no. 3f (December 1, 1982): 1239–42. Gill, Sandra K. “Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment: Influence of Class and Status.” Sociological Perspectives 28, no. 4 (October 1985): 441–62. Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. “Gender and the Constitution.” University of Cincinnati Law Review 44, no. 1 (1975): 1–42. Goodman, William, Stephen Antczak, and Laura Freeman. “Women and Jobs in Recessions: 1969-92.” Monthly Labor Review, July 1993, 25– 36. Governor’s Commission to Study Implementation of the New Equal Rights Amendment. “Report to the Governor.” Maryland: A Commission of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, 1978. Greta R., Aul. Impact of the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights Amendmentࣟ: A Report on the Impact of the State Equal Rights Amendment in

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Pennsylvania since. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Commission for Women, 1971. Grubb, W. Norton, and Robert H. Wilson. “Sources of Increasing Inequality in Wages and Salaries, 1960-1980.” Monthly Labor Review, April 1989, 3–13. Hewitt, Nancy, ed. No Permanent Waves. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, 2010. Kalman, Laura. Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974-1980. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Kempker, Erin M. “Coalition and Control: Hoosier Feminists and the Equal Rights Amendment.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 34, no. 2 (January 1, 2013): 52–82. doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.34.2.0052. Kessler-Harris, Alice. In Pursuit of Equity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Klatch, Rebecca. A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. —. “Coalition and Conflict among Women of the New Right.” Signs 13, no. 4 (July 1, 1988): 671–94. doi:10.2307/3174107. —. Women of the New Right. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987. Klein, Jennifer. For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public Private Welfare State. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. —. “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism.” Journal of Policy History 16: 1 (2004). Krippner, Greta. Capitalizing on Crisis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Lassister, Matthew. The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Maclean, Nancy. Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Mansbridge, Jane. Why We Lost the ERA (Equal Rights Movement). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Mansbridge, Jane J. “Myth and Reality: The ERA and the Gender Gap in the 1980 Election.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 49, no. 2 (July 1, 1985): 164–78. doi:10.2307/2748825. Mathews, Donald. Sex, Gender and The Politics of ERA. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Mayeri, Serena. “A New E.R.A. Or A New Era? Amendment Advocacy And The Reconstitution Of Feminism.” Northwestern University Law Review 103, no. 3 (2009): 1223–1301.

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—. Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Medoff, Marshall. “The Effect of the Equal Rights Amendment on the Economic Status of Women.” Atlantic Economic Journal 13, no. 3 (September 1, 1985): 60–68. doi:10.1007/BF02304295. “Merrill Lynch Will Pay $1.9 Million in Bias Suits; Merrill Lynch Will Pay $1.9 Million in Bias Suits.” New York Times, June 5, 1976. Nickerson, Michelle. “Women, Domesticity, and Postwar Conservatism.” OAH Magazine of History 17 (January 2003): 17–21. Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Ravitch, Diane. “Why the Equal Rights Amendment Is Stalled.” Wall Street Journal, July 20, 1981. Robbins, Edward Morris. The Christian Church and the Equal Rights Amendment. Nashville: Winston-Derek Publishers, 1986. —. Why the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Doesn’t Passࣟ: Roadblocks to ERA’s Passage. Nashville: Winston-Derek Publishers, 1986. Rodgers, Daniel. Age of Fracture. New York: Belknap Press, 2012. Rossi, Alice S. “Beyond The Gender Gap: Women’s Bid For Political Power.” Social Science Quarterly (University of Texas Press) 64, no. 4 (December 1983): 718–33. Roth, Benita. Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Royster, Vermont. “The Personhood of Women.” Wall Street Journal. March 24, 1982. Rymph, Catherine E. Republican Womenࣟ: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Saletan, William. Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Sarah A. Soule, and Brayden G. King. “The Stages of the Policy Process and the Equal Rights Amendment, 1972–1982.” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 6 (May 1, 2006): 1871–1909. Saucier, Peter. “The Maryland Equal Rights Amendment: Eight Years of Application.” University of Baltimore Law Review 9, no. 2 (1980): 342.

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Schlafly, Phyllis. “ERA: Equal for Whom.” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1973. Schreiber, Ronnee. Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Schulman, Bruce. Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Sedwick, Cathy. “Black Women and the Equal Rights Amendment.” Black Scholar July-August (1975): 24–29. Self, Robert. All in The Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012. Siegal, Riva. “Constitutional Culture, Social Movement Conflict and Constitutional Change: The Case of the de Facto ERA.” Faculty Scholarship Series, 2006. Smith, Joan. “Transforming Households: Working-Class Women and Economic Crisis.” Social Problems 34, no. 5 (December 1, 1987): 416–36. doi:10.2307/800539. Stachecki, Cynthia, and Donald Critchlow. “The Equal Rights Amendment Reconsidered: Politics, Policy, and Social Mobilization in a Democracy.” The Journal of Policy History 20, no. 1 (2008). Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Story, Ronald, and Bruce Laurie. The Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Strongforce. “Women Taking Charge: New Ways to Economic Power A Resource Manual.” Washington, D.C., n.d. Economics Collection. Sophia Smith Collection. Sue Cobble, Dorothy. Dishing out. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991. —. The Other Women’s Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Tedin, Kent. “Social Background and Political Difference Between Proand Anti-ERA Activists.” American Politics Quarterly, July 1975, 395–408. The Council of State Governments. “All Are Created Equal.” Lexington: The Council of State Governments, 1972. “The Equal Rights Amendment and the Military.” The Yale Law Journal 82, no. 7 (June 1, 1973): 1533–57. doi:10.2307/795578. “The ERA Loses Two More Rounds.” Time, 1982. Toufexis, Anastasia, Hays Gorey, and Jane O’Reilly. “What Killed Equal Rights?” Time, July 12, 1982.

CHAPTER THREE WORK, WORK, WORK: WOMEN’S PAID, UNPAID, AND LITERARY LABORS IN A HISTORICIZED READING OF DIANA GARCÍA’S LABOR POETRY KRISTINA POPIEL UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Poet Diana García's literary productivity has been informed, delimited, and enabled by her youth in the migrant labor camps of California. Even more than pure autobiography, literature (and poetry, in particular) has the capacity to represent more expressively the affective significance of the material conditions portrayed. It is García's poetic representation of the labor camps of her youth that so dramatically renders the affecting humanity of the workers who comprise migrant labor camps—that humanity that is so often invisible to the dominant-culture audience who (willfully or not) encounter only the laborers' (commodified and alienated) products. García's poetry reaffirms Audre Lorde's and bell hooks's assertions that work, even within the necessarily exploitative capitalistic realm, can be more than purely exploitative—that it can, in fact, be a creative expression of self—if it is consciously infused with the joy and eros that arise from within. This self is emphatically not opposed to the worker's laboring body, but evidences the wholeness of one's self, outside the binary patriarchal conceptualization of that self that divides body from spirit. Further, García's work rejects the strict, binary gender differentiation and domestic, gendered roles that mark dominant culture, and reveals that these roles are, in fact, particular ways of embodying luxury, from which her characters are disallowed. Adherence to normative gendered, familial roles (e.g., the happy housewife, or the girl-child, whose only responsibilities are to attend school during the day and play in the yard

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afterward) are manifestations of the power, privilege, and social/political access that García's characters simply do not have. Instead, their representations in García's collection belie the economic and political leisure and luxury that undergirds normative gender roles. Gendered oppression is clearly portrayed in García's work, but it looks much different here than within the dominant culture. Significantly, the most strongly portrayed rejection of gender subjugation appears in the women characters' construction of collective, homosocial affective communities, which represent a response to the social, political, and economic powers that most often render them powerless. It is through their labor—both paid, on the visible market, and unpaid domestic and affective labor, on what we might call the invisible care market—that they seem to achieve their power.

Working Women’s Radical Self-Representation García's poetry helps us see more clearly the falsity inherent in the normative academic conceptualization of the distinct “worker” identity as a static, homogenous, and theoretical or ideal identity. What I refer to is one of the dangers inherent in theory, which is to envision our object as, in this case, a sort of ideal (in the Platonic sense) “worker,” as an unindividuated point of intersection in a field of exploitative powers and processes, and as a perhaps embodied—but never individually articulated—human subject. This academic construction of the theoretical “object” fails to realize the deep experiential heterogeneity of the life of the human worker, as it is subsumed by that of the imagined “worker” figure. However, for García, “work” is a specific and contingent set of practices, which takes place in a constantly negotiated realm of powers, products, and personalities, and has multiple, complex functions. Some of these functions are what we might call “human,” or perhaps, “humane” (which I read as opposed to the products of un-embodied systemic, social, and/or structural forces), and some are not. One important function of this set of local, contingent practices is that it enables a continuous, fluid, and revisionary self-representation for the speakers of García's poems—in a way that is specifically anti-assimilatory. In her poems, García presents a sort of counter-identity to the presumed and/or implicit norms in the conceptualization of the worker identity. In this way, her poetic work refuses the normative representations of migrant workers as variously invisible or problematic (this problematization, of course, defines the migrant worker figure solely in relation to its perceived threatening effect upon the dominant society). Her work also refuses the supposed “solution”

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to “the migrant problem” as either migrants' expulsion or their assimilation. García's poems, however, reveal a radical claiming and representation of the personhood of these particular characters who live, love, and work in the shadow of the exploitative capitalistic system that both delimits and engenders their experience. The power of the worker in García's poetry is simultaneously a manifestation of the complex human agency that is indefatigable even in the face of racist, exploitative capitalism, as well as a product of that same violently marginalizing and silencing power. Don Mitchell argues that representations of the imagined-to-be-purelynatural agricultural Californian landscape in the dominant culture (i.e., our failure to perceive human productive forces within our perception of the landscape) denies the land-shaping toil that migrant workers effect upon the land. This mode of representation simultaneously subsumes those workers' laborious reality into an imagined idyll that is both effacing and silencing as it is conversely productive of a hegemonic aesthetic. He writes: “Not only do migratory workers in agricultural California have to continuously fight just to survive ... they also have to continually fight their own aestheticization, their dissolution, in the landscape” (Mitchell 200). Indeed, García's poetry seems to buttress Mitchell's claim regarding the dissolving of migrant workers into the imagined (and thus, ideological) landscape (which they have, in fact, shaped and enabled). Her art so clearly rejects this effacing, dehumanizing representation, as she portrays migrant agricultural labor as a deeply—and necessarily—human, agential act, performed in concert with the land. And, this is only one among many agential acts her characters perform. In her poem “La Madrugada,” the speaker's portrayed predawn routine evidences her complex relationship to the intersecting “natural” (i.e., nonhuman) and commodified capitalistic worlds: Soon I'll brave my leche con café. I'll clutch my favorite bowl [...] I'll marvel at the squirt of yolk [...] Then, teeth brushed,

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hair pomaded into braids, I'll grip the wire handle of my lard can, rush to claim a window to the predawn air. (García 14)

In these lines, we see that García's speaker is subject to an exploitative labor market that requires her to rise before dawn, composing her body in accordance with ideological/aesthetic standards that co-mingle commodities (portrayed by the terms “pomade,” “lard can,” “window”) with human body parts (“teeth,” “hair”) and animal body products meant for human nourishment (“leche,” “yolk”). The speaker's “braid[ing]” and “pomad[ing]” of her hair, over and above the simple practicality that requires women with long hair to secure it before they engage in manual labor, makes evident the additional aesthetic (and thus, ideological) requirements for women before they can engage in visible labor. Norms of women's fashion function as physical manifestations of the social control over women's bodies, and thus further dictate the way they can safely and productively engage in the public domain. That the speaker here needs to control her long hair (which is, of course, a traditional mark of the body's adherence to the requirements of normative femininity) reveals the specifically gendered social and political control over her body. This control always precedes her ability to go out into the field and enter into the economic subjection inherent in back-breaking waged work. To return to the specifics of this image, we can see how this mix of human and animal body parts and products suggests one of the results of ubiquitous capitalism is the destabilization of the (possibly) natural distinctions between subjects and objects—and the potential for the dangerous and misleading over-valuation of commodities that this implies. It is worth noting specifically the particular language with which García's speaker deals with the animal products and parts: she “braves” the “leche con café,” suggesting that it is (or represents) a fearsome thing, and “marvels” at the “yolk,” suggesting its awesome power. Further, it is significant that the “leche con café” that the speaker “braves,” is specifically designated with the genitive pronoun “mine.” In fact, the speaker never uses the genitive pronoun to refer to her own body or its parts; she uses “mine” only in regards to the named commodities in the poem. This word implies the speaker's complex relationship within the capitalist system: that “leche” is hers, no longer the animal's from whose female body it was extracted; the “café,” too, is hers, no longer a part of the (supposedly natural) coffee plant, and certainly it does not belong to

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the famously exploited coffee workers harvesting the plants, but it is hers—perfectly effacing and cleanly denying the complex chains of capitalistic production and human, animal, and natural exploitation that comprise these powerful and nutritive commodities. But, of course, the speaker is herself visibly exploited, even as she plays the role of the exploiter. How completely agential her complicity is, though, is not worth debating; that is, one could ask whether she would even need to claim the products of the animal and the coffee field worker if she didn't have to rise before dawn to perform her own body-wrecking, pre-dawn labor for an unseen, alienating overseer. My point here is not that we should fault the speaker for her complicity in a system of mutual— though extremely unequal—exploitation, but rather that the inevitability of this complicity is, in fact, part of the problem. The forcible cooperation of all within the system that exploits our worker-speaker, at least in part, serves to naturalize itself and render itself invisible. It does so by making it appear that the speaker’s struggle to survive within a system built upon the denial of the value of her experiential subjectivity is, in fact, her acceptance of that system rather than her practical, logical response to an illogical, inhumane mode of human existence (i.e., capitalism). That said, I would not like to suggest that the capitalistic system that operates so is in any way a disembodied, inevitable process, but rather is, of course, always the effect of the ongoing and continuous exploitative choices made by individual and collected humans to exercise their relative power in unscrupulous ways. And, we should be wary, too, of reading García's speaker's characterization as simply or purely victimized by an external application of exploitative power. This is precisely the point—and precisely the power of García's art. Her characters make evident the ways in which they are dominated by capitalism while they yet resist the assimilatory forces that would lead to their dissolution or effacement (these forces being in the service of maintaining a hegemonic status quo that permits no room for individuals like García's characters). When migrant workers have been represented within the greater normative mass culture, that representation has only rarely been selfrepresentation. This is an important distinction within a history in which official government reports whose ostensible purpose was to benefit migrant workers referred to them with the denigrating epithet “wetbacks” as late as the mid-1950s.12 At the time, García herself was a young child in

 1

Lucile Petry Leone and Helen L. Johnston “Agricultural Migrants and Public Health,” 1954. 2 Indeed, García refers in the introduction to When Living Was a Labor Camp, “Camp Observations,” to the racist, federal deportation program of the early 1950s

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the agricultural migrant worker camps, where her parents toiled and where she was born. The juxtaposition between overtly racist, dehumanizing language even at the level of official government documentation and the policies that purport (surface-level) commitment to provide community necessities, such as education for migrant children and health services, belies the deeply rooted hostility toward migrant workers and their families. This hostility views the “immigration of Mexican [people] to the United States in general, as a “social problem” in and of itself (Weiler 123). While this hostility was based in part on fears of increased (and uncontrollable) economic competition,3 there is also a more aesthetic, assimilationist, and ideological impulse. Indeed, the official rhetoric of the period focused implicitly upon the “normal” members of the community— which meant, of course, the Euro-American non-migrants, already settled in a particular locale. Thus, the “problem” of educating migrant children was not at all how best to meet their specific educational needs, but rather how to prevent them from becoming an obstacle to the educational successes of those “regular children” (Weiler 122-123). García's portrayal of the specifically un-assimilated characters, who reject and oppose the homogenizing assimilatory force of normative mass culture makes evident the truly radical power of self-representation in art.

(Wage) Work, (Domestic) Work and (Artistic) Work In “La Madrugada,” García portrays and makes visible another significant element of the migrant worker's life rendered invisible in dominant culture representations: the gendered boundaries between waged work, domestic work—and in García's case, artistic and/or literary work. It is significant that this artistic work is invisibly performed, outside the

 United States, entitled “Operation Wetback,” which she argues was aimed explicitly to “send wetbacks back where they came from” (xiii). She traces the racist vestiges of that program through the present day, which “spread... like thick tule fog today” to the contemporary California social and agricultural landscape in which she writes (xiii). Her poem “Operation Wetback, 1953” describes the human toll of the program: lost love, the deep regret at missed opportunities for affection from disappeared family members, violently truncated familial lineage and the like (22). 3 Weiler notes that “one county superintendent of schools reported in 1928: We find in the wealthiest districts the coldest hearts, and a very strong sentiment in opposition to any schooling for these Mexican children... Today one trustee told us... 'we have given up our anterooms to the Mexicans, so that our children have no place to hang their hats. We positively cannot take any more, and will do nothing to help take care of them.'” (Weiler 125).

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bounds of the poem's text, since this invisibility portrays a hierarchization of labor, in that the speaker is evidently preparing her body (both its external appearance and inner properties) for the day's labor outside her home. And yet, both the poem itself and the speaker's represented food simply appear, ready to be consumed by the reader and the speaker, respectively—and both are the products of hierarchized labor. We could read this invisibility as evidence of García's speaker's assimilation into the dominant, capitalistic culture that renders the labors behind commodities invisible (and in late capitalism, both leche con cafés and poems are, indeed, commodities). However, if we read the portrayal of the dignified speaker's morning routine as her claiming access to the same processes of representation that render lowly hierarchized labors invisible in the dominant culture, hers is instead a radical act of self-representation— revealing the same personal subjectivity that normative representations of migrant workers so thoroughly deny. García's work subtly announces that this has always been the case: the speaker, as one agricultural worker in a long and unquantifiable succession of the same, in this way, does have control over a situation in which “it has never / been better or worse / than this” (García 14). Though the wage labor to which the speaker will rush may elicit a pained response from her body (her “knees pop, hips and back/spasm”), she still represents herself in relatively positive terms, such as “sunshine,” “the eager wheat ear / ripening for love,” and even “sweet-salt toil” (García 14). This choice of words denies the normative representations of migrant agricultural workers as invisible, problematic (or worse). We can also read the lines “it has never / been better or worse / than this” as a poetic representation of metaphorically stagnant time—which evidences, at least in part, a rejection of the work overseer's commodification of the time, and even life, to which hourly workers are subject (García 14). While the porous boundary between unpaid domestic work (particularly women's unpaid domestic work) and waged work has long been a site of theoretical attention, the case is particularly important for migrant agricultural workers because the camps in which they often live are either within the farms on which the workers are laboring or geographically very close to them. This proximity is significant for many reasons: first, the lack of privacy and physical and emotional space from one's employer (who often aims to prevent collective laborer action) denies workers the full personal subjectivity engendered when one can separate one's work outside the home from one's life within the home. In the introduction to the book, García notes the specifically gendered responses to this lack of space between the characters' work lives and

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personal lives: I write what I hear and see, the stories of my dad, his friends and brothers, my godfather tell over six-packs of beer and plates piled with tacos. I listen to the aunts gossip in the kitchen, voices hushed as they recall some longago tragedy. The men howl at how they almost got swept up by la migra [border patrol]. The women weep for husbands killed by pesticides... And always the guitars and songs, one uncle's clear baritone, my father's perfect harmony, the women listening for tones long forgotten. (García xiv)

This passage reveals much about the intersection of labor, race, and gender in García's writing. First, it is significant that the men engage in storytelling “over” the material effects of the women's invisible domestic labor—the “plates piled with tacos.” The use of the preposition “over” makes evident the subtle, yet omnipresent, gendered subjection of domestic work. This reproductive work is necessary for the continuation of men's lives—and labor—but its significance is absolutely denied. In addition to this compulsory, invisible, reproductive, domestic labor, the women's other functions seem to be to “listen” and “weep.” Affective labor, then, seems as equally compulsory for the continuation of the family as the women’s more material, domestic labor. The women seem to be the community’s appointed grievers—but their performance of this function must be as unobtrusive as possible: their “voices” are “hushed” as they recall “tragedy,” and they seem not dare to grieve aloud. Their subjugation is further evidenced by their relatively passive role in the musical performance: the men play and sing, while the women only “listen for tones long forgotten,” which reveals their exclusion from the meaningmaking agency of their community. In “La Madrugada,” the speaker's apparently resigned acceptance of the inevitable interconnectivity of her wage work, domestic work, and artistic work symbolizes the inextricable intertwining of the human, natural, and commodity spheres comprising the capitalistic status quo. The speaker's work, home, and art appear thoroughly intertwined in the inescapable call of the sunrise, which has come to represent the inevitability of their totality. García writes: I pull the covers higher but can't escape the call: Es la hora de amanecer, aquí viene la madrugada.

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50 Here it comes, this day's dawn. [...] but it has never been better or worse than this [...] (14)

Significantly, “the call” the poem's speaker cannot “escape” is in Spanish, though she translates it, loosely, into English in the next few lines. This translation suggests that perhaps the inevitability of this call transcends language, making it irresistible for all who come into contact with it, irrespective of language. Conversely, the fact that the speaker does need to translate it for the English-reading audience could point to her desire for a more complete and accurate representation of her subjective, experiential reality4—complete with its compulsory “call” from the disembodied radio voice aimed at the migrant working community, which disrupts the speaker's restfulness and peace. This trans-linguistic, inescapable, disruptive call that will eventually pull the speaker and all who hear it from beneath their “covers” and the unconsciousness of their personal, subjective sleep, is complicated by the fact that it coincides with the supposedly natural process of the sun rising.5 As Mitchell argues, however, the unquestioned presentation of the landscape as an entity purely external to human social construction serves to naturalize the marginalizing processes that render workers, their labor, and the effects of their labor invisible in the hegemonic ideology of the dominant culture aesthetic. This aesthetic has no room for migrant

 4

Indeed, García's collection WLWALC concludes with a complete three-page glossary, translating the Spanish words and phrases that appear throughout the text into English (with the exception of one Greek phrase taken from the Catholic mass, “Kyrie eleison,” which is translated into English as “Lord, have mercy”). The contents of this glossary locate the book within a specific community—and, more importantly, the inclusion of the glossary itself suggests that the author intends the text as a whole to be more accessible to the mainstream English-language reader than the often-exclusionary world the text represents has been (and is) to the poems’ speakers. 5 Of course, migrant workers do not literally compel the sun to rise—but rather what is significant here for our purposes is that the varying socio-cultural significances of this particular daily natural phenomena vary according to the racial and economic hierarchical positions of individuals from particular communities.

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workers, their subjectivity, or their effects on the landscape. That García's speaker's representation and the call to labor appear in two mainstream languages (Spanish and English) illuminates the hegemonic ideology at the cultural and social foundations of language. In maintaining general communicative efficacy, these languages do not, in fact, make room for any creative constructions that might disrupt the transmission and reinforcement of the ideology that enables them. This suggests that language is (perhaps counterintuitively) not based in consensus, as we might expect, since a living language is necessarily being formed and reformed in every word written and spoken as its agents progress through time. Rather, the efficacy of language is proof of the domination and revolution-impeding power of the status quo, to which García's speaker refers toward the end of the poem.6 García's speaker's representation of work, then, as inextricably and invisibly intertwined in all its manifestations, can perhaps be read simply as a function of the linguistic impediments to which we are all subject. However, these impediments (as language itself) are clearly ideological, economic, and exclusionary at base. Another poem that addresses the porous boundaries between women's wage work, their unpaid domestic work, and their affective care work is García's “Operation Wetback, 1953.” The poem begins: The day begins like any other day. Your daughter soaks a second diaper, chortles as she shoves her soft-cooked egg to the floor. Knees pressed to cracked linoleum, you barely notice as your husband strokes your belly. Mijo, he croons, prophetic plea, then squeezes your nalgas as if to gauge for ripeness... (22)

 6

I mean that, for example, some African American slang has not been codified into accepted cultural parlance the way, say, the slang of Caucasian college students has been accepted, due in part to the fact of unequal access to power, economic, social and legal opportunity and media. This is evidence of the way a living language's evolution in fact reinforces the relative and uneven powers already present in the respective society using that language.

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The poem ends with the speaker's regret for not paying more attention to her husband's pleas for love and physical affection due to her preoccupation with the demands of domestic labor—especially since moments after the above scene, her husband is trucked away, never to be seen again by his wife and children, at the hands of the border agents as part of “Operation Wetback,” to which the title refers. This opening scene of the poem is telling: the speaker is on her knees, in a traditional pose of subjection to a greater, stronger power. She has “soft-cooked” an “egg” for her infant daughter, which suggests the gentle care with which she nurtures her family, and the “egg” imagery recalls the biological specifics of the female speaker's fertility that produces her daughter, and her yet unborn son. That the “egg” is “pushed to the floor” mirrors the violent expulsion of the speaker's husband from the country, since she will not be able to have more children with him and their sexual, reproductive relationship has been cut short by the violence of the state. Yet, it is only the woman speaker whose agony is portrayed within the poem. The speaker notes that the scene is mundane: it is a “day” like “any other day,” which portrays the unending demands of women's domestic and affective care labor—but also reveals the particularly racialized precariousness of their existence. This is the day on which her husband is taken, but the possibility for oppressive tragedy is present every day. This is the day she needs to tend to her husband and children (even as her efforts are continuously thwarted by the whims of those in her care and the oppressive forces external to her agency), but they need to be fed and cared for every day. Her compulsory care labor does not end with her husband's disappearance; rather, it intensifies, since she will now need to care for and provide for both children alone.

Artistic and Economic Productivity, Products, and Production Economic and artistic productivity are both defined and valuated by the expectations, norms, and ideology of the powerful within a given community. In a paper on the historical effects of economic unpredictability upon the lifestyle and choices of migrant workers in the late 1960s, Dorothy Nelkin7 argues there is an important conflict between the experience of the migrant worker and the greater culture in that the exclusionary nature of the dominant ideology renders its norms irrelevant



7 The field research that informs Nelkin's study was conducted between 1966 and 1968.

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at best and, more often than not, representative of the oppressive socialization of the larger static (“non-migrant”) society. She writes: “[the migrant worker's] goals are influenced by the values of the larger society, but his [sic] experience has told him [sic] that they are not within his [sic] grasp... The very norms which make life viable in a position of impotence within an unpredictable and disorderly system,8 limit the potential for social change” (Nelkin 486). The speakers in García's poems seem to have deeply and thoroughly accepted the sort of “impotence” in regard to effecting “social change,” to which Nelkin refers. The discontinuity between the aesthetics, norms, and ideology of the dominant culture and the experience of the migrant worker is evident in García's poem “Turning Trays”; it emerges immediately within the initial, evocative line of the poem: “Each vineyard is a world of crosses” (García 46). Here, the speaker distorts the traditional Christian cultural imagery of vineyards and crosses from their normative representation as evidence of bounteous miracles (Jesus turning water into wine) and the trials believers must push through—with divine support. However, in García's poem, the speaker humanizes and re-valuates the migrant worker in that her toils, too, are worthy of divine notice. But there is no support—divine or otherwise—for the migrant worker speaker to help her through the inescapable agricultural labor; her productivity serves to nourish those who exclude and marginalize her: […] you, as far from the beginning as the end, cannot walk away. You cannot escape turning trays. (García 46)

Significantly, the poem is addressed to an unseen “you” figure. While it initially seems that the poem's speaker could be addressing someone familiar with her struggles, perhaps someone from the migrant worker community she represents, in part because García's book is published by a mainstream academic press, it seems more likely that the poem addresses a wider audience—one including potential readers whose cultural norms

 8

The author argues elsewhere in the paper that migrant workers are forced to “seek safety by adapting to disorder” via “antisocial behaviors” such as fighting, storytelling, gambling, and drinking (Nelkin 474). She suggests the aforementioned phenomena reflect the perceived lack of a safe environment in migrant worker communities.

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actually exclude people such as herself. In this light, we can read the “you” as a manifestation of García's “calling out” the members of the dominant culture who benefit—unequally and exploitatively—from the labor of migrant workers to reconceptualize these workers’ humanity and acknowledge their individual, agential, and creative subjectivities that are so readily assumed in the members of their own culture. Nelkin argues further that, due to uncontrollable factors such as weather, market conditions, and the opaque, exploitative employment system, “[t]he migrant worker perceives his [sic] world as arbitrary, unpredictable, and capricious” (Nelkin 473). “Turning Trays” suggests the genesis of García's interest in the artistic use of language is in her labor in these fields: Here is where I tackled imagery […] Here is where I struggled for the end of each line, no dirt roads or dry canals to turn me back. I learned to savor strands of words, weigh their ripe perfection. (García 46)

In these lines, the speaker comes to grips with what is perhaps the only means of control over the exploitative and unpredictable world that greets her, inevitably, in a manner that controls her total physiological state and limits her experiential opportunities. She is subject to the crop's natural schedule of ripening for harvesting; she “struggles” to reach the “end” of each line (of trays), and finds each one ultimately meaningless, as there is always another row of trays she must turn. She may not be able to control her economic productivity, but she can control the poetic, linguistic representation of the system (its rules for production and her role in the construction of commodity products) through her own artistic productivity that mirrors the “struggle” of the migrant worker—except that her poetic productivity does, in fact, come to some manifest success. She does reach the end of her poetic lines. It is only through her own agential artistic productivity that she affords herself the respite from the never-ending lines in which she toils. The employment system to which migrant agricultural workers are subject is portrayed as deeply (and historically) exploitative, in the

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traditional Marxist sense,9 based in power differences. Of course, the migrant agricultural worker whom García's speaker represents has far less power than the capitalists who have structured her work life—and thus her personal life, as we might call it—so exploitatively. It is significant, however, that the exploitation is not purely and simply a product of capitalism and its concurrent ideology per se (as is the plight of the migrant agricultural worker); rather, it is arguably a continuous historical process that takes varying cultural forms, contingent upon the local, temporal, and socio-economic and political circumstances. For example, Harper and colleagues argue that “exploitation antedates capitalism. Earlier economic systems had their own forms of exploitation. Thus, exploitation is a recurring historical fact, and calls for an explanation which does not refer to the characteristics of a particular historical period” (Harper et al. 293). While this may be the case (and I do agree that it is), more pressing for our purposes is the need to explore the multiple, complex effects of the contemporary socio-economic form of exploitation represented in García's poetry. Indeed, it is the physiological effects of the speaker's exploited labor that she relates in the lines that describe both the ripening raisins that she cultivates, and, metaphorically, her own increasingly desiccated body that produces the commodity foodstuffs: […] Flesh shrivels, browns in the sun. Bronzed nuggets fall from the stem [...] (García 46)

The speaker's capability for both economic and sexual re/productivity is decreasing, as it is used (exploited) by her employer. More significant than the reduction in capability for performing waged work, the “shriveling” of the “flesh” in the poem, which “falls from the stem,” is the implied simultaneous reduction in re/productive functions of the body of the specifically female speaker. Since her flesh has shriveled, she is not likely young, strong, or healthy. The intensely oppressive labor has desiccated her fertility, and she is thus doubly exploited: both economically, by the dominating force of capitalistic progress for which she labors, but also, and perhaps more significantly in this particular image, this labor seems to have irreparably charred the possibility of the speaker's fulfillment of the normative demands of femininity. She is oppressed, in a manner analogous

 9

“The capitalist exploits workers by paying them a wage which only sustains them, while at the same time extracting surplus value from their endeavours” (Harper et al. 283).

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to the superabundant prolific ripening of the foodstuffs she harvests, in a way that is overdetermined by dominating forces: she will labor continuously, never being able to get ahead in the face of economic inequality; she is forced, ironically, to sacrifice the fertility and health of her body to be able to provide for herself and her children by harvesting fruit when it is the most full and ripe for consumption by others; she is disallowed, via the effects of her labors, from embodying the aesthetic norms of dominant femininity, while she is yet, and always, subject to their power and conscious of her body's failure to conform. Since her body has, even if only metaphorically, “fallen from the stem,” she is, at the very least, isolated and alienated from what had previously given her sustenance or support. Her exploitative labor thus reduces her capacity to function as a complete or whole person within her community. Toward the end of the poem, the speaker argues that the call to productivity is inescapable: I learned there is no stepping away, no leaving behind what remains: one more row to turn, unfinished lines to tend. (García 46)

In these lines, the speaker makes clear the inescapable requirements of/for production that delimit her possibilities for action. Both literally and metaphorically—that is, in terms of both the poem's speaker's economic production and García's personal literary production—the speaker is portrayed in the poem as ultimately compelled to continuously “tend” (i.e., continuously labor) to her always unfinished work and its inescapable remainders. Her always-unfinished work portrays the continuous subjection of women—and working-class women in particular. After returning home from the fields, she must perform the compulsory hours of unpaid, often invisible and unacknowledged domestic, reproductive, and affective care work. Her paradoxically agential representation via her poetic work is thus, at least in some respect, equally compulsory to the exploitative agricultural labor the poem represents. While García's literary work does not provide the reader with a clear answer to the question of how perfectly agential any of these labors are, her radical selfrepresentation through the product of her art serves at the very least to claim for her migrant worker characters the personal subjectivity which they are denied in the aesthetics and ideology of the dominant culture that excludes and marginalizes them.

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Conclusion: Race, Work, and the Woman Artist García's work shows that race and gender are often exploited for the acquisition of economic power. Despite the ironic titular claim of her poem “It's Not About Race,” throughout the text of When Living Was a Labor Camp, the book from which these selected poems are taken, issues of race pervade migrant labor politics, generally, and resonate throughout the collection. The fact that race is not often explicitly referred to in the poems is perhaps representative of the increasingly “colorblind” race politics of the United States in which García wrote.10 WLWALC was first published in 2000, at a time when using the refrain “I don't see race/color” was politically advantageous to suggest that the speaker had somehow transcended racist politics and history. Read in this way, the text could be viewed as very much a product of its time. However, García's work portrays vividly how race and racism form the necessary and perpetually fertile ground from which her labor poetry springs (or, more accurately, from which it is painfully dragged out in a generations-long struggle against racial, gender, economic, and social inequalities). In García's collection, it is evident that poetry and race have an analogous relationship to the cultural politics from which they are formed, in that lyric poetry and normative conceptualizations of race and gender, both social constructions, refer continually, powerfully, and definitionally to that which lies meaningfully outside themselves. The artist, a laborer in her own right, paints/labors with only the colors that she and her audience/consumers can see and comprehend—and these colors are themselves suffused with generations of meaning and social implications. García, a skillful artist/laborer, deploys these layers of invisible yet resonant meaning in her craft. Indeed, the racial and historical heritages of unequal power, privilege, and access render an artist like García's work always already political.

Bibliography García, Diana. When Living Was a Labor Camp. Tucson: University of Arizona, 2000. Print. Harper, Dean, Bobby Mills, and Ronald Parris. “Exploitation in Migrant Labour Camps.” The British Journal of Sociology 25.3 (1974): 283295. Web. 16 Nov 2014.

 10

See Omi and Winant's Racial Formation in the United States for the history and development of “colorblind” race politics in the United States.

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hooks, bell. “Rethinking the Nature of Work.” Feminist Theory: from Margin to Center. Brooklyn and Boston: South End Press, 1984. (96107). Print. Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984. (53-59). Print. Mitchell, Don. The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 1996. Print. Nelkin, Dorothy. “Unpredictability and Life Style in a Migrant Labor Camp.” Social Problems 17.4 (1970): 472-487. Web. 16 Nov 2014. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. 3rd edition. New York and London: Routledge, 2015. Print. Petry Leone, Lucile and Helen L. Johnston. “Agricultural Migrants and Public Health.” Public Health Reports 69.1 (1954): 1-8. Web. 16 Nov 2014. Weiler, Katherine. “Schooling Migrant Children: California, 1920-1940.” History Workshop 37. Spring (1994): 117-142. Web. 16 Nov 2014.



CHAPTER FOUR THE UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT FOR WOMEN’S WORK IN INSTITUTIONS FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED, 1876-19161: PRESTIGE, AUTHORITY, AND RESPECT KATRINA JIRIK UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

The rise of American caregiving institutions for people categorized as feeble-minded at the turn of the twentieth century provided women with employment opportunities as well as positions of prestige and authority at a time when female expertise was often marginalized. In the secondary literature, institutions for the feeble-minded have traditionally been grouped with other institutions, such as insane asylums and prisons.2 Closer examination of institutions for the feeble-minded indicates striking differences in the role of women within this niche. Although employment opportunities for educated women expanded during that time, many were 1

These dates reflect a time of rapid expansion of institutions for the feeble-minded out of New England into the Midwest and West Coast. It was also a time of rapid increases in the residential populations of the institutions, from initial populations in the teens to populations over a thousand. The year 1876 marks the establishment of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions of Idiotic and Feeble-minded Persons, which was the beginning of professionalization and the development of bureaucratic structures. By 1916, bureaucratic structures had been established and professionalization had been accomplished, and thus, it marks the end of the era of development. 2 William G. Staples, Castles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800-1985 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990). Frances Cahn and Valeska Bary, Welfare Activities of Federal, State, and Local Governments in California, 1850-1934 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936).

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in low-paying, low-status jobs. In contrast, women employed at institutions for the care of the feeble-minded assumed positions of power and influence, serving as models of possibility for other women. This did not happen in a vacuum; they operated within a supportive and respectful environment of male peers, who were well-aware that their women colleagues were critical in the development of these institutions and in the public support that led to their rapid expansion. This chapter offers an analysis of the work lives of four highly successful women—Catherine Brown, Mary Dunlap, Katherine Lathrop, and Alice Morrison Nash—who represent but a small sample of the many women who worked in caregiving institutions for the feeble-minded. They were involved with the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions of Idiotic and Feeble-minded Persons (hereafter referred to as the Association), a professional organization serving both employees within caregiving institutions and professionals in the public sphere. The contributions of these women illustrate a shared power dynamic with men in the field of providing specialized care. Along with their male counterparts, these women were directly responsible for shaping the field. They received recognition not only from their institutions and their professional organization, but also from the wider society, including government officials, the National Education Association, foreign experts, medical groups, and higher education authorities, something rather unusual at the time. It is important to note that the term “feeble-minded” had a broad meaning at the turn of the twentieth century; it was synonymous with the concept of “socially inadequate.” Harry Laughlin, a prominent American eugenicist, defined “socially inadequate” as “a condition whereby the individuals included are unable to meet the demands of organized society in proper caring for themselves, and in behaving toward their fellows in the manner required of useful citizens.”3 This included not only people with cognitive impairments but also a wide variety of people who today would not be considered cognitively impaired, such as the poor or immigrants. For example, twelve of the first fifteen children admitted to the Minnesota State School for the Feeble-minded as transfers from the St. Peter Insane Asylum could not speak English.4 The term “feeble-minded” 3

Harry H. Laughlin, “The Socially Inadequate: How Shall We Designate and Sort Them,” American Journal of Sociology 27, no. 1 (1921): 57. 4 George H. Knight, “Status of the Work Before the People and Legislatures,” in Proceeding of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 172. (1880: reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964).

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will thus be used in this chapter to reflect this broad and inclusive category, to which it was assigned by contemporary authorities, even as it enabled the removal of certain individuals from the larger society. The four women who are the subject of this analysis expanded their sphere of influence beyond what was typically assumed to be the providence of women working as caretakers of the young and protectors of public morals. Even within traditional female roles, such as matrons or teachers within an institution, these women exhibited a marked degree of independence and authority. Although three of the four women— Catherine Brown, Katherine Lathrop, and Alice Morrison Nash—were married, each had a professional identity separate from her husband’s, unlike the typical arrangement where wives were assistants to their husbands. This was true even when, as in the case of Catherine Brown and Alice Morrison Nash, their husbands worked in the same field.5 Although many women worked either inside or outside of institutions for the feebleminded to improve care to this vulnerable population, Brown, Dunlap, Lathrop, and Nash form a subset of women who were directly connected to specific institutions. Catherine Brown was one of five new members elected at the first meeting of the Association in 1876. Membership required a unanimous vote, along with the criterion that new members must have “distinguished themselves by their interest in this defective class.”6 A matron of the Elm Hill institution since 1851 (when her husband, Dr. George Brown, became superintendent), Brown was responsible for setting up and overseeing the educational programming, which was based on the writings of Edouard Seguin. This included individualized lessons, musical instruction, development of good manners and personal hygiene, and weekly

5

Pnina G. Abir-Am and Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Ellen Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Helena M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack, and Pnina G. Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996); Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940, vol. 1, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Women and Science: Social Impact and Interaction, Science and Society Series (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 6 “Meeting for Organization 1876,” in Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons (Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1877), 3–6. (1877; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964).

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entertainments.7 Following her election to the Association, she presented papers at several annual meetings, including one in 1877, titled “Prevention of Mental Disease,” in which she highlighted the conflict between Christian charity and Darwinian science faced by those providing care for people who were feeble-minded. Brown argued that “True Christianity, by its charities and loving care, does aid in the survival and sometimes (as it never ought) in the propagation of the unfittest, Darwinianly speaking.”8 In 1881, Brown visited four English institutions to compare them to institutions in the United States, which resulted in the publication of reports on her findings. One important difference she documented was that English institutions relied on voluntary contributions while American institutions depended primarily on state funding. She presented a summary of her observations, along with a written document, at the 1882 annual meeting of the Association, which elicited a discussion of increasing private donations to provide extras like Christmas presents and magazine subscriptions for the children.9 A regular participant in the discussions following the presentation of papers at the Association’s annual meetings, Brown was a proponent of small, home-like institutions, criticizing the push for large facilities, such as the one for feeble-minded women that had been proposed in the New York legislature by Josephine Lowell.10 Upon Brown’s death in 1907, the Association recognized her for her integrity, intelligence, and executive ability, calling her the Mother of the Association. This honorary title was indicative of Brown’s fundamental influence, especially because her husband, one of the first members of the association, was not considered among its founding fathers. Even though the wives of other founding members were very

7

Disability History Museum, “Private Institution For The Education Of FeebleMinded Youth. Barre, Massachusetts. Twenty-Fifth Biennial Report” (Charles E. Rogers, 1898), http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=1707&page=all. 8 Catherine W. Brown, “Prevention of Mental Disease,” in Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and FeebleMinded Persons (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1877), 25. 9 Catherine W. Brown, “A Visit to Four English Institutions,” in Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 226–35. (1882; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964). 10 Catherine W. Brown, “Discussion of Custodial Care of Adult Idiots,” in Proceeding of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 216. (1891; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964).

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involved in the Association’s work, they were not recognized as Brown was for their service in shaping the organization. According to Sheila Rothman, women at the turn of the twentieth century, especially middle-class women, developed philanthropic societies to focus attention on child welfare issues. For these women, employment was seen as legitimate only for a brief time before marriage. The social mores of the times still dictated that a woman’s primary obligation was to her home and family. Men and women had separate and distinct tasks, and women were not welcome in areas deemed the preserve of men. Women typically held jobs that men could not or would not do. Few middle-class, married women were employed because it carried a stigma and was often equated with the need for the family to accept charity.11 Thus, Catherine Brown’s experiences do not readily fit into the description of a middleclass woman’s place in society in the late nineteenth century. She was gainfully employed for most of her life, even though she was married and had children of her own. She was a respected member of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions of Idiotic and Feeble-minded Persons, an organization with a preponderance of male members. While she assisted her husband in the running of the Elm Hill institution, she was recognized for her contributions in her own right. She had oversight and managerial responsibilities that would have been more typical of a male employee. It is unclear how and why she was able to navigate so successfully a path that ran counter to the prevailing notion of the place of women, especially married, middle-class women. Perhaps she was seen as expanding but still functioning within the social housekeeping role of women, considering that most of the American institutions for the feebleminded during this time frame served children. Perhaps there was a societal recognition of the importance of women in caring for children in this endeavor. Perhaps this field had a more egalitarian view of women’s abilities. Whatever the reasons, Brown’s life represented an interesting anomaly to contemporary assumptions about the role of women. Unlike Brown, who was the wife of a superintendent and served as the matron of an institution, Dr. Mary Dunlap was specifically recruited by Olin Garrison, the first superintendent of the New Jersey State Institution for Feeble-minded Girls and Women in Vineland, New Jersey. She took over as both superintendent and medical director, a full-time position. Mary Dunlap received her medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886. She worked for two years as director of 11 Sheila M. Rothman, Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1978).

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Dr. Joseph Parrish’s sanitarium in Burlington, New Jersey. In 1888, when she took over the state institution,12 she and Dr. Alice Bennett were the only two female physicians in the United States at that time to have full control over both the superintendent and medical director positions at facilities for the feeble-minded.13 According to the 1914-1915 edition of Woman’s Who’s Who of America, Dr. Dunlap was internationally distinguished as a physiologist and neurologist specializing in the care and treatment of the feeble-minded. She was elected President of the Association by the predominantly male membership in 1899. That same year, she chaired the section on feeble-mindedness at the conference of the National Association of Charities and Correction. In 1901, Dunlap became the first female member of the Cumberland County Medical Society and was elected its vice president in 1903 and president in 1904, even though 44 of the 46 members were male. She was a member of the American Medical Association, which had refused to admit women as members until the early twentieth century.14 These medical connections were important because, at this time, the understanding of feeble-mindedness by general practitioners was low.15 Her presentations to the local medical society helped local physicians become more accurate in their diagnoses and provide families with information regarding services at the institutions.16 She was well-published on the care of the feeble-minded, both in medical journals and in general-audience publications. Dunlap was also influential in local civic affairs as director of the New Jersey Legal Aid Association for Women, a life member of the Vineland Historical and Antiquarian Society, a charter member of the Vineland Women’s Club, and organizer of the Vineland Public Library Association.17 By engaging with prominent members of the community, she put a public face on the work being done 12

John William Leonard ed., Woman’s Who’s Who of America; a Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada 1914-1915 (New York: American Commonwealth Company, 1914), 766, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026074107;view=1up;seq=10. 13 Frances Elizabeth Willard and Mary A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century; Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, (Buffalo: C.W. Moulton, 1893), 264. 14 Martha R. Clevenger, “From Lay Practitioner to Doctor of Medicine: Woman Physicians in St. Louis, 1860-1920,” accessed August 23, 2015, http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/articles/practitioner.htm. 15 G. R. Hunter, “Mary Dunlap, Cumberland County,” New Jersey Medicine 87, no. 3 (1990): 207–8. 16 Hunter, “Mary Dunlap,” p. 207-8. 17 Hunter, “Mary Dunlap,” p. 207-8.

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at her institution, prompting the community to view the institution favorably and to support it. In 1909, her effective role led the board to choose Dr. Madeline Hallowell to succeed her as superintendent. In Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine, Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez discusses how working in institutions and asylums as resident doctors became a new career opportunity for female physicians. A 1900 poll of 189 graduates of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania showed 60 had been or were currently employed by institutions, primarily insane asylums. Thirty-eight out of 133 public institutions for the insane employed female physicians.18 Working in an asylum offered several advantages to female physicians: the opportunity to treat a variety of physical and mental infirmities, economic security that was often lacking in private practice, and the development of community contacts and involvement. However, especially in psychiatric institutions, female physicians faced discrimination and unequal treatment that often encouraged them to seek other positions. For example, they were “regularly passed over for promotion, systematically paid lower salaries, and frequently forced to confront an unsupportive superintendent.”19 In addition, “women were not welcomed at the meetings of the American Psychiatric Association until the turn of the century.”20 While Dunlap’s life fit within the broad parameters of the career path available to female physicians during this time frame, the details offer a much different picture, possibly due to the fact that she worked in an institution for the feeble-minded rather than a psychiatric institution. She was elected president of the Association at the same time female physicians were merely accepted at meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. She was not a resident physician but rather a superintendent and medical director of an institution. She was well-respected by her male colleagues as evidenced by her election to positions of authority. She was also not the only woman specifically recruited to work in an institution for the feebleminded. These differences suggest that the environment at institutions for the feeble-minded and the Association was significantly different and more welcoming for female physicians than other institutional environments. Both Catherine Brown and Mary Dunlap functioned as staff members for prominent institutions. Katherine Lathrop, on the other hand, was instrumental in establishing an institution in California and guiding it 18

Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 91. 19 Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science, p. 156. 20 Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science, p. 156

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through its first years of operation. Lathrop was well-known in California philanthropic circles as Leland Stanford’s sister-in-law and the wife of a wealthy entrepreneur. In 1882, she traveled with Julia Judah, the wife of a railroad tycoon and mother of a feeble-minded child, to Syracuse, New York, to observe the institution there. Upon their return, they initiated a meeting with prominent citizens and power-brokers to establish the California Association for the Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children. The initial Board of Directors included former governor Leland Stanford, Governor Washington Bartlett, Julia Judah, and Katherine Lathrop.21 In 1885, Lathrop was appointed by the governor to serve as president of the Board of Trustees for the new California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-minded Children. In that role, she presided over the committee in charge of selecting a temporary site for the institution. In 1889, she used her position as president of the board to work the floor of the State Assembly, successfully canvassing members on a bill to provide a permanent site for the California Home.22 Letters from the superintendent indicate that she routinely oversaw decisions, both large and small, regarding the institution’s business, such as selecting outside vendors for supplies, determining whether to allow a magazine to profile the institution, and instructing the superintendent on institutional goals. She resigned her position as president of the board in 1893 when she moved out of California.23 According to the California legislative journal, at the time of her resignation, “She was greatly devoted to the Home and its inmates. The management had the benefit of her executive ability, which was of a high order, and of her business experience, which had been varied. In addition, she was possessed of wealth, and was of a charitable disposition, and the Home was the recipient of many benefactions at her hand.”24 The institution Lathrop helped establish was not only the first institution for the feeble-minded in California but also the only such 21

“A Benevolent Plan,” Daily Alta California, June 18, 1885, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DAC18850618.2.21&e=-------en--20--1--txIN-------. 22 “Legislative Notes,” Sacramento Daily Union, February 15, 1889, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18890215.2.28.3&srpos=7&e=------en--20--1---txIN-%22mrs+ariel+lathrop%22------#. 23 “First Biennial Message of Governor H. H. Markham to the Legislature of the State of California, Thirtieth Session,” in Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of the Thirtieth Session of the Legislature of the State of California, vol. 1 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1893), 9, https://books.google.com/books?id=z2FBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA41&source=gbs_t oc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false. 24 First Biennial Message, Appendix to the Journals, p. 9.

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institution west of Iowa. As a state institution, it accepted only state residents, which prompted some families to move to California and establish residency. According to Friedman and Shade, expanded educational opportunities led to middle-class women entering professional occupations, such as nursing, teaching, and library work, which had low status and low pay.25 Lower-class women were employed in domestic service and other menial labor. What has received little attention is the subject of wealthy women’s employment. While some, such as Hetty Green, increased their fortune by investing in the stock market, others became entrepreneurs.26 One of the outlets for middle- and upper-class women, especially married women, was social activism through women’s organizations, seen as an expression of Christian charity. Women, like Jane Addams, established missions and settlement houses designed to assist poor women. In these enterprises, the clients and the staff were predominantly female: “Men were also discarded as irrelevant in the planning of … women’s settlements because they were … motivated to action entirely by commercial rewards.”27 Wealthy women were often engaged in fundraising events for charitable enterprises, enlisting others of their social status for contributions for worthy causes. Katherine Lathrop’s life fits into this narrative in some ways and stands in sharp contrast in others. As a wealthy woman, she engaged in charitable fundraising and donated to worthy causes.28 It is of interest to note that she was frequently referred to as Mrs. Ariel Lathrop when she was engaged in social activities, tacitly acknowledging social convention. Her work in establishing and overseeing the first California institution was, however, distinctly different. She was almost exclusively referred to as Katherine Lathrop when she was involved in her work for the feebleminded, something highly unusual during this time. She was one of only a 25

Jean E. Friedman and William G. Shade, Our American Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1976), 223– 225. 26 Susan M. Yohn, “Crippled Capitalists: The Inscription of Economic Dependence and the Challenge of Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century America,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (April 2006): 85–109. 27 Friedman and Shade, Our American Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought, 307. 28 A Novel Entertainment. “San Francisco Call 5 April 1890 — California Digital Newspaper Collection,” accessed August 23, 2015, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgibin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC18900405.2.50&srpos=11&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txINlathrop%2c+kindergarten------#.

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few women to have a prominent role in the establishment of an American public institution for the feeble-minded. Unlike many women’s organizations of the time, where the directors were all women, she presided over an all-male board of trustees and the male superintendent of the institution. Nor was she simply a figurehead; she exerted control over decisions both large and small. The archival record does not provide any evidence concerning the reasons for Lathrop’s interest in providing care for the feeble-minded, and it is also unclear how she was able to navigate the separate identities of Mrs. Ariel Lathrop and Katherine Lathrop. As with the other women, there appear to be factors within the environment of caring for the feeble-minded that facilitated women in obtaining positions of leadership and authority. Like Brown and Dunlap, Alice Morrison Nash was a member of the staff at an institution for the feeble-minded. Although she spent some time as a teacher, for most of her professional life she was engaged in outreach to the community on the needs of the feeble-minded, interacting with a much larger audience than the previously mentioned women. She began teaching at the Training School for Feeble-Minded Children at Vineland, New Jersey, in 1900, at the age of twenty. She had planned to stay for only a few years to earn money for college, but remained for more than fifty years. In 1904, the Vineland Training School began offering summer school classes for public school teachers who would be working with feeble-minded children in the public schools. Nash was instrumental in setting up and running this residential summer training program, which became world-renowned, educating teachers from as far away as Japan. It became the model for other institutionally based summer programs for public school teachers. In 1909, she became principal of the school department, a position often held by men, and from 1925 to 1952, she was director of education with outreach responsibilities. From 1952 until her death in 1966, Nash was a national educational consultant. Starting in 1904, she was a co-editor, along with Henry Goddard,29 and a frequent contributor to the monthly Training School Bulletin.30 Nash continued

29

Goddard is considered the father of American intelligence testing. He translated the Binet test into English and was responsible for widely distributing it. According to Zenderland, he helped draft the first state law mandating that public schools provide special education. He was director of research at the Vineland Training School. 30 Ayer Directory, Newspapers, Magazines and Trade Publications, 1921, 617.

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serving on the editorial board until her death,31 working to improve the public perception of people with cognitive impairment and advocating that they were much like anyone else. This belief was a focal point of all of her outreach efforts; it pervaded her summer school training programs, her prolific writing and her presentations to civic, professional and educational audiences. Teaching was seen as a predominantly women’s profession because it fit within the child care duties ascribed to women at the turn of the twentieth century. By 1910, women made up eighty percent of the nation’s teachers.32 Pay, however, was meager, often less than half of what a man would have been paid, leading school boards to hire women as a costsaving measure. Various laws forced women out of the profession when they married because school boards had no difficulty replacing them.33 According to Rothman, social conventions dictated that women’s work was temporary; its purpose was to “[i]mprove her marital choices…and to demonstrate her moral worth through self-support under the most trying circumstances.”34 Work was not intended to advance a woman’s career, and assumptions that it was temporary prevented women from being considered for promotions. Those same norms also helped employers assume that women were not capable of functioning in executive positions. Female teachers did not escape the discrimination that middleclass women experienced in other professions. Not only were they paid less than men, but they were also unlikely to advance to principal or superintendent. According to Rothman, in 1900, only twelve women in the entire United States held a position as superintendent.35 The trajectory of Alice Morrison Nash’s professional career offers a stark contrast to the traditional path. Not only did she continue to work after she married in 1909, but she was also promoted to positions of authority usually held by men. She demonstrated executive abilities in the operation of the Vineland summer school and in coordinating educational outreach on a global scale. She was a sought-after speaker at national meetings of various 31

Frederik Ohles, Shirley M. Ohles, and John G. Ramsay, Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), 236–237. 32 Rothman, Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present, 57. 33 Barbara Mayer Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 243–248. 34 Rothman, Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present, 47–48. 35 Rothman, Woman's Proper Place, p. 59.

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professional organizations, including the National Educational Association and the American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded. Morrison Nash was not the only female teacher to advance her career within an institution for the feeble-minded, possibly because she did not report to a school board but rather to the institution’s superintendent. While her husband, Charles Nash, eventually became superintendent of the Vineland institution after World War I, her promotion to principal occurred before his advancement and she was his supervisor for a number of years. Catherine Brown, Mary Dunlap, Katherine Lathrop, and Alice Morrison Nash were all notable leaders in their field. While caring for the feeble-minded evokes the concept of social housekeeping,36 noting their individual leadership seems inadequate in explaining the power and authority they held in a field dominated by men. They were by no means an exception. Other women found employment opportunities in institutions for the feeble-minded as superintendents, physicians, teachers, matrons, and attendants. One of the features connecting these four women was that they were either full or honorary members of the Association, an organization welcoming to women and actively supporting women in positions of influence. The egalitarian environment within the organization was illustrated by a remark by its president in 1894, Dr. A. E. Osborne, who reflected on his desire to open up the membership to “People of both sexes, who, though belonging to no organization, are humble workers in the cause individually and to whom our papers and discussions would be very interesting as an additional incentive to action.”37 He did not want the Association to “debar the admission of any man or woman interested in the care or the education of those deficient or feeble in mind,”38 and believed opening up the membership would increase the power of the Association in providing care for the feeble-minded. One possible explanation is that the early Association’s mission focused on caregiving, and women were by their very nature considered experts in nurturing children. Another possibility is that a more egalitarian perspective within the Association enabled women to achieve positions of authority.

36

Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 37 A. E. Osborne, “President’s Annual Address,” in Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 389. (1894; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964). 38 Osborne, President’s Annual Address, p. 389

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Another reason for women’s success in the field was that, at a time of open hostility to female physicians practicing medicine,39 institutions for the feeble-minded were actively recruiting them.40 For instance, in 1894, Dr. Barr of Pennsylvania stated: The medical staff has been augmented by the addition of a woman physician, a long felt want in this institution. Dr. Louise H. Llewellyn, a graduate of the Woman’s College in Philadelphia, also formerly a resident physician at the Delaware State Insane Hospital, with an added experience at the Salpetriere in Paris under Charcot, fills this position with credit to herself and the institution.41

It should be noted that Charcot was one of the foremost neurologists of his time (Sigmund Freud was one of his students), suggesting that women like Dr. Llewellyn were extremely well-credentialed. Credentials were, however, apparently not enough to actively recruit or even hire female physicians into positions of authority outside the field of care for the feeble-minded. In conclusion, Catherine Brown, Mary Dunlap, Katherine Lathrop, and Alice Morrison Nash represented women wielding unusual authority and influence at the turn of the twentieth century. Within their field, they demonstrated women’s potential for leadership, carving out positions of prestige and responsibility—from matron to physician to founder to educational outreach coordinator. They were not the only women to do so, thanks in part to the respectful and supportive environment provided by the Association. There is no definitive answer, at this time, as to why this was the case. One possibility is that institutions for the feeble-minded at this time were caregiving places for a special population of children; another possibility is that many of the residents were female, and there was a belief that women should care for women. A third possibility is that there was something fundamentally different about the working lives of women within the setting of institutions for the feeble-minded. While secondary sources do not usually distinguish between institutions for the feeble-minded and psychiatric institutions, prisons, and reform schools, the work lives of Brown, Dunlap, Lathrop, and Morrison Nash suggest the 39 Clevenger, “From Lay Practitioner to Doctor of Medicine: Woman Physicians in St. Louis, 1860-1920.” 40 M. W. Barr, “Report from the States-Pennsylvania,” Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and FeebleMinded Persons, 511. (1894; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1964). 41 Barr, Report from the States, p. 511

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environment for working women in institutions for the feeble-minded was radically different from the work culture of other settings. At a time when women’s abilities were stymied and marginalized in most fields, women caring for the feeble-minded had access to leadership positions, and were not only accepted but also encouraged and praised by their male colleagues. The history of institutions for the feeble-minded has received little academic investigation. Embedded within this broader history is the so far unexamined history of women and work in this setting. Typical explanations, such as women were successful in this field specifically because of gendered assumptions regarding their caretaking proclivities, at best offer only a partial understanding of the historical events. Each of the women portrayed in this chapter was recognized for skills far beyond caretaking. Nor were they the only women in this field to achieve positions of power and authority. Additional investigation into women and work in institutions for the feeble-minded is needed to discover what made this setting so different for women. Why did this setting seem to expand the role of women in positions of authority in a field that was still predominantly male when other settings did not? Why were male members of the Association actively recruiting women into positions of authority at a time when other organizations were marginalizing the role of women? How does women’s work in this setting compare to other, more wellexplored, settings during this time frame? A greater examination of this specialized niche offers the possibility of adding new insights to the topic of women and work.

Bibliography Benevolent Plan.” Daily Alta California. June 18, 1885. http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DAC18850618.2.21&e=------en--20--1---txIN-------. Abir-Am, Pnina G., and Outram, eds. Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989. Ayer Directory, Newspapers, Magazines, and Trade Publications, 1921. Barr, M. W. “Report from the States-Pennsylvania.” Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 1894, 503–12. Brown, Catherine W. “A Visit to Four English Institutions.” Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for “A

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Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, no. Journal Article (1882): 226– 35. —. “Discussion of Custodial Care of Adult Idiots.” Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, 1891, 211–18. —. “Prevention of Mental Disease.” In Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and FeebleMinded Persons. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1877. Cahn, Frances, and Valeska Bary. Welfare Activities of Federal, State, and Local Governments in California, 1850-1934. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936. Clevenger, Martha R. “From Lay Practitioner to Doctor of Medicine: Woman Physicians in St. Louis, 1860-1920.” Accessed August 23, 2015. http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/articles/practitioner.htm. Degler, Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Disability History Museum. “Private Institution For The Education Of Feeble-Minded Youth. Barre, Massachusetts. Twenty-Fifth Biennial Report.” Charles E. Rogers, 1898. http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=1707&page= all. “First Biennial Message of Governor H. H. Markham to the Legislature of the State of California, Thirtieth Session.” In Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of the Thirtieth Session of the Legislature of the State of California, Vol. 1. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1893. https://books.google.com/books?id=z2FBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA41&so urce=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false. Fitzpatrick, Ellen. Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Friedman, Jean E., and William G. Shade. Our American Sisters: Women in American Life and Thought. 2nd ed. Boston: Allynand Bacon, Inc., 1976. Hunter, G. R. “Mary Dunlap, CumberlandCounty.” New Jersey Medicine 87, no. 3 (1990): 207–8. Knight, George H. “Status of the Work Before the People and Legislatures.” Proceeding of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, no. Journal Article (1880): 163.

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Laughlin, Harry H. “The Socially Inadequate: How Shall We Designate and Sort Them.” American Journal of Sociology 27, no. 1 (1921): 54– 70. “Legislative Notes.” The Sacramento Daily Union. February 15, 1889. http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgibin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18890215.2.28.3&srpos=7&e=-------en--20--1--txIN-%22mrs+ariel+lathrop%22------#. Leonard, John William, ed. Woman’s Who’s Who of America; a Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada 1914-1915. New York: American Commonwealth Company, 1914. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026074107;view=1up;s eq=10. “Meeting for Organization 1876.” In Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and FeebleMinded Persons, 3–6. Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1877. Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Ohles, Frederik, Shirley M. Ohles, and John G. Ramsay. Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997. Osborne, A. E. “President’s Annual Address.” Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Persons, no. Journal Article (1894): 385–99. Pycior, Helena M., Nancy G. Slack, and Pnina G. Abir-Am, eds. Creative Couples in the Sciences. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. Rossiter, Margaret W. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Vol. 1. Book, Whole. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Rothman, Sheila M. Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present. New York: Basic Books, Inc, 1978. “San Francisco Call 5 April 1890 — California Digital Newspaper Collection.” Accessed August 23, 2015. http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgibin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC18900405.2.50&srpos=11&e=-------en--20--1-txt-txIN-lathrop%2c+kindergarten------#. Sheffield, Suzanne Le-May. Women and Science: Social Impact and Interaction. Science and Society Series. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.

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Staples, William G. Castles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800-1985. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Wertheimer, Barbara Mayer. We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Willard, Frances Elizabeth, and Mary A. Livermore. A Woman of the Centuryࣟ; Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Book, Whole. Buffalo: C.W. Moulton, 1893. Yohn, Susan M. “Crippled Capitalists: The Inscription of Economic Dependence and the Challenge of Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century America.” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (April 2006): 85–109. Rothman, Sheila M. Woman’s Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the Present. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1978. Wertheimer, Barbara Mayer. We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. Willard, Frances Elizabeth, and Mary A. Livermore. A Woman of the Centuryࣟ; Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Buffalo: C.W. Moulton, 1893.

CHAPTER FIVE WHOSE “Y” IS IT? DEFINING MEANINGFUL WORK IN THE COMPETITION FOR WOMEN’S SOULS: 1865-1907 THOMAS HARLOW UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

While many disciplines recognize the importance of surveying the varied ways in which oppression shapes society, among historians this discussion has tended to focus on the impact of race and class in shaping gendered identity. Consequently, when examining the women’s club movement, historical inquiries have typically emphasized only the relationships and disagreements between race- and class-defined groups. However, the historiography has left unexplained the conflict found between women of the same socio-economic status as they sought to shape club identity.1 The purpose of this chapter is to explore the possibilities presented using the theoretical perspective of intersectionality as an analytical tool for historical analysis. Intersectionality provides the means to survey organizational processes beyond race, class, and gender. This essay investigates an unexplored Illinois state Supreme Court case to demonstrate the importance of other identifiers, such as religion and cultural politics, in shaping club identity. Prior to the formation of a national association in 1907, two predecessor organizations locked in a protracted legal battle for the right to use the name Young Women’s

1 There are notable exceptions that explore the inner-workings of club membership such as Nancy Marie Robertson’s review of race relations in the YWCA. However, it too emphasizes the impact of race in shaping club identity. See: Nancy Marie Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).

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Christian Association (YWCA). Each argued that their disparate Protestant vision of national service entitled them to sole ownership. For their part, the men deciding the case ultimately based their decision on the economic impact to the club benefactors. In the spring of 1902, one of the first duties for Jennie Griffith, the newly elected president of the American Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association, was to order the publication of a pamphlet in its defense.2 Mailed out to the 454 member groups of the of the American Committee (AC) across the nation, the document was a strident rebuke of the Illinois Supreme Court’s reversal of a prior ruling, which thus stripped the Chicago-based organization of the right to use the name “Young Women’s Christian Association.”3 In the leaflet, Griffith vehemently denied what Chief Justice John P. Hand had noted as the AC’s willful incorporation of the name YWCA to defraud donors by “leading the public to believe that it stood as the committee and representative of the associations known as the Young Women’s Christian Associations in the field where it expected to operate.”4 This was a stunning blow to the membership of the American Committee. Meanwhile, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the president of the International Board of Women and Young Women’s Christian Associations, Jean Buxton, reviewed the Illinois Supreme Court decision with a sense of satisfaction. The ten-year court battle had been an emotional rollercoaster. It began with a loss in a superior court, followed 2

It is important to note that I use the term “American Committee” as it came to be known. Toward the end of the nineteenth-century, it was called the International Committee as well. Frequently these names were interchanged until the American Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association incorporated in the state of Illinois in 1902. See Secretary of State Rose, James A., “An Act Concerning Corporations” (State of Illinois, Department of State, March 15, 1902), Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 3 John Hand, The Young Women’s Christian Association of Chicago vs. The International Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association Illinois Supreme Court Opinion, 1362 Thomas. N. Jamieson 1 (Supreme Court of Illinois, Northern Grand Division 1901). “City and College Association Tables,” The Evangel, July 1900, 24, 34, Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 4 “Reasons for Change of Name of the American Committee of Young Women’s Christian Associations, to the American Committee” (The American Committee, 1902), 3, Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

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by a victory at the appellate level, only to have that decision reversed by the initial Supreme Court decision. Though Buxton lamented the negative publicity brought on by the case, which had affected recruiting for her association, she felt the International Board (IB) had been vindicated at last.5 While a much smaller organization than the American Committee, with only 56 nationally affiliated clubs, the IB had been the first to use the name YWCA.6 This long-drawn legal case provides an excellent opportunity to explore how differing ideas of gender identity shaped women’s organizations in the United States. When scholars today refer to the work that women do, they usually mean paid labor. Of course, women have always worked, regardless of class, race, ethnicity, or social status. However, for many middle- and upper-class women, “work” has not always meant wage labor but rather activism and volunteer work. Most of the nineteenth and early twentieth century registered a women’s association movement, which eventually permeated every aspect of American life, transforming the political and social culture of the country. Whether working for abolition, temperance, orphan asylums, or homes for aged widows, participating women forged careers without wage compensation but with such a profound impact that contemporary men often referred to the era as the “woman’s century.”7 “Organized womanhood,” as it came to be called, existed in many forms: newly sprung or long-existing, auxiliary or self-sustaining, conservative or liberal, and representing women from most ethnic or religious groups. Women organized to address the issues most important to them and to bypass constraints that defined a “woman’s place.”8 For its part, the YWCA stood at many of these momentous cultural crossroads, which are still significant today. The YWCA membership debated racial and ethnic inclusion against the backdrop of historic racism 5

“Victory for Chicago and the International Board,” The International Messenger, February 1902, 178–180, Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 6 “Statistics,” Journal of the Seventeenth Biennial Conference of the International Board of Women’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, October 29November 5, 1903, n.d., 122, Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 7 Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History, Women in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 3. 8 Ibid., 2.

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and nativism. It witnessed the branching of evangelical Protestantism into the competing ideals of the Social Gospel progressive reform and the more conservative, fundamentalist salvation movement of the early twentieth century. Both branches sought to justify their inclusion in a patriarchal political culture through the familial language of motherhood. Both movements also challenged modernists’ and liberal feminists’ arguments for full political and economic inclusion. Originally ignored in the standard histories, the study of women’s associations has evolved greatly from the early compensatory and contributory reviews by second-wave feminist historians of the 1970s. To illuminate the lives of women missing from history and juxtapose their careers with men’s expectations, these scholars have long depicted the women's club movement as a unified effort toward common goals.9 These decades-old studies have long colored our perceptions of the clubwomen of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Recent scholarship utilizing gender analysis has explored in more depth the relationship between clubwomen and those they perceived to be in need. These studies have focused on class- or race-based differences, investigating how working-class women and minorities have pursued social inclusion or attempted to define their relationship with the middle class. Consequently, we have very little understanding of the nature of these associations’ operations. For example, in the case of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Dorthea Browder has focused on attempts of middle- and upper-class clubwomen to impart Victorian Christian values onto working women, who, for their part, sought to shape club policy toward temporal assistance, such as employment services, housing, or the pursuit of protective legislation. Further, Nancy Robertson has examined the relationship between these white clubwomen and the black auxiliaries, as African American women sought to shape club policy away from ecumenical uplift and toward full inclusion and “Christian Sisterhood.”10

9

Early club histories were published by their memberships. Examples include Mary Sims of the YWCA and Geline MacDonald. See: Mary Sophia Stevens Sims, The Natural History of a Social Institution: The Young Women’s Christian Association (New York: Woman’s Press, 1936).Geline MacDonald Bowman, A History of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc. 1919-1944 Inclusive, 1st Edition (National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, 1944). 10 See: Dorothea Browder and The University of Wisconsin- Madison, From Uplift to Agitation: Working Women, Race, and Coalition in the Young Women’s

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As a result, there has been little work to historicize the evolution of not just the relationship between clubwomen and those they sought to serve, but also between competing ideals within the organizations. Clubwomen did not merely conform to gendered cultural expectations of behavior.11 Rather, they held disparate views of meaningful service, and competed to define their roles in public spaces. In the case of the YWCA and its two predecessor groups—the American Committee and the International Board—the scholarly portrayals can be categorized in two general directions. First, some scholarship has depicted an organization that has always clung to Victorian tenets as it sought to compel working-class women to adopt middle-class standards. Second, the YWCA has also been viewed as two original organizations that, while struggling with different ideas of uplift, finally came together to forge a unified identity at the 1906 merger.12 The unexplored court case that is the subject of this chapter reveals a more complex relationship. While the circumstance that sparked the lawsuit was the infringement of an AC club into an area where an IB club existed—in Chicago, Illinois—and the ruling was based on the right to utilize the name; at the heart of the case were competing visions of meaningful service for women and the nation. Understanding the intricacies of the YWCA, and the actors that shaped its policies can provide a template for examining all large social organizations. It has been more than 25 years since Joan Wallach Scott’s theoretical treaties revolutionized women’s studies, as well as women’s and gender Christian Association (University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2008).Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46. 11 Dorothea Browder provides a class based perspective, arguing that working women altered the mission of the YWCA. See: Browder and Madison, From Uplift to Agitation. Kirsten Delegard argues it was fear of Communism that drove conservative women to reactionary groups such as the Daughters of the Revolution, which sought to dismantle the “progressive” clubs they saw as a threat to the natural social order in the United States. See: Kirsten Delegard, Battling Miss Bolshevikiࣟ: The Origins of Female Conservatism in the United States, 1st ed.., Politics and Culture in Modern America. Y (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 12 Peggy Pascoe provides an example of the relationship between Victorian clubwomen and their working-class and racially different counterparts. See: Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Also see: Mary Sophia Stephens Sims, The YWCA, an Unfolding Purpose (Woman’s Press, 1950). Anne Firor Scott has argued the second view of a forged identity. See: Scott, Natural Allies, 104–110.

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history, around what has become called (sometimes disparagingly) the holy trinity of gender, race, and class.13 This theoretical perspective has become an analytical foundation that has re-conceptualized how we examine history, and it has contributed to a comparative dialog that most frequently focuses on the structural relationships between groups. Missing in the discourse are certain invisible in-group dynamics that can shape historical events and processes.14 While feminists have continued to search for increasingly sophisticated theoretical lenses to understand how oppression shapes society, historians have lagged in carrying these perspectives into women’s history and historical discourse as a whole. In particular, third-wave racial-feminist theorists such as Kimberlè Williams Crenshaw have utilized a methodology formulated around notions of “intersectionality.”15 However, as Nina Lykke has noted, there are many definitions of intersectionality and many different perspectives on how gender intersects with other sociocultural categorizations. Although historians often resist interdisciplinary perspectives and feminist discourses that explore power/ disempowerment, possession/dispossession, privilege, and oppression—preferring instead to discuss agency, cultural interaction, and change over time—Lykke offers a perspective that can serve “as a tool, to examine political resistances vis-àvis intertwined power differentials and normativities being built around a resignification of categorizations and normative identity markers.”16 Lykke argues that it is important to understand these processes involve both inter-action and intra-action. Whereas the former describes the movement of “bounded entities,” like billiard balls, that encounter each other without triggering any mutual transformation, the latter is an interchange of “un-bounded” phenomena, which interact resulting in a process of mutual construction and transformation.17 This idea of intraaction of normatives that are subject to changes in meaning, through human agency, offers historians a powerful tool of analysis for a vast array of categories. Not only can identifiers such as gender, race, ethnicity,

13

Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1053. 14 For a discussion of the relevance of “gender” as a category of analysis see: Joan W. Scott, “Unanswered Questions,” The American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (December 1, 2008): 1422–30, doi:10.1086/ahr.113.5.1422. 15 Nina Lykke, Feminist Studiesࣟ: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology and Writing (New York: Routledge Sociology, 2010), 50. 16 Ibid., 51. 17 Ibid.

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class, age, and sexuality be interwoven, but the transformational processes they undergo can also be historically contextualized. Consequently, when we revisit the 1902 Illinois Supreme Court ruling, we can now review the complex forces shaping the YWCA. Specifically, the willingness of each side to commit to such protracted adjudication requires closer scrutiny. Why would two groups with so many socioeconomic similarities vehemently compete for the same name, a competition born out of their incongruent notions of duty and service? The answer can be found in their disparate interpretations of their Protestant faith. The student-based AC clubs required Evangelical church membership, focused on missionary outreach, and saw their greatest duty as saving women’s souls for Christ. In contrast, urban members of the IB were concerned with spreading God’s word, but they were also ecumenical, promoting unity through Christian work, and focused on temporal outreach to women they deemed to be in need. The interaction with their constituents shaped these different interpretations of Protestantism, reflecting how over time, class and race influenced clubwomen’s socioeconomic, political, and religious beliefs and sense of duty. The women of the AC, which initially formed in Midwestern colleges, and their urban IB counterparts, were socially and economically comparable. Both consisted of middle-class white women with a smaller cadre of upper-class women within their leadership. In addition, while no specific data is available, it appears marriage rates were similar—though given the AC’s student membership, their average level of education was perhaps higher. The chief disparity between the two clubs was in their religious perspective. While today we may see little difference between Evangelical Fundamentalists and Social Gospellers of the late nineteenth century, in reality, the distinctions were stark. The older, urban YWCAs affiliated with the International Board in many ways reflected the “old order of American Protestantism which allowed for the interrelationship of faith, science, the Bible, morality, and civilization.”18 It began to appear in cities on the East Coast, originally formed as prayer groups to carry the word of God to “unattached girls” moving to the city, and to teach Victorian ideals of womanhood. By the 1870s, many of these had begun to focus on overseeing the “temporal, social, mental, moral and religious welfare of young women.”19 Foremost 18

George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17. 19 The Ladies Christian Union of the City of New York (LCU) Constitution, revised in 1863, was reprinted in LCU, Sixth Annual Report for 1863, 10-11,

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concerned with native-born, white working women throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, they went about their work in practical ways as the associations focused in efforts on women who worked for wages. They provided inexpensive boarding houses, vocational training groups, and placement bureaus to help find employment, gymnasia for exercise, and low-cost cafeterias and restaurants. These working women were, in turn, encouraged to join the association as full members. This would be a crucial factor in shaping the IB YWCAs. As these women became full members, they began to have an impact on association policy, and the IB began evolving to accept the social justice tenets of the Social Gospel movement. These early, community-based YWCAs used the familial language of motherhood and sisterhood to describe the power of the “Christian Home,” aiming to protect not only young working women but also the nation as a whole. Members were reminded that it was their Christian duty to serve as role models for newcomers: “Every young woman is her sister’s keeper.”20 Moreover, Jean Buxton, noted, “A homeless nation is a godless nation.”21 In this way, IB members elevated their work to that of national service. As a proper home was the foundation of social order, YWCA boarding houses served as suitable fictive homes, and a means to impart acceptable values of culture and refinement to “working girls.” As middle-class women engaged in the day-to-day work of the Association, they began to observe the lives of working girls first hand and were profoundly shocked by what they saw and heard.22 Over time, they came to support improved working conditions and revising minimum wage laws, an aspect that would become part of women’s agenda in the Progressive movement by the 1870s.23 The younger AC YWCA association began appearing by 1871, primarily across university campuses as women sought education in everquoted in Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 190646, 13. 20 Mrs. Jacob Harley, “Should Boarding Homes Be Self-Supporting?” Journal of the Fifth International Conference of Women’s Christian Associations (Cleveland, 1879), 18-19. Quoted in Sims, The Natural History of a Social Institution, 28. Harley’s given name was not listed. 21 Jeanne Logan Buxton, “The Advantages of Consolidation as Viewed by the International Board of Women’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations,” in American Committee of Young Women’s Christian Associations, Proceedings of the Special Convention, 1906, 7. Quoted in Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, 14. 22 This reference delineated membership rather than age. Organizers were referred to in Association meeting minutes as “ladies” in distinction from working women who were regularly referred to as “girls.” 23 Scott, Natural Allies, 106.

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growing numbers. At a time when public education emphasized Christian morality and most university presidents were ordained ministers, these campus YWCAs emphasized individual salvation and encouraged student members to support foreign missionary work. They used Bible study and religious meetings to persuade their membership to commit to “a life of Christian service at home or in the mission field.”24 With an emphasis on individual salvation, these student groups represented a more conservative view of their Protestant faith. Many of these women would eventually embrace the then-emerging pessimistic fundamentalist perspective. These student groups immediately came into conflict with the community-based associations. This was partly due to religious differences. Members of the AC rejected the lax membership requirements of the urban YWCAs, and were suspicious of what they saw as the “secular nature” of the IB’s social programs. However, it was also due to their expansion into urban areas, as graduated members sought to maintain their affiliation with the YWCA to which they identified. Focused on preparing “proper Christian women” from their own upper- and middleclass, these clubs were affected less by the plight of working women— though their work with black women’s auxiliaries would become a factor in shaping club policy after the 1906 merger. The result of the conflict between the AC and IB was competition for membership, confusion among their benefactors, and a loss of credibility in the eyes of the public at large, as each supposed “Christian” organization attacked the integrity of the other. The two organizations had discussed unification as early as 1891; however, they could not come to terms on the basis of membership. By 1893, an attempted merger had failed. The best the two clubs could manage was to forge an agreement not to organize a local club in an urban area where a competing club operated. However, this agreement immediately created more tension as a club affiliated with the American Committee organized in Chicago. Ironically, while headquartered in that city, the AC had never established a local YWCA. After operations began, the IB bitterly complained in letters that they had not been contacted, and demanded the closure of the facility. For their part, the AC board argued that the club organizers had been longterm members of their YWCA from other clubs, hence were not breaking the agreement.25 Through its local affiliate, the Chicago Young Women’s 24

Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 14. Sims, The Natural History of a Social Institution, 21–26. 25 “The Report of the Adjustment Committee of the International Board of Women’s & Young Women’s Christian Associations” (International Board of Women’s & Young Women’s Christian Associations, November 1895), Y.W.C.A.

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Christian Association, the IB filed suit, which was the case that touched off the ten-year court battle for the right to operate and organize under the title Young Women’s Christian Association.26 It is important to note that, at the time of the 1902 decision, almost ten years before the Men and Religion Forward Movement in 1911 (or Hobby Lobby today, for that matter), the Illinois Supreme Court and the male witnesses deposed found little interest in the women’s arguments of the importance of their differing missions or protection of religious expression.27 In an era when men challenged the notion that women even belonged in the public sphere, they viewed this strictly as an issue of business. Depositions of club officers focused on their conflict over the importance of their differing missions for women and the nation, and its relevance in establishing entitlement to their name. The men, mostly benefactors or community leaders, addressed the financial impact caused by the confusion of two clubs with names so similar. It is on this basis that the court made its final determination. Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Hand initially rejected relief for the International Board, finding nothing proprietary in the names Young, Women’s, Christian, or Association that would warrant protection. It was only after reconsidering the financial impact of contributions regularly given to the wrong party that the court reversed itself and granted the IB relief.28 Throughout the late nineteenth century and until the merger of the two organizations in 1906, the non-ecumenical evangelists of the AC—with a growing membership more than three times the size of the urban clubs— were far more influential than their IB counterparts. The loss of their name provided the impetus for the union and a change of tactics. As Griffith noted at the end of the pamphlet, “now that this thing is past [sic] the American Committee would willingly ‘forget those things which are of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 26 Hand, The Young Women’s Christian Association of Chicago vs. The International Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association Illinois Supreme Court Opinion, 1362 Thomas. N. Jamieson 1 (Supreme Court of Illinois, Northern Grand Division 1901). 27 Gail Bederman, “‘The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough’: The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 1911-1912 and the Masculinization of Middle-Class Protestantism,” American Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September 1, 1989): 432, doi:10.2307/2713149. 28 Hand, The Young Women’s Christian Association of Chicago vs. The International Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association Illinois Supreme Court Opinion, 1362 Thomas. N. Jamieson 1 (Supreme Court of Illinois, Northern Grand Division 1901).

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behind’…and to the healing of divisions rather than making them wider.”29 For their part, the IB members had long sought merger though they feared it. As the AC YWCAs grew in numbers, their membership had aged and remained stagnant for more than a decade. In the 1906 merger, it was easy for Griffith to voice conciliation. After all, it was the American Committee that emerged victorious as the International Board members agreed that all future clubs must join dedicated to the individual salvation and the Evangelical Church membership basis prescribed by the AC. However, this would not end the struggle for the identity and mission of the YWCA. Many of the original IB members remained, and by 1915 forged a coalition with a new generation of student members, industrial working women, and black women auxiliaries—once again dedicating the YWCA to temporal uplift and “Christian sisterhood.” Some original AC members, such as Florence Sims, faced with the working conditions of the industrial working women, would have a conversion experience and come to reject their salvation mission in favor of social activism. And black auxiliary members, such as Addie Waites Hunton, would shape YWCA policy to live up to their ideal of their “bond of common womanhood deeper than all racial separateness.”30 In 1920, many of the evangelical fundamentalists would publically denounce the shift, and flee the YWCA for more conservative organizations, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Bibliography Bederman, Gail. “‘The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough’: The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 19111912 and the Masculinization of Middle-Class Protestantism.” American Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September 1, 1989): 432–65. doi:10.2307/2713149. Bowman, Geline MacDonald. A History of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Inc. 1919-1944 Inclusive. 1st Edition. National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, 1944. Browder, Dorothea, and The University of Wisconsin- Madison. From Uplift to Agitation: Working Women, Race, and Coalition in the Young Women’s Christian Association. University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2008. 29 30

“Reasons for Change of Name.” Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46, 2.

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“City and College Association Tables.” The Evangel, July 1900. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Delegard, Kirsten. Battling Miss Bolshevikiࣟ: The Origins of Female Conservatism in the United States. 1st ed. Politics and Culture in Modern America. Y. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Hand, John. The Young Women’s Christian Association of Chicago vs. The International Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association Illinois Supreme Court Opinion, 1362 Thomas. N. Jamieson 1 (Supreme Court of Illinois, Northern Grand Division 1901). Lykke, Nina. Feminist Studiesࣟ: A Guide to Intersectional Theory, Methodology, and Writing. New York: Routledge Sociology, 2010. Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pascoe, Peggy. Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. “Reasons for Change of Name of the American Committee of Young Women’s Christian Associations, to the American Committee.” The American Committee, 1902. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Robertson, Nancy Marie. Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Rose, James A., Secretary of State. “An Act Concerning Corporations.” The State of Illinois, Department of State, March 15, 1902. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Scott, Anne Firor. Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Women in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1053–75. —. “Unanswered Questions.” The American Historical Review 113, no. 5 (December 1, 2008): 1422–30. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.5.1422. Sims, Mary Sophia Stephens. The YWCA, an Unfolding Purpose. Woman’s Press, 1950.

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Sims, Mary Sophia Stevens. The Natural History of a Social Institution: The Young Women’s Christian Association. New York: Woman’s Press, 1936. “Statistics.” Journal of the Seventeenth Biennial Conference of the International Board of Women’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, October 29-November 5, 1903, n.d. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. “The Report of the Adjustment Committee of the International Board of Women’s & Young Women’s Christian Associations.” International Board of Women’s & Young Women’s Christian Associations, November 1895. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. “Victory for Chicago and the International Board.” The International Messenger, February 1902. Y.W.C.A. of the U.S.A. Records. Group 2. Series I. Predecessor Organizations. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

II. CASE STUDIES AND SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES

CHAPTER SIX POLICIES AND PRACTICES TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD FOR WOMEN FACULTY: THE CASE OF NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY CANAN BILEN-GREEN, KAREN FROELICH, AND CHARLENE WOLF-HALL NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

A revealing 2006 study by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) piqued academic and public interest in the role of women in higher education. AAUP’s examination of 1,445 colleges and universities found that women earned more than half of all new Ph.D. degrees granted to American citizens, but still comprised only about 45% of tenure-track faculty, 31% of tenured faculty, and just 24% of full professors in 2005-2006 (West & Curtis, 2006). More women than men occupied part-time or non-tenure-track positions.Women’s participation was notably less in doctoral-granting institutions, where women constituted just 34% of full-time faculty, 26% of tenured faculty, and 19% of full professors. This is a serious problem, according to West and Curtis (2006), given the status and prestige of doctoral universities, which are considered role models and progressive thought leaders in higher education, as well as the fact that close to half of all full-time faculty teach in these institutions. The low representation of women at advanced professional ranks is neither new nor unique to higher education. However, the slow progress of women in light of their prevalence in academe’s primary labor pool for a substantial number of years presents a puzzle. Land-grant universities, institutions transitioning from science/technology roots to a more comprehensive programmatic scope (Bilen-Green & Froelich, 2010), and science/technology/engineering/math (STEM) university units exhibit

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especially low percentages of women in their upper faculty ranks(Nelson & Rogers 2004). Higher education’s inability to fully incorporate the talents of this large segment of the workforce does not bode well for individuals in the many under-represented groups striving for successful academic careers or for universities seeking maximum access to top talent pools to enhance their institutional performance. Increasing scholars’ diversity calls for greater inclusiveness across universities’ organizational infrastructure to better serve the needs of students and the public.

Institutional Context and History North Dakota State University (NDSU) has a proud tradition as a highly respected land-grant university located in the upper Great Plains. It is comprised of seven academic colleges – Agriculture, Food Systems and Natural Resources; Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Business; Engineering; Human Development and Education; Health Professions; and Science and Mathematics – home of about 700 faculty and serving 14,500 students. Women make up 45% all undergraduate students at NDSU, and receive 10% of engineering degrees, according to the most recent statistics available in 2015. NDSU is a desirable and sought after institution for developing and truly living one’s career in a vibrant, congenial, and engaged learning community. Yet, consistent with the practices at many land-grant universities, career opportunities and advancement have been implicitly facilitated along gender lines, resulting in men dominating both administrative and advanced faculty ranks. A stark disparity was exposed by the 2006 AAUP Gender Equity Report: NDSU’s representation of women as associate or full professors ranked near the bottom among all universities studied (Table 1). Table 1: AAUP Gender Equity Indicators Report*

*Average *Doctoral NDSU 2006

%Tenure-line Women Men 45 55 41 59 36 64

*Curtis and West, 2006 N=1,445 universities

% Tenured Women Men 31 69 26 74 10 90

% Full Professor Women Men 21 76 19 81 7 93

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This bluntly unflattering picture, notably publicized in a Chronicle of Higher Education article titled “At North Dakota State, Women are Few and Far Between” (Wilson, 2007), spurred further internal examination. An obvious finding was the dearth of women in senior academic administration positions (college deans and department chairs, provost or vice provosts, vice presidents). Campus climate studies revealed that, in comparison to male faculty, female faculty perceived department climate to be less hospitable, notably based on their treatment by colleagues and staff, informal department interactions, and decision-making dynamics. Compared to men, women faculty also reported significantly more time spent on teaching and service (though they desired more time for research), higher stress levels, and lower work-life satisfaction. Further, women faculty were less likely than men to think their department was doing well regarding recruitment, retention, and promotion of women; women faculty were more likely than men to feel that there were too few female faculty members in leadership positions. While the proportion of women at lower academic ranks was growing at NDSU, moving up was through an extremely “leaky pipeline” (Valian, 2004, pg. 213), resulting in a mere trickle reaching the top. Such underuse of the university’s total talent pool has a negative effect not only on women, whose constrained careers are often accompanied by frustration and disappointment, but also on the institution itself, whose growth and success are limited by a truncated set of ideas, opportunities, and expertise. For example, if only men are “tapped” for interim or part-time developmental leadership opportunities, a large portion of the internal talent pool is overlooked, potentially resulting in a less-than-optimal appointment.

ADVANCE FORWARD Project A grassroots group, NDSU FORWARD, convened in 2002 and comprised faculty and administrators primarily in STEM fields, began working on plans to address these concerns. An initial proposal for a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award was not successful, but a subsequent proposal was funded in 2008. The NSF ADVANCE Program provides resources for comprehensive and sustainable institutional transformation to increase the ratio of tenure-track and tenured women faculty in STEM disciplines and university units. NDSU’s five-year, $3.7-million multifaceted project, guided by research and best practices, enabled the campus to initiate comprehensive

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institutional change to reduce barriers and create opportunities for women faculty. The NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD (Focus on Resources for Women’s Advancement. Recruitment/Retention and Development) Project pursued the following five distinct goals: (a) enhance recruitment of women faculty, including women of color and women with disabilities; (b) increase retention of women faculty; (c) promote/advance women faculty; (d) open academic leadership opportunities to women faculty; and (e) improve the organizational climate. The ADVANCE FORWARD Project was broad in scope, admittedly overwhelming at the outset. Figure 1 provides an overview diagram. The project was anchored at the top by the provost, providing credibility, authority, and institutional access for policy implementation. Linked to the Office of Provost was the Commission on the Status of Women Faculty, which facilitated its key role in initiating policy change. The ADVANCE FORWARD Project, led by an executive director and supported by administrative staff, was guided by both internal and external advisory boards. A steering committee helped coordinate programs to (a) improve the organizational climate, (b) facilitate women’s advancement and entry into leadership, and (c) increase women’s research opportunities. Special attention was given to disseminating research findings and effective programming approaches, as well as continual evaluation to encourage ongoing improvements and documentation of the project’s impact.

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Figure 1: NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD Project*

It takes considerable commitment and a substantial number of people to orchestrate a project of this scope. This becomes an advantage over time because participants initially dispersed throughout the university’s organizational structure move up into leadership and can provide increasing support to the project’s goals. A downside to the large scope is the potential burnout for active individuals involved in several component programs and leadership groups, which adds to an already challenging set of teaching, research, and service expectations. Prominent participants and programs in NDSU’s ADVANCE FORWARD Project included the following: (a) a faculty recruiter to keep track of gender equity in candidate pools and campus interviews; (b) FORWARD advocates and allies, consisting of male faculty serving as active and effective proponents of gender diversity and equality (this program has become a national model, with NDSU facilitating

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implementation at other universities throughout the United States); (c) gender equity awareness education for faculty and administrators, occurring through sponsored luncheons and workshops featuring nationally prominent diversity educators, new faculty orientation, department chair forums, search training, promotion and tenure evaluation training (with the goal of reaching over 80% of faculty with at least one event); (d) grants and awards to encourage climate and diversity research, provide course release to free up research time, and accelerate highpotential individuals into leadership; (e) mentoring programs for junior and mid-career faculty as well as travel awards to enable faculty travel to off-campus mentors, or vice versa; (f) the Promotion to Professor Taskforce, a highly valued program encouraging continual progress toward full-professor rank for both men and women.

Identifying Barriers to Women’s Advancement The NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD programming centered on the imperative to nurture and better use the talents of the female segment of the workforce, for the benefit of both the university and its employees. We began by trying to understand the structural barriers and implicit bias underlying the underutilization of women professionals, which has been extensively documented in the social cognitive literature (e.g., Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). The litany of problems that emerged is presented in the review below. Although they appear to have an aura of whining, their enumeration is a necessary step toward understanding and pragmatically addressing existing barriers, which in turn enables the design and implementation of effective initiatives. Research on women’s less-than-full participation in higher education spans several decades, primarily focusing on their roles as graduate students or within the professorial ranks. Early investigations describe a “chilly” academic climate experienced by women faculty, administrators, and graduate students (Sandler, 1986). A range of behaviors, from overt to subtle – including women’s assignment to support roles as well as more and/or more time-intensive but less powerful committees, resource inequities, gendered stereotyping, and lack of a professional etiquette leading to feelings of discomfort and thus social isolation – have combined to discount, discourage, and disadvantage women at all levels in academe (Sandler, 1986). Later empirical tests demonstrate gender bias favoring men in hiring for faculty positions; for example, both men and women gave higher

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evaluations to and indicated preference to hire male rather than female candidates with identical curriculum vitae (Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke, 1999). Gender bias has been similarly documented in post-doctoral fellowship application reviews, where women received undeservedly lower scores on all three evaluation parameters, resulting in 80% of the fellowships being awarded to men, who were only 54% of the applicants; in the same study, 8% of female applicants and 29% of male applicants received a fellowship (Wenneras & Wold, 1997). Similar experiments continue to document gender bias in hiring today (for example, Rajagopalan, 2015; Williams, Phillips, & Hall, 2015). An underlying problem is that of the gendered organization, whereby work policies, interpersonal networks, and embedded attitudes have evolved from the life experience of a traditional male breadwinner, creating an unequal playing field favoring men’s advancement. Women, by contrast, may face career interruptions due to childbirth, child rearing, and domestic responsibilities, reflecting their socialization to be supportive rather than dominant. As a result, they tend to be systematically disadvantaged in a male-normed institutional environment (Acker, 1992; Bailyn, 2003; Hochschild, 1994; Kanter, 1977; Martin, 1994). Stereotypes about men’s and women’s roles unconsciously pervade the attitudes of both men and women, leading to persistent patterns of overrating of men and underrating of women when work-related behavior is evaluated in the context of entrenched expectations (Valian, 1998). Many barriers are inherent to the gendered academic workplace. These include the so-called “second shift” (Martin, 1994, p. 409), referring to women juggling home and professional responsibilities, a problem compounded by “the coincidence of the biological clock and the tenure clock” (Martin, 1994, p. 409), resulting in births and small children during the faculty member’s probationary period. Other barriers include the following: (a) the “invisible job” (Martin, 1994, p. 410), which is the tendency to assign greater academic service roles to women; (b) the “hidden curriculum” (Thomas, Bierema, & Landau, 2004, p. 63), the phenomenon of women assimilating into the male culture by downplaying their feminine attributes; (c) the Catch-22, which suggests that women are required to prove themselves more extensively than men and need to have more informal networks to draw upon in order to advance (Oakley, 2000). Considering the previously described gender biases in selection, evaluation, and promotion, women’s trek to advanced positions is indeed an arduous one. When women manage to advance, the chilly climate becomes even “colder at the top” (Sandler, 1986, p. 13); the few women who make it

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often discover that they do not fit neatly into male-only dynamics and groups, resulting in their increased isolation and visibility for scrutiny. “Solo status” – being the only representative of a social category in an otherwise homogenous group – exacerbates effects of stereotyping and isolation, with negative impacts on evaluation and performance (Thompson & Sekaquaptewa, 2002). Often accompanying the solo status are perceptions of tokenism (advancement based on social category rather than competence), which diminish the respect and increase pressure for women in top positions (Craig & Feasel, 1998). Overcoming the stigma associated with tokenism requires a critical mass of non-dominant group members, occupying 35-40% of leadership positions (Karsten, 1994). Research has also found that workplaces where at least 35% of the employees are female offer better working environments for women (Collins, 1998; Tolbert, Simmons, Andrews, & Rhee, 1995). Removing the detrimental effects of solo status requires doing away with the common practice of advancing mainly “star” women, whose achievement far surpasses the accomplishments of their colleagues, both female and male (Bilen-Green, Froelich, & Jacobson 2008). The latter can be linked to the “queen bee syndrome” (Funk, 2004), which refer to the rare case of a female leader happy to occupy a prominent throne within an otherwise male hierarchy. The concept of organizations as gendered entities offers a framework for understanding women’s stalled momentum in the workplace and the complexity of making a significant and enduring change. Singular and straightforward initiatives have not been effective in overriding undercurrents of prejudice. When obstacles are ingrained in policies, practices, and organizational culture, accomplishing meaningful change calls for an ambitious plan reaching broadly and deeply into the organization.

Potential Routes to Effecting Change Developing a research-driven program for change, adequately broad in scope to address our goals, required multi-disciplinary involvement. Throughout planning discussions, two primary underlying philosophies became apparent. One focused on the need for “bottom-up” change in the culture, through Organizational Development (OD) processes to enhance awareness of relevant issues via education and discourse among organization members (Burke, 2008; Demers, 2007). According to this perspective, faculty involvement would lead to attitude and value shifts, and ultimately, a long-lasting and meaningful change would emerge.

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Others believed this approach was too slow, seeing the desired changes coming “not in my professional lifetime.” An alternative was the Change Management (CM) approach, which called for implementing more immediate change through mandatory organizational policies and procedures. In this view, behavior change would precede attitudinal and culture changes; all these would gradually coalesce over time as new procedures and practices settled in as “how things are done” routines (Kotter, 1996). Ultimately, we incorporated both perspectives into our ADVANCE FORWARD Project. While it is difficult to parse the effects of each approach, climate change appears to have a predictable lag in terms of producing tangible results. Targeted interventions to modify both policy and practice offer a more direct route to desired ends; however, they have also been surprisingly slow to design and implement. The remainder of the chapter will detail our experience with high impact policies and associated practices designed to avoid implicit bias and facilitate a more equitable opportunity context for both women and men. We include pragmatic guidance for a step-wise process of policy change. 

Key Policies and Practices at NDSU Numerous policies have been identified as instrumental in facilitating equal opportunities for women faculty. These include family leave, tenure clock extension, childcare and eldercare options, lactation facilities, tuition remission, hiring policies, part-time tenure positions, adoption leave and subsidy, dual-career and disability accommodations, and modified duties (Bilen-Green, Froelich, Holbrook, & Carlson 2014; Mason, Wolfinger, & Golden, 2013). NDSU found that it had much to accomplish with regard to the presence and operation of such policies. The key policies (and associated practices) implemented to enhance the organizational climate and improve the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women faculty included: (a) the Faculty Obligations and Time Requirements Policy; (b) the Accommodation on the Basis of Disability Policy; (c) the Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Policy; (d) the Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Policy; (e) Dual Career Hiring Policy; and (e) the Search Committee Training Policy. Under the Faculty Obligations and Time Requirements policy, the ADVANCE FORWARD Project led the way to create a clear and consistent childbearing leave policy across campus. Previously, individual faculty would negotiate childbearing leave and coverage of professional responsibilities with their department chair, creating a variety of

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accommodations and reporting a wide range of positive to negative experiences. The pregnant faculty member typically approached the question with trepidation, concerned about creating extra work for colleagues and being singled out as a woman needing to bring up such issues. In the absence of clear guidelines for childbearing leave, a notable number of women faculty amazingly succeeded at giving birth between semesters and in the summer. The Childbearing Leave Policy ensures women faculty receive six weeks of leave following childbirth without a reduction in pay, and makes scheduling arrangements a matter of routine, taking the burden off of the faculty member, while imparting acceptance of female faculty’s life experiences and professional contributions within their units. We agreed that the fundamental fact of life, that women bear children, must be effectively addressed within a university’s standard operating procedures to begin to level the playing field for women faculty. A new Modified Duties section also became part of the Faculty Obligations and Time Requirements policy, enabling a revised workload without a performance evaluation penalty or reduction in pay to accommodate new parenting responsibilities, caring for sick family members, or addressing one’s own health condition. Modified duties are available for a semester, aiming to improve the retention and long-term academic success potential of both men and women faculty. For longerterm issues related to disability, a clarified and enhanced Accommodation on the Basis of Disability Policy becomes applicable. Noteworthy amendments to the Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation policy included tenure clock extensions, requested for personal or family reasons, personal illness or disability, or institutional circumstances. Importantly, the policy now calls for faculty to “opt out” rather than “opt in” the automatic tenure clock extension for birth or adoption. Practices to encourage use of the policy include confidentiality in the request process, explicit prohibition of raising performance expectations due to the extension, and ability to revert to the original tenure clock if desired. The tenure clock extension policy for birth and adoption has been wellreceived and utilized by both male and female faculty. General training sessions on appropriate promotion and tenure evaluation practices are also offered for Promotion and Tenure Evaluation Committees, with the goal of sensitizing committee members to the hazards of implicit bias and encouraging best practices; at present, this training is encouraged but not mandated. Especially instrumental to the transformation of the leadership structure at NDSU was a slight change in the Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Policy on the Announcement of Position Openings.

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Previously, interim or part-time internal opportunities were primarily filled through a closed appointment process, which may have contributed to the lack of women in academic leadership roles on campus. Instead of merely encouraging a more open process, the revision required an internal announcement of a position opening to relevant groups and a ten-day application window, followed by a selection process. This approach found many interested and qualified women candidates for leadership positions, enabling their professional development from these stepping-stone positions to more permanent and higher administrative positions. A substantial number of our department chairs, associate/assistant deans, and higher-ranked administrators start from such open-application internal positions, resulting in a visible change in the gender makeup of our academic leadership today. Another important tool for both the recruitment and retention of faculty is the Dual Career Hiring Policy. Such a policy may be useful especially to institutions in areas where highly specialized and educated spouses/ partners may have difficulty finding appropriate positions. We found a partial solution by allowing for exceptions to national search requirements if a spouse or partner is qualified, interviews, and is selected for an existing opening. Hiring in dual-career cases has been streamlined, directing inquiries to a central location in the Office of the Provost to facilitate the process. A complete solution would require funding to support new positions for spousal/partner hires; however, this is a goal currently beyond our reach. The Search Committee Training policy offered another opportunity to increase the number of women in the faculty ranks. Since 2005, NDSU has required training for search committee chairs. The ADVANCE FORWARD Project expanded this training by introducing and encouraging a new workshop for all academic (faculty and administrative) search committee members, which replaced predominantly online with face-to-face training, and emphasized content related to implicit bias in the hiring process. The content was developed on the basis of research from other NSF ADVANCE institutions, peer institutions, and relevant literature on the recruitment and advancement of women and faculties of color (e.g., Madera, Hebl, & Martin, 2009; Sanders, Willemsen, & Miller, 2009; Walker, Feild, Giles, Armenakis, & Bernerth, 2009). The result is a campus more aware of the role of implicit bias in search processes and practices. Thus, potential pitfalls leading to gender-homogenous candidate pools (including assumptions that mothers are less committed to their work or that women are less equipped with quantitative skills or leadership attributes compared to men) become more visible and likely to be avoided.

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Given the favorable feedback and outcomes from the new training, we are moving toward a policy change that would require rather than encourage this training for all search committee members.

Basic Steps in the Policy Change Process While policy change has been clearly established as an important component in facilitating recruitment, retention, and advancement of women faculty, how to accomplish such policy change is far less clear. Below, we detail basic steps and guidance in the policy change process, based on our experience through the NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD Project.

Step 1: Initiation The first task is to determine who can initiate a policy change. We learned that many policies had to be formally initiated through the Office of the Provost; Faculty Senate committees were also able to initiate some. Our ADVANCE FORWARD Project’s Commission on the Status of Women Faculty, charged with policy change initiatives, lacks authority to initiate policy change on its own. So although policy change initiatives can spawn in many places on campus, it is important to establish and maintain relationships with key entities that can sponsor or forward proposals into the policy change pipeline. We also found it useful to rotate the initiating entity, such that one group was not was not always associated with a particular theme of policy change – to spread the work as well as the social capital underlying these efforts.

Step 2: Information Gathering It is essential to be confidently conversant in the institution’s current policies and their implementation, including actual practice and common problems. How do key players and major constituents feel about the current policy? What is seen as a positive or needing improvement? Here, one might find unanticipated allies as well as sacred ground to avoid. Being aware of policy change constraints – whether financial, legal, or, as we found, often stemming from state policies – provides a realistic sense of what is feasible. Other important information to acquire includes “best practices” from leading universities and other NSF ADVANCE institutions. Best practices provide a starting point for discussion and possibilities for adaptation to one’s own campus needs; often, they also offer convincing evidence to support change initiatives.

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Step 3: Re-writing Policy In our experience, numerous drafts (often 10-15 or more) with broad input and re-examination over time can facilitate the policy change process. Discussions seeking consensus on policy intent can be productively followed by a small group drafting the language. Attempts to have larger groups sit and write policy proved to be a frustrating endeavor. Having one person maintain the “official” drafts improved consistency throughout iterations. We tackled high-priority sections that could be adopted more quickly than a total policy overhaul. More complex initiatives involved extensive revisions of both policy and procedure. Effectively integrating policy and procedure remains a challenge; both are important for achieving intended results.

Step 4: Proposal Circulation and Discussion Gatekeepers and key individuals or groups affected by the policy must be kept in the loop, especially when a draft nears the formal proposal stage. Care to avoid blindsiding is a must. While seemingly delaying the process, we found timely constructive feedback on the front end to actually speed up approval, resulting in a more solid and broadly acceptable proposal, while reducing potential derailment in the highly visible formal process. Being sincerely open to policy improvements rather than merely seeking buy-in was beneficial in our experience. We also found the ability to compromise and proceed with an improved rather than perfect policy to be a productive attitude. Throughout circular iterations of steps 3 and 4, we gained not only critical feedback but also partners and supporters, which contributed to the momentum for change.

Step 5: Navigating the Institution’s Policy Change Process At NDSU, we are fortunate to have a strong tradition of shared governance, enabling consideration of policy change initiatives from various entities. (At some universities, policy change is entirely the administration’s prerogative.) Specific processes vary across institutions; we found through trial and error our university’s process to be circuitous and often frustrating, requiring a learning curve for effective change initiatives. An important start is identifying the various steps, channels, and players. On our campus, for example, policy change initiatives are first aired at a meeting of the Senate Coordinating Committee (SCC), which determines appropriate routing channels. For our first initiative, we

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submitted and waited (too) patiently for several months, and for various reasons, the proposal did not move forward. We learned to follow up and nudge ahead. This requires the use of both formal and informal channels, a clear sense of the protocols that need to be followed, and a degree of assertiveness. From SCC, our policy initiatives go to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, and, if approved, to the Faculty Senate for discussion and approval. A legal review follows, and then the policy reaches the university’s president. At any stage, policies can be sent back for revision, which reinforces our previous advice to discuss concerns before the formal process to avoid lengthy delays. Through our experience, we developed instrumental relationships with SCC members, legal counsel, the Office of the Provost, the Faculty Senate, and others. To summarize, knowing the institution’s mechanics of policy change in detail and cultivating relationships throughout the process is of utmost importance.

Step 6: Policy Implementation Pre-planning for a policy’s implementation facilitates the achievement of the intended results. We found (again, through trial-and-error, when a hiring policy was successfully changed, yet the hiring practice remained the same) that it is necessary to facilitate and even initiate communication about the policy change with groups affected by the change. Faculty and administrator meetings, listserv notices, internal announcements, and, if needed, targeted training (especially for searches and promotion/ tenure evaluation) proved useful. Communication may require intermittent reinforcement, suggesting a need for continued vigilance until new practices are solidly established. In reality, policy implementation is just as important as the policy itself. The process of changing a policy was typically a multi-year effort, in our experience. While some smaller changes (modification to the dualcareer policy, for example) were completed in a single semester, more substantial changes can be expected to take longer. Key advice for policy change is to proceed with both patience and persistence.

Project Outcomes The NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD project has made measurable strides toward its goals to recruit, retain, promote, and advance women faculty and to improve campus climate. Figure 2 shows changes in tenureline faculty by gender, increasing from 20-24% women faculty before the

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ADVANCE award in 2008 to 31% in 2014-2015. This demonstrates solid progress, yet substantial room for improvement. Figure 2: NDSU Tenure-line Faculty by Gender*

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Figure 3 shows tenure-line faculty by gender in the STEM fields, which is the primary focus of NSF ADVANCE projects. While the proportion of women faculty in STEM is less than in the university overall (24% compared to 30%), movement toward gender balance has been somewhat more pronounced. This is illustrated by an increase in women’s participation in the faculty ranks by 8 percentage points in STEM units since 2007-2008, compared to 6 percentage points in the university overall. Considering the additional challenges in attracting and retaining women faculty in STEM, we see this as significant progress. Not shown in Figure 3 are the outcomes of our expanded recruitment efforts, resulting in some departments hiring their first ever woman faculty member and paving the way for improved gender balance in the future.

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Figure 3: NDSU Tenure-line STEM Faculty by Gender*

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Next, we look at changes in the percentages of women tenure-line faculty by rank, which suggest that the ADVANCE FORWARD project has had an effect on promotion as well as recruitment and retention (Figure 4). While these percentages have not dramatically changed, they reflect a level of progress recognized throughout the university. The proportion of women in full professor ranks has almost doubled, creating a new set of now more visibly attainable goals and role models for many women faculty. The improving gender balance among associate professors has also changed attitudes throughout campus, as a critical mass of female talent erodes the older picture of male dominance at tenured ranks. The ADVANCE FORWARD programming – including diversity education, policy change, and search/ promotion and tenure evaluation training sessions – has created a culture more aware of implicit bias and more willing to facilitate the hiring and progress of women faculty. Overall, we are confident these tools will propel even greater gender balance in the faculty ranks ahead.

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Figure 4: NDSU Women Tenure-line Faculty by Rank*

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*Full-time administrators are not included

Greater representation of women in academic leadership positions is also more pronounced, changing the face of NDSU at the upper ranks. While still only two of NDSU’s seven academic deans are female, the proportion of women assistant and associate deans has increased from almost nothing to 25%, providing experience and credibility for further advancement of women. The number of female department chairs has increased from two to nine since the ADVANCE award, and some departments have had their first female chair, including Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Veterinary and Microbiological Sciences, and Biological Sciences (all from STEM disciplines). Most visibly, the number of women in top administrative positions (vice president, provost, and vice provost roles) has increased from zero to four. Improvement in institutional climate is more difficult to measure. Throughout the project, NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD organized over 100 presentations and workshops, and more than 80% of faculty participated in at least one of these events (90% of the women faculty; 76% of men faculty). According to the 2014 Faculty Work-Life and Administrators Climate Surveys, 81% of administrators (men and women) believe ADVANCE FORWARD promotes gender equity; 94% of women

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and 81% of men faculty believe the project initiatives have affected their experience of the climate very to somewhat positively. Further, there is evidence for across-the-board support for work-family policies and a relatively positive view of individual units’ climate.

Conclusion While we are proud of the progress evident on our campus, challenges remain. A pressing priority is the continuation of key programs after the grant funding expires. Success can imply that issues have been addressed and problems have been resolved, thus weakening the case for allocation of scarce and competitive internal funding to the continuation of necessary work. Institutionalizing the programming into routine university operations (moving mentoring programs and search, evaluation, and administrator training sessions into the Office of the Provost, for example) addresses this challenge in part; yet, fully funding these activities within an already stretched unit while retaining commitment for new initiatives is likely to be difficult. Another challenge is replenishing the ADVANCE FORWARD leadership. Several committed individuals with pivotal roles in the project have moved into high administrative positions with new responsibilities, squeezing out leadership in the grassroots group. Others have approached a state of burnout due to the addition of the project roles to their many other responsibilities; these team members are now stepping back to refocus on core faculty tasks. This fatigue is exacerbated by the difficulty of translating project data and experience into publishable research, which would help maintain necessary productivity. Bringing in new leaders with fresh perspectives and energy is critical for the continuing vitality of NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD; yet, the risk of losing focus increases with the infusion of new agendas. Outcome data show movement in the right direction, but there is a long way to achieving gender parity. The progress towards NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD goals has not been automatic, but the result of sustained and targeted work to address root causes standing in the way of women faculty achieving their full potential. Successful programs and policies require ongoing reinforcement. Other desirable policies and programs have not yet been fully realized (for example, a sustainable funding pool for dual career hiring; onsite childcare expansion), and new needs continue to emerge (such as the need for a clear promotion path for professors of practice, most of whom are women). Clearly, there is unfinished business.

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Looking ahead, we plan to continue our project’s success, both at NDSU and through the dissemination of effective programming to other universities. NDSU ADVANCE FORWARD will keep working toward its ultimate stated vision of “establishing a university culture in which all are nurtured and supported to develop to their fullest potential, and the criteria for success and achievement incorporate the unique skills and contributions of both men and women.”

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Funk, C. 2004. Female leaders in educational administration: sabotage within our own ranks. Advancing Women in Leadership, www.advancingwomen.com. Greenwald, A.G., & Banaji, M.R. 1995. Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102, 427. Greenwald, A.G., McGhee, D.E., & Schwartz, J.K.L. 1998. Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480. Hochschild, A.R. 1994. Inside the clockwork of male careers. In Meadow Orleans, K.P., and R. A. Wallace, Gender and the Academic Experience. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Kanter, R. M. 1977. Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Karsten, M. F. 1994. Management and gender: issues and attitudes. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Kotter, J. 2012. Leading change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Madera, J., Hebl, M., & Martin, R.C. 2009. Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1591–1599. Martin, J. 1994. The organization of exclusion: Institutionalization of sex inequality, gendered faculty jobs and gendered knowledge in organizational theory and research. Organization, 1: 401-431. Mason, M., Wolfinger, H., & Goulden, M. 2013. Do babies matter? Gender and family in the ivory tower. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Nelson, D., & Rogers, D.C. 2004. A national analysis of diversity in science and engineering: faculties at research universities. http://www.now.org/issues/diverse/diversity_report.pdf, accessed July 18, 2005. Oakley, J. G. 2000. Gender-based barriers to senior management positions: Understanding the scarcity of female CEOs. Journal of Business Ethics, 27, 312-334. Rajagopalan, J. 2015. Gender bias in research: A myth or reality? Editage Insights, March 12, 2015. http://www.editage.com/insights/genderbias-in-research-a-myth-or-reality, accessed September 30, 2015. Sanders, K., Willemsen, T., & Millar, C. 2009. Views from above the glass ceiling: Does the academic environment influence women professors’ careers and experiences? Sex Roles, 60, 301-312.

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Sandler, B. R. 1986. The campus climate revisited: Chilly for women faculty, administrators, and graduate students. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, Project on the Status and Education of Women. Steinpreis, R.E., Anders, K.A., & Ritzke, D. 1999. The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A national empirical study. Sex Roles, 41, 509-528. Thomas, K. M., L. Bierema, & Landau, H. 2004. Advancing women’s leadership in academe: New directions for research and HRD practice. Equal Opportunities International, 23, 62-77. Thompson, M., & Sekaquaptewa, D. 2002. When being different is detrimental: Solo status and the performance of women and racial minorities. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2, 183-203. Tolbert, P. S., T. Simmons, A. Andrews, & Rhee, J. 1995. The effects of gender composition in academic departments on faculty turnover. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 48, 562-579. Valian, V. 1998. Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —. 2004. Beyond gender schemas: Improving advancement of women in academia. NWSA Journal, 16, 207-220. Walker, H., Feild, H., Giles, W., Armenakis, A., & Bernerth, J. 2009. Displaying employee testimonials on recruitment websites: Effects of communication media, employee race, and job seeker race on organizational attraction and information credibility. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1354-1364. Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. 1997. Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature, 387, 341-343. West, M., & Curtis, J.W. 2006. AAUP Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006, American Association of University Professors. Williams, J., Phillips, K., & Hall, E. 2015. Double jeopardy? Gender bias against women in science. Report from the Tools for Change in STEM Project, January 21, 2015. http://www.toolsforchangeinstem.org/double-jeopardy-gender-biaswomen-color-science/, accessed 9/30/2015. Wilson, R. 2007. At North Dakota State, women are few and far between. Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2.

CHAPTER SEVEN THE UNFINISHED WORK OF FEMINISM: AN ANALYSIS OF ONLINE USER-GENERATED COMMENTS RESPONDING TO PUBLIC OPINION POLLS ABOUT GENDER EQUALITY KELLY MCKAY-SEMMLER AND SHANE SEMMLER UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

Denotatively, feminism is defined as “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities” (Feminism, n.d.). Adherents to this idea in the U.S. have labored since the mid-nineteenth century to sustain social, political, and economic momentum for expanding the rights and opportunities of women, in particular, who have traditionally faced discrimination in public spheres such as the workplace. As such, enacting feminist ideals has produced connotative meanings of the term that reflect strong political disagreement over the best and fairest means to achieve the movement’s stated ends—indeed, even disagreement as to whether the movement is still necessary. In this chapter, we examine a recent snapshot of the public debate over whether feminism is “dead,” as has been proclaimed by popular media sources numerous times over the last several decades. Using content analytic methods, we investigated public reaction online in the form of user-generated comments to recent reports of feminism’s ostensible unpopularity in polling results. Equal rights and opportunities in the workplace have been central to feminism’s popularity, especially among women, since the 1960s. Due in large part to feminist advocacy over the last 50 years, women today comprise nearly half of the U.S. labor force (U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 2014). Key legislation passed during this period made it possible for women to enter the workforce, and aimed to improve their work lives. The new laws included the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of

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the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin), and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (which prohibited sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions). In 1993, the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) entitled eligible employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave from work for specified family or health reasons (Hauser, 2012). While this legislation was nonsex specific, women continue to be the primary caregivers of children and other family members with assistive needs (National Alliance for Caregiving & AARP, Inc., 2015); thus, the FMLA has made it easier for women to meet the dual demands of work and family. Furthermore, the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 reflects continued efforts to whittle away the persistent gender pay gap that disadvantages female workers by expanding workers’ rights in suing for paycheck discrimination. Despite the advances made for women in the workforce and other public spheres by feminist policy advocates, several recent polls have concluded that a majority of U.S. Americans, and even a majority of U.S. American women, do not consider themselves feminists. A HuffPost/ YouGov poll conducted April 11-12, 2013, found that when respondents were not provided a definition of feminism, only 23% of women and 16% of men self-identified as feminists (Swanson, 2013). Similarly, an Economist/YouGov poll released a few weeks later reported that 72% of U.S. Americans did not consider themselves feminists, including 62% of women and 82% of men (YouGov Staff, 2013). A November 2012 poll conducted by Ms. magazine in collaboration with the Communications Consortium Media Center and the Feminist Majority Foundation presented the most optimistic findings on the relative popularity of feminism, reporting just over half (55%) of women voters self-identified as feminists and only 30% of male voters did. Polls in other Western countries, where women have made substantial gains in obtaining equal rights and opportunities with men, have reported similar findings: A YouGov poll conducted in Great Britain in October of 2013 found that only 19% of Brits claimed to be feminists, including 23% of women and only 10% of men (Chambers, 2013). Poll numbers changed dramatically, however, when respondents were provided with a denotative definition of feminism. Eighty-two percent (equal percentages men and women) in the HuffPost/YouGov poll believed that “men and women should be social, political, and economic equals” (2013), as did 81% of the Brits polled by YouGov (Chambers, 2013). The results of the Economist/YouGov poll did not change as

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dramatically, though, when participants were presented with a definition of feminism: 33% of the polled women still did not identify with feminism defined as a movement for the social, political, and economic equality of women, and neither did more than half of the polled men (53%) (YouGov Staff, 2013). While polls signaling the death of feminism are hardly a new phenomenon (see Goodrich [2015] for obituaries for feminism dating back to the 1930s), the Economist/YouGov poll and others suggest that feminism, or, at least the term itself, is suffering a public relations problem. That it is, in actuality, a public relations problem for the term and not widespread disapproval of gender equity is evident in the popular support of issues relevant to the continued social and economic advancement of women. A recent nationwide survey of nearly 1,800 U.S. voters and likely voters found overwhelming support for women’s economic issues, including pay equity, childcare, education, worker protections, and family leave. Ninety percent of respondents polled were in favor of achieving pay equity by raising pay for women (74% strongly in support); 91% thought it important to protect pregnant workers and mothers from being fired or demoted for having families (70% strongly in support); and 87% supported expanding scholarships for women and parents to train for better jobs (61% strongly in support) (Greenberg, Carville, Seifert, & Gardner, 2013). Moreover, although the abortion debate remains a deeply divisive issue among women and men who might otherwise more fully embrace the feminist label, a 2015 Gallup poll showed that support for a woman’s right to choose is gaining ground. For the first time in seven years, significantly more Americans identified as pro-choice (50%) than pro-life (44%) (Saad, 2015). Besides evidence refuting the notion feminist issues have lost popularity, poll results heralding feminism’s demise are possibly skewed due to their failure to capture the nuance of the movement in the definitions provided to respondents. In polls like the one conducted by the HuffPost/YouGov (Swanson, 2013), respondents have typically been asked whether they consider themselves to be feminists. Later in the poll, respondents are provided with a simple dictionary definition of the term, highlighting a focus on equality between the sexes, and asked to what extent they support gender equality. However, as Wood (2015) observes, there have been various “waves” of the feminist movement. Each wave has seen tensions between liberal feminism (the belief that women and men are equal in most respects) and cultural feminism (the belief that women and men are fundamentally different and should have different rights, roles, and responsibilities). Since the first wave of feminism in the

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late 19th century, myriad strains of feminist thought have emerged from these bipolar views on the nature of inter-gender relations, including, for example, the radical liberal feminism of the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s; power feminism, whose advocates encourage women to cease defining themselves as an oppressed minority and embrace their majority status; lesbian feminism, which maintains only women who love other women, and do not orient their lives around men, are truly liberated; and revalorists, who embrace women’s traditional roles as homemakers and mothers, contending that women are more nurturing, life-giving, cooperative, and supportive than most men. In belief and practice, feminism is diversely defined and lived. Instead of demonstrating that feminist ideals are “dead,” poll results pointing to feminism’s decline in popularity may, in fact, be confounded by the nature of the ongoing debate within feminism between liberal and cultural feminist viewpoints.

User-Generated Comments as a Forum of Opinion Expression The access to information and reciprocity of communication afforded by the Internet offers a promising means of expressing political opinions, overcoming the atomized and contrived nature of contemporary political polls, like those showing the supposed “death of feminism.” In her history of public opinion, Herbst (1995) argued that political polling distorts the public’s detailed positions on public affairs issues by reducing them to the private expression of yes or no agreement with a limited set of prescribed options. Herbst further observed that the Enlightenment-era French salons and English coffee houses offered a more nuanced model for the authentic expression of public opinion. Habermas (1973) argued that those 18thcentury cafés provided public spaces for the expression of his idealist concept of the public sphere, characterized by a dynamic discussion of public affairs in which “the public organizes itself as a bearer of public opinion” (p. 351). Ruiz, Domingo, Lluis Mico, Meso, and Masip (2011) compared the comment sections of online news sites to Habermas’s (1973) conception of an 18th-century public forum (i.e., cafés). Although Papacharissi (2009) rejected the potential of the Internet to manifest the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere, she was not entirely pessimistic. She argued that online discussions might provide a public space for Mouffe’s (2000, in Papacharissi, 2009) concept of agonistic pluralism characterized by vigorous debate among a plurality of voices, guided by a lack of decidability, but ultimately, receptive to multiple perspectives within a deliberative mode.

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The popularity of online forums for user-generated political discussions is consistent with Papacharissi’s (2009) soberly optimistic view of the Internet’s potential to aggregate and represent an authentic expression of public opinion. About 60% of Americans get some or all of their news online, and 25% contribute to the creation of news by posting their comments on a news story (Purcell, Rainie, Mitchell, Rosenstiel, & Olmstead, 2010). Although some news sites control nefarious commenters (a.k.a., trolls) by removing or closely monitoring user comments (Konnikova, 2013), forums for user-generated content remain a standard feature of most Internet news sites and are often among the most popular forms of online participation (Weber, 2013). The popularity of user-generated comments has important implications for democratic participation (Hardy & Scheufele, 2005) and the capacity of publics to resist the journalists’ hegemonic perspective (Milioni, Vadratsikas, & Papa, 2012). Hardy and Scheufele’s (2005) application of the differential gains hypothesis (Scheufele, 2002) to the use of computermediated hard news found that hard-news users commenting on online news forums engaged in more political activity than hard-news users who did not comment on computer-mediated hard news on online news forums. The association of user-generated comments with enhanced political participation is consistent with Papacharissi’s (2009) optimistic expectation that discussing politics online serves a genuine democratic function. That function is further reflected in research showing the capacity of user-generated comments to expand political discussions in constructive ways. Milioni and colleagues’ (2012) content analysis of online user-generated comments attached to articles about immigration found that even as an elite group of commenters (i.e., about 3%) contributed new information to the discussion, the vast majority of commenters expressed more extreme opinions than those provided by the journalists sponsoring the online discussion forums. In other words, most of the commenters’ opinions expanded the discussion by differing from the journalists’ opinions. Given that user-generated comments are a demonstrated context for active citizens to expand the range of political discussion beyond that of the journalists hosting the forums, and given that peoples’ attitudes about feminism are more complicated than the aforementioned polls seemed to capture, we considered it worthwhile to offer and investigate two research questions:

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RQ1: What proportion of online user-generated comments responding to the state of feminism convey a substantive perspective on the nature of feminism? RQ2: What proportion of online user-generated comments responding to the state of feminism express a favorable, unfavorable, or ambivalent attitude toward feminism?

Method The authors along with five graduate students and one undergraduate student at a public Midwestern university content analyzed 2,656 usergenerated comments responding to 63 online articles reporting on four polls gauging public support for feminism. Content analysis is “the systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characteristics” (Neuendorf, 2002, p. 1). Communication studies scholars typically use content analysis to explain a message system’s influence or understand its authors, audiences, or culture’s perspective. McKay-Semmler, Semmler, and Kim’s (2014) content analysis of local television news partially explained attitudes about a newly arrived immigrant population. Alternatively, Semmler, McKay-Semmler, and Robertson’s (2013) content analysis of the fictionalized female president in ABC’s Commander in Chief (2005-2006) revealed that the program’s patriarchal issue priorities reflected the issue discrimination that confronts female political candidates for federal office. The present content analysis sought to understand how online user-generated comments reflect their authors’ favorable, unfavorable, or ambivalent attitudes toward feminism.

Sample Construction and Coder Training A census of user-generated comments was captured from the online forums attached to 63 Internet articles reporting on the results of four polls gauging the proportion of persons who self-identify as feminists versus those who do not. The 63 articles were identified through a three-step process: First, user-generated comments to a Washington Times (Harper, 2013) article reporting findings for the YouGov/Economist poll were mined for hyperlinked references to other articles reporting on public support for feminism. This process was iterative so that comment sections in subsequent articles were mined for other articles reporting on support/non-support for feminism. Ultimately, four polls and articles reporting their results were discovered (Table 1). In the second step, an exhaustive Internet search was conducted to discover all articles

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referencing the four polls listed in Table 1. This process yielded 63 articles with forums for user-generated comments. Ultimately, these forums yielded 2,656 user-generated comments. Consistent with other content analyses of online user-generated comments, the unit of analysis in this study was the individual comment (Milioni et al., 2012). Through an iterative process of rough and pilot coding, the eightperson coder team articulated a reliable scheme consisting of four mutually exclusive categories of user-generated comments. During each rough coding session, coders independently categorized 20 units for the degree to which they were substantive (0 = not substantive / 1 = substantive), favorable attitude toward feminism (0 = not favorable / 1 = favorable), or unfavorable attitude toward feminism (0 = not unfavorable / 1 = unfavorable), or ambivalent attitude toward feminism (0 = not ambivalent / 1 = ambivalent). Wood (2015) provided coders with a common set of definitions on which the team built the coding scheme. After each session of rough coding, the team discussed each coding decision until it arrived at a common set of definitions for the four coding variables. Using 5% of the 2,656 comments (n = 133), the eight coders achieved acceptable or excellent levels of agreement (Holsti, 1969) on substance (.89) favorable attitude toward feminism (.79), unfavorable attitude toward feminism (.89), and ambivalent attitude toward feminism (.84).

Analysis and Results This study proposed two research questions. The first question was answered with single chi-square tests for goodness of fit. The second research question was answered with a series of chi-square goodness-of-fit tests; critical tests of difference were performed for unfavorable versus ambivalent comments, favorable versus ambivalent comments, unfavorable versus ambivalent comments, and supportive (i.e., the sum of ambivalent and favorable comments) versus unfavorable comments. The first research question asked what proportion of user-generated comments conveyed a substantive perspective on the nature of feminism. For the purposes of this study, a substantial comment was defined as including one or more of the following components: the term “feminism”; a discernable definition of cultural or liberal feminism (see Wood, 2015); one or more mentions of prominent women (e.g., Senator Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher); or a policy issue uniquely impacting women (e.g., abortion rights, access to contraception, or family medical leave). A comment was

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coded as non-substantive if it did not independently meet one of the above criteria. For example, the following user comment was too vague to be coded as substantive: “Evidence?” (Jm Mac, 2013). A chi-square goodness-of-fit test showed the proportion of substantive comments (n = 1,441, 54%) was significantly greater than the proportion of nonsubstantive comments (n = 1,215, 46%), X2 (1, N = 2656) = 19.23, p < .001. The second research question asked what proportion of substantive user-generated comments expressed a favorable, unfavorable, or ambivalent attitude toward feminism. A comment was considered unfavorable if it associated the term “feminism” or any definition of feminism with one or more of the following elements: pejorative or sarcastic language; references to feminists as belonging to a category different from the commenter (“us” versus “them”); a definition of the interests of feminists as distinct from or opposed to the interests of the commenter. For example, the following comment was coded as unfavorable toward feminism: The mainstream dropped the hairy legged lesbian with hairy armpits stereotype more than 30 years ago. Feminists hang onto it as a red herring to distract us from the real reasons most people shun the feminist label: sexism. Feminism has become sexist. Feminists stereotypes [sic] masculine attributes as negative and feminine attributes as positive. Feminism stereotypes women as victims and men as predators. Feminism is sexist, and the Movement for the Establishment of Real Gender Equality (MERGE) has long since become the province of the Men’s Rights Movement. (Van Mechelan, 2013)

A comment was considered favorable if it was not definitively unfavorable, or if the commenter associated his/her interests with feminism, identified as a feminist, or used laudatory language to describe the term “feminism” or any definition of feminism. The following comment, for example, was coded as favorable toward feminism: You are ignorant of what feminism accomplished. If you vote, feminism accomplished that. If you had a choice of profession outside of minimum wage jobs, feminism accomplished that. If you chose how many children and when you would have them, feminism accomplished that. If you married a man who beat you, feminists made that illegal. This is just the tip of the iceberg, the list is a very long one of accomplishments of the feminist movement. (bluelolly, 2013)

An ambivalent comment included elements of both favorable and unfavorable language regarding the term “feminism” or any definition of

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feminism. The following illustrative comment was coded as ambivalent toward feminism: I am, and always have been “up” for women’s, or anyone else’s rights. But I am not now and never will be a “feminist.” That designation means a female liberal. Feminists love to denigrate conservative women and attack them with a lack of decency that disgraces the word woman. So, no, I’m not a feminist. If it ever again comes to mean women supporting women’s rights, all women’s rights not just liberal causes, then I might change my mind. (KenoshaMarge, 2013)

The chi-square goodness of fit test showed a significant difference in the number of unfavorable (n = 559, 38.8%), favorable (n = 545, 37.8%), and ambivalent comments (n = 337, 23.4%), X2 (2, N = 1441) = 64.36, p < .001. Follow-up tests showed there were significantly more unfavorable than ambivalent comments, X2 (2, N = 896) = 54.52, p < .001, and significantly more favorable than ambivalent comments, X2 (1, N = 882) = 48.58, p < .001; however, the difference between favorable and unfavorable comments was not significant, X2 (2, N = 1104) = .16, p = .689. Ultimately, the combination of comments expressing a favorable and qualified support for feminism (n = 882, 61.2%) was significantly greater than the proportion of comments expressing an unqualifiedly unfavorable attitude toward feminism (n = 559, 38.8%), X2 (1, N = 1441) = 71.96, p < .001.

Discussion In this study, we examined the public comment sections of 63 articles on the Internet reporting recent polling results that showed a widespread lack of support for feminism. Along with six other coders, we contentanalyzed 2,656 user-generated comments on these articles and polls. We posed two research questions: First, what percentage of user’s comments conveyed a substantive perspective on the nature of feminism, and second, of those substantive comments, what percentages were favorable, unfavorable, or ambivalent toward feminism? Significantly more usergenerated comments were found to be substantive than non-substantive. Results also showed there was no significant difference between the percentages of comments that were favorable versus unfavorable, but when combined, favorable comments and comments reflecting ambivalent attitudes about feminism significantly outnumbered unequivocally unfavorable comments about feminism.

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Using the method of content analysis to investigate whether usergenerated comments were substantively about feminism enabled the coding team to explore the ways in which commenters discussed feminism and to compare user’s comments to strains of feminist thought previously identified by scholars such as Wood (2015). The user-generated comments revealed a multiplicity of views on feminism and inter-gender relations, but further research is needed to assess the relative levels of support for the various connotative definitions of feminism expressed by commenters in their posts. Coding for liberal versus cultural definitions of feminism, for instance, was beyond the scope of this study, but anecdotally, the longstanding tension between these perspectives was observed in user’s comments, whether favorable or unfavorable toward feminism. In the following example, one commenter with an unfavorable opinion of feminism conveyed assumptions based within the liberal feminist tradition of gender equality: I’m a female, and the feminist movement has devolved into infantilizing women instead of treating us an independent thinking, fully-capable adults [sic]. Instead of advocating self-reliance the movement focuses on pushing women into being completely dependent on government. How can you say we’re equal to men if we need the government to replace the husband as head of household? It’s disgusting, offensive and the movement excludes any diversity of political thought. After decades of fighting to be seen as equal to men now the majority of women are trapped in crappy low-paying jobs, single mothers dependent on hand-outs to survive. There is no dignity in that. (aiamorning, 2013)

Conversely, unfavorable opinions of feminism rooted within the cultural feminist tradition were also expressed, as in the following example, where the commenter stated that women’s unique role in childbearing makes men and women different on many levels: You’re right that feminism isn’t about hating men, it’s about wanting to BE men. It used to be more aptly called penis envy. Women get pregnant and men don’t. That means women and men are anatomically, physiologically, AND psychologically DIFFERENT. Men and women cannot be the same as long as they remain H sapiens. (Hominid, 2013)

The liberal and cultural feminist traditions were likewise evident in user’s favorable comments on feminism. One commenter’s post reflected liberal feminist support for gender equality, underscoring that having equal rights and responsibilities does not mean women have to be men: “Because I like lipstick, dresses and stockings. I like dressing the way I do. I can be a desired woman and be their [men’s] equal, the two are not

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mutually exclusive” (eldargal, 2013). Other commenters were more closely aligned with the cultural feminist tradition, indicating a strong support for advancing women’s leadership opportunities, but not because they believed that men and women are equal. In the following example, the commenter conveyed a belief that women are superior to men and thus would inherently make better leaders: Females are & have always been the stronger race, working at home, cooking, cleaning, raising kids, as well as working outside & bringing home ½ the paycheck!! Its [sic] high time men here recognize this... just think, educated worlds have placed women in power, like Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhuto…women are the worlds [sic] mediators, just not given the power. We won’t make war, like the men who get into daily fights...we make peace. (Mukhtyar, 2014)

Further exploration into how the bipolar themes of the liberal and cultural feminist traditions are reflected in public commentary could provide insight into how and why the feminist label appears, on its face, to be losing popular appeal. Our study demonstrated that commenters’ opinions on feminism were much more nuanced than can accurately be captured in a simple yes or no polling response to the question, “Are you a feminist?” The complexity of public responses to this question, and to the results of these polls, was underscored in our content analytic findings. While approximately 80% of user-generated comments expressed opinions that were either clearly favorable or unfavorable toward feminism, the remaining one-fifth of comments (20%) reflected feelings of ambivalence. Ambivalent commenters usually expressed support for some conception of feminism, but conveyed a lack of confidence that those whom they labeled “feminists” shared their beliefs. Combined favorable and ambivalent comments comprised 61% of substantive user-generated posts, suggesting support for feminism (or some conception of it) is far from “dead”; however, for researchers interested in investigating current forms of antifeminist backlash, the 39% of comments unambiguously unfavorable toward feminism warrant further examination. Consistent with theory (Papacharissi, 2009) and other empirical investigations of user-generated comments (Milioni et al., 2012; Ruiz et al., 2011), we found the comments to provide a valuable window through which to quantitatively and qualitatively look more closely at public opinion on a complex issue. In this case, that issue was the state of support for feminism. Although our results are limited by the fact that usergenerated comments do not reflect a statistically representative sample of public opinion, they provide a more in-depth look at public discourses

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about controversial topics, yielding another tool by which to assess the current state of feminism aside from quantitative polling results.

Author Note The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaborative efforts of the other members of the coding team in the development of the content analysis codebook for this project and coding of data (listed alphabetically): Rebecca Froehlich, Alaina Novotny, Sama Hitendra-Pratik Patel, Stacie Peitz, Rachel Prodanovich, and Elizabeth Schley. Table 1 Polling Results for Support of Feminism

Ms. / Communications Consortium / Feminist Foundation Poll Do you consider yourself a feminist (females)? Do you consider yourself a feminist (males)? YouGov United Kingdom Poll Are you a feminist? Do you think men and women should have equal rights and status in society?2 YouGov / Economist Poll Do you consider yourself a feminist or not? Is the word ‘feminist’ and insult? If a feminist is “someone who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes,” are you feminist or not? YouGov / Huffington Post Poll Do you consider yourself a feminist, a strong feminist, neither a feminist nor an anti-feminist, an anti-feminist, a strong antifeminist, or are you not sure?

Yes

No

Not Sure

55%

45%

-

30%

70%

-

19%

66%

15%

81%

11%

8%

19% 23%

66% 77%

-

57%

43%

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Strong Feminist Feminist Neither a Feminist nor an Anti-Feminist? Anti-Feminist Strong Anti-feminist Not Sure Regardless of your own view, do you think a majority of women consider themselves to be feminists? Regardless of your own view, do you think that a majority of men consider themselves to be feminists? When you hear the word ‘feminist,’ do you think of this as which of the following? Completely Positive Mostly Positive Neutral Mostly Negative Completely Negative Not Sure Do you believe that men and women should be social, political, and economic partners?

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6% 14% 63% 5% 3% 8%

-

-

27%

37%

36%

7%

67%

27%

7% 19% 29% 30% 7% 7%

-

-

82%

9%

9%

Bibliography aiamorning. (2013, June 26). [Msg 441]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments bluelolly. (2013, June 26). [Msg 518]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments Chambers, L. (2013, October 5). Has “feminism” become a dirty word? Retrieved from https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/05/01/hasfeminist-become-dirty-word/ eldargal. (2013, June 26). [Msg 457]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments

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Feminism. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism Goodrich, J. (2015). Zombie stories for women. Retrieved from http://www.wcwonline.org/Women-=-Books-Blog/zombie Greenberg, S., Carville, J., Seifert, E., & Gardner, P. (2013, July 22). The women’s economic agenda: Unmarried women focused on critical economic issues. Retrieved from http://www.wvwvaf.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/07/dcor-wvwv-memo-072213-final.pdf Habermas, J. (1973). Theory and practice. London: Heinemann. Hardy, B. W., & Scheufele, D. A. (2005). Examining differential gains from Internet use: Comparing the moderating role of talk and online interactions. Journal of Communication, 71(1), 71 - 84. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2005.tb02659.x Harper, J. (2013, May 1). Feminism may be dead: 72 percent of Americans say they’re not “feminists.” Washington Times. Retrieved from http://www.washingtontimes.com. Hauser, S.G. (2012, May 15). The women’s movement in the ‘70s, today: “You’ve come a long way,” but… Retrieved from http://www.workforce.com/articles/the-women-s-movement-in-the70s-today-you-ve-come-a-long-way-but. Herbst, S. (1995). Numbered voices: How opinion polling has shaped American politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Holsti, O. R. (1969). Content analysis for the social sciences and humanities. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Hominid. (2013, June 26). [Msg 18]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments Jm Mac. (2013, June 26). [Msg 526]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments KenoshaMarge. (2013, June 26). [Msg 340]. Message posted to http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/how-to-get-morewomen-and-men-to-call-themselves-feminists/277179/#articlecomments Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com McKay-Semmler, K. L., Semmler, S. M., & Kim, Y. Y. (2014). Local news media cultivation of host receptivity in Plainstown. Human Communication Research, 40(2), 188-208. doi:10.1111/hcre.12024

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Milioni, D. L., Vadratsikas, K., & Papa, V. (2012). “Their two cents worth”: Exploring user agency in readers’ comments in online news media. Observatorio, 6(3), 21-47. Mukhtyar, S. (2014). [Msg 360]. Message posted to http://www.care2.com/causes/feminisms-not-dying-but-it-may-bechanging-a-little.html#comments National Alliance for Caregiving, & AARP, Inc. (2015). http://www.caregiving.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/2015_CaregivingintheUS_Final-Report-June4_WEB.pdf Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Papacharissi, Z. (2009). The virtual sphere 2.0: The Internet, the public sphere, and beyond. In A. Chadwick & P. N. Howard (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (pp. 230-245). New York, NY: Routledge: Taylor & Francis. Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory news consumer. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2010/03/01/understanding-theparticipatory-news-consumer/ Ruiz, C., Domingo, D., Lluis Mico, J., Meso, K., & Masip, P. (2011). The public sphere 2.0? The democratic qualities of citizen debates in online newspapers. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 16, 463-487. doi:10.1177/194016121415849 Saad, L. (2015, May 29). Americans choose “pro-choice” for first time in seven years. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/183434/americans-choose-pro-choicefirst-time-seven-years.aspx Scheufele, D. A. (2002). Examining differential gains from mass media and their implications for participatory behavior. Communication Research, 29, 46-65. doi:10.1177/009365020202900103 Semmler, S. M., McKay-Semmler, K. L., & Robertson, T. (2013). Gendered issue depictions in Commander in Chief versus The West Wing. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 21, 247-262. doi:10.1080/15456870.2013.840304 Swanson, E. (2013, April 16). Poll: Few identify as feminists, but most believe in equality of sexes. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/feminismpoll_n_3094917.html U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau. (2014). Data and Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/stats_data.htm

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Van Mechelen, R. (2013, May 13). [Msg 1]. Message posted to http://www.dailyiowan.com/2013/05/13/Opinions/33293.html Weber, P. (2013). Discussions in the comments sections: Factors influencing participation and interactivity on online newspapers' reader comments. New Media & Society, 16, 941-957. doi:10.1177/1461444813495165 Wood, J. T. (2015). Gendered lives: Communication, gender, and culture (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. YouGov Staff. (2013, May 1). Has “feminist” become a dirty word? Retrieved from https://today.yougov.com/news/2013/05/01/hasfeminist-become-dirty-word/

CHAPTER EIGHT WHEN YOUR SPOUSE IS YOUR CO-WORKER: MANAGING THE WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES IN ACADEMIC COUPLES CAROLYN PRENTICE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

ILMIRA DULYANOVA UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

AND LAURA HUDSON POLLOM CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO

Although many organizations have strict policies against employing married or even dating pairs (Howard, 2008), many other organizations embrace the married couple as employees. Such is the case in small towns, isolated areas, and other places where qualified candidates for open positions are scarce (Sprunt & Howes, 2011). In addition, spouses often work together in family businesses, in special organizations such as Boys Town, or as caretakers (WorkingCouples.com). And, as many of the readers of this chapter are aware, such is the case in the academic world: Schools and colleges across the U.S. employ many married pairs, either through spousal accommodation policies, common practice or happenstance. Although numbers are not available for all these groups, in academia, approximately 40% of college faculty are partnered with other academics (Wolf-Wendel, Twombly, & Rice, 2000). More recent research from a 2006 study by Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research indicates that being a coworker-spouse is more common among women in academia: 40% of female faculty and only 34% of male faculty are partnered with other academics (Wilson, 2013). Authors have reported on this phenomenon in higher education from a standpoint of institutional policy and practice (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2000).

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Others have offered anecdotes of dual-career couples’ struggles to maintain marriage and career (Adler, Adler, Ahrons, Perlmutter, Staples, & Warren, 1989; Chudud, Tealdi, Howes, & Sprunt, 2008; Coleman & Coleman, 2012; Newcastle, 2006; Taz, 2007; Valcour, 2015). Work-life scholars have explored how individuals manage the separation between work and life, particularly in an age where the boundaries between the two are disappearing through technology and flexible working arrangements (Adler et al. 1989; Denker & Dougherty, 2013; Edley, 2001). This present study is unique in that it explores how couples who work at the same academic organization (coworker-spouses) negotiate their public and private lives between themselves and their organization. This situation offers a unique opportunity to explore the separation of work and life. As noted above, couples outside of higher education are also often employed together. Thus, the findings of this study may be useful to understand life and work tensions in other organizational settings in which spouses participate together.

Literature Review The idea for this project evolved from the literature on workplace friendship. Since modern workers spend most of their waking hours at work, they often form important friendships with the people with whom they work. A variety of authors have explored how these friendships develop, how they may affect the individual and the organization, and what special tensions might occur within these relationships. For example, in a survey of 544 city administrators, Berman, West, and Richter (2002) found that, in general, the participants looked favorably upon workplace friendship because they perceived it as being beneficial to the company through mutual support for employees, better work communication, and an improved work atmosphere. Although the administrators perceived some risks—such as office gossip, clouded judgment, and distraction from work—they rated the benefits as much more important than the risks. Coworker-spouses can be considered to represent a form of workplace friendship, so their relationship may have a positive effect on the employing organization while at the same time providing important mutual support for the coworker-spouses. Researchers have shown the importance of the workplace context on friendships. Sias and Cahill (1998) found organizational context influenced the formation of friendships through proximity and banding together in the face of oppression by a “bad” supervisor. Although working professionals list both negative and positive aspects of the

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workplace friendships, in general, these friendships contribute to job satisfaction and career advancement (Austin, 2012). While women report enjoying the social and emotional benefits from work friendships, men report greater job satisfaction when they have friends at work (Morrison, 2009). These studies suggest that through friendships, coworkers develop a shared vision of their workplaces. Several researchers have noted that workplace friendships also have a negative side. Bridge and Baxter (1992) recognized that work friendships can evoke dialectical tensions between or among coworkers, which have to be constantly balanced, such as autonomy vs. connection and equality vs. inequality. Similarly, Morrison and Noland (2002) reported that workplace friendships may be wrought with contradictions and tensions, and can hinder workplace performance by distracting the friendship pair and other workers. This tension can culminate with some workers, “when faced with dual-role dilemmas, [prioritizing] their friendship above their responsibilities to the organization” (p.40). Coworker-spouses are also affected by these benefits and tensions, possibly exacerbated by the fact that they may spend more time together than other married couples or other coworkers who are friends. Coworker-spouses may also be faced with prioritizing the organization over their marriage, or vice versa. Another tension in workplace friendships relates to the demarcation of public and private life. Fritz and Arnett (1999) theorized that while some people were inclined to have friendships at work, others preferred to keep the two realms separate. Fritz and Arnett suggested that in work friendships, the separation of work and life can become confused for both the organization and the individuals, an idea also suggested by Edley (2001) regarding married couples who work for the same employer. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that married couples who work for the same organization (coworker-spouses) may strengthen their marital bond by sharing the workplace context while at the same time experiencing potential tensions between their work and home contexts. In academia, people often find their spouses in college or graduate school, and so it is not unusual for both to be highly qualified in their academic fields, teaching or administration. An earlier study by Adler et al. (1989) showcased three academic coworker-spouse couples who were interviewed regarding their day-to-day relational experiences, rewards, and tensions of working at the same institution. Our similar (but more extensive) study here explored how the lived experiences of coworker-spouses may have changed since the study by Adler et al. was published. However, the coworker-spouses in our study were not

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exclusively faculty couples and included other pairings within higher education. In coworker-spouses, the divide between work and family life may be blurred. In their examination of the interdisciplinary work-family literature, Kirby, Golden, Medved, Jorgenson, and Buzzanell (2003) sought to empower individuals to change the discourse of separation of work and family life. Most pertinent to the present study is the boundary problematic, which casts work and family as two distinct spheres with conflicting commitments and demands. Through modern technology, the boundaries between the two spheres are eroding for many workers. For coworker-spouses, the boundary may be particularly difficult to negotiate because they enact a part of their married life at work and also enact a part of their work life at home. Similarly, the problematic of identity discussed by Kirby et al. (2003) may operate more acutely in the daily lives of coworker-spouses since spouses are forced to interact with one another in two conflicting roles. Since family “roles are fundamentally gendered” (p. 12), this gendering may leak into their professional roles, causing marital tensions as well as tensions for coworkers and other onlookers, undermining their professional identity. In addition, other coworkers may be unable to distinguish the differences between coworker-spouses, viewing them as a unit rather than as two individuals (Adler et al. 1989). This includes previously voiced concerns that a married couple in an academic department will vote as one (Adler et al., 1989; Farley, 2007). Perhaps, as Kirby et al. suggested, the coworker-spouses will find empowerment through an integrated sense of self that includes both work and family roles. Thus, we begin our research seeking answers to the following questions: RQ1: How do coworker-spouses in higher education negotiate and construct boundaries between work and other life? RQ2: How does working with one’s spouse affect a couple’s marriage and/or professional lives?

Methods In collecting and analyzing the data, we followed conventions of qualitative research in communication (Tracy, 2013) and grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). We received approval for the study from our campus Institutional Review Boards. The interviews were guided by an interview schedule as we encouraged participants to tell us their work/life stories.

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Participants We recruited a sample of 39 participants, beginning with people we knew, asking them to suggest other participants, and also making cold contacts with other academic couples we could identify as coworkerspouses. The participants were employed by a variety of higher education institutions, including two state universities, a private liberal arts university, and a small two-year college. In all, we interviewed 22 women and 17 men, ranging in age from 30 to 55. The sample included 8 married pairs who were interviewed separately (16 participants) and 23 other individuals. The participants’ professional positions included accountant, director, coach, instructor, advisor, professor, administrator; their spouses held a similar variety of positions at the same institutions. Thus, our sample reflects many different arrangements between academic pairs, such as two faculty members, or two in support or administration, or one teaching while the other works as administrator or staff. Many of the participants had also previously worked with their spouses at other institutions or in other non-educational settings.

Interviews The authors of the study individually interviewed the participants in settings that were convenient and comfortable for the participants, although some were conducted by telephone. The interviews lasted 25 to 75 minutes and were audio-recorded with the participants’ consent. We transcribed the interviews, resulting in 287 single-spaced typed pages. We followed an interview schedule of open-ended questions, beginning with broad questions about the participant’s position and the spouse’s position, what a typical day at work looks like, and what the academic couple talks about after work. Then we moved on to more specific open-ended questions about what they perceived as benefits or drawbacks of working at the same place.

Verification Unlike data obtained through quantitative methods, interpretive data are expected to be biased and not generalizable to a larger population. Because qualitative researchers seek to understand lived experiences, which by their nature are individual and reflect “multiple, changing realities” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 239), interpretive researchers must verify that the interpretation has a good fit with the data. A standard of

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quality is verification by at least two other methods to demonstrate trustworthiness and authenticity (Creswell, 1997). The two methods used to verify our results included (a) rich, detailed descriptions (as evidenced by the quotations from participants); and (b) member checking, which means that after completing our analysis, we contacted three participants and shared with them a summary of the themes that had emerged. They concurred the themes reflected their experiences as coworker-spouses. Also, many participants who later inquired casually about the research nodded affirmatively at our summary of the basic findings.

Data Analysis In qualitative research, data analysis is an iterative process, beginning with data collection and continuing throughout. Looking for themes emerging from the lived experiences of coworker-spouses, each author read and coded the transcriptions, and then met to discuss our identified themes. Perhaps because all of us are in coworker-spouse relationships, we found that we had independently identified similar themes. At the same time, we were also aware of the need for "bracketing of presuppositions" (Kvale & Brinkman, 2008, p. 31), which requires researchers to suspend assumptions and be aware of their personal values and potential biases. We tabulated exemplars of themes from each transcription and devised descriptive titles.

Findings The analysis revealed that coworker-spouses recognized advantages to working at the same institution of higher education, but nevertheless, they also found it challenging to maintain individual identities and to separate personal life from work life and vice versa. In addition, for some couples, the working arrangement seemed to exacerbate tensions in gender roles.

Negotiating Work-Life Boundaries The first research question probed the ways in which academic couples negotiate and construct boundaries between work and other life. Participants negotiated the permeability of work-life boundaries by regulating their (a) work talk; (b) social circles; and (c) contact with spouses at work. These three elements are discussed in the following subsections.

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Work talk. While talking about work seems to be inevitable for coworker-spouses, several participants drew and maintained a boundary between work and home by actively regulating how much they talk about work at home. For example, Debbie (all names in this chapter are pseudonyms) noted that although her husband sometimes vented and “let it all out,” he usually did not talk about work at home, apparently as his strategy to escape from work for a while. Katie noted that she and her husband would “consciously move to another topic because it can get kind of old” to talk so much about work. Even Brenda and Larry who shared an office, both reported they had created and honored the rule (for 20 years) that they could talk about work only for the first 15 minutes on the drive home. Three participants noted that either they or their spouses had a rule of not bringing any work home. Thus, the creation of limits on work talk was a favored strategy for maintaining boundaries. Social circle. Another strategy for negotiating boundaries was managing social circles. Eleven participants did not socialize with their coworkers, choosing to limit their leisure-time exposure to work friends and preferring to socialize with friends unaffiliated with the organization. John explained: “It’s one of those things where you need a break from all the stuff that goes on every day. … It is a need to get away from the work.” Similarly, Katie and her spouse chose non-work friends in order to enjoy having multiple and varied identities. Perceived generational differences, as well as different personal and family interests, were other reasons for not socializing with co-workers. Nevertheless, four participants indicated that their closest friends were their colleagues and sometimes supervisors. For example, Sheryl said that “my social network and my work networks, there’s not many barriers there.” Similarly, Debbie said her closest friends worked with her husband. These participants admitted they had to monitor what they said. Sometimes, they felt psychological discomfort because they could not express themselves freely or communicate an issue the way they wanted because their spouses worked with their best friends. While a few participants’ best friends were their colleagues or bosses, it was not clear which relationship was privileged—the friendship or the organizational affiliation. Spousal contact. Six participants clearly indicated they liked work togetherness. For example, Sean noted that he and his spouse valued frequent interactions at the office, taking breaks and meals together, and always commuting together. Similarly, Brenda and Larry enjoyed carpooling, sharing an office, and knowing what was going on in each other’s teaching lives. These participants appreciated having very fluid work-home boundaries.

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Participants benefited from working at the same organization because they could have lunch together. Five participants appreciated sharing an adult conversation during their lunchtime at work. For instance, Michael noted: “It helps that we’re able to talk when it’s calm and quiet, and not have to worry about kids’ bad table manners.” Shared lunch also provided the opportunity to talk about private subjects: “Like at lunch when things come up, we can just talk about it” instead of having to wait until the children were in bed (Michael). Sarah mentioned that she and her husband talked about work at lunch so that when they came home, they could spend time with their family. Thus, by sharing time at work, these couples could better manage their home lives. However, several participants tried to limit contact with their spouses at work by maximizing separation of work and home. Jenna noted: “It was like, I see you at home, I see you at work, and I just can’t get away from you!” Nelly also expressed a need to get away: “Because we’re so close to each other, just physically, proximity and offices in the same department, teaching—at times it’s a little stifling or suffocating!” Eileen was outspoken about how she struggled to maintain a professional distance from her spouse at work, expressing how she did not feel that she “could just basically go to work and do my work.” Her husband would show up “in the office sometimes unannounced when I’m in the middle of something and —just to say hi because he was teaching [nearby].” She noted that although this was “very sweet,” she nevertheless wanted to say, “Just please, leave me alone right now!” Therefore, many participants created routines to limit contact at work. For example, Karla and her spouse found it beneficial to work separately on professional projects. Although their offices were close, her husband preferred working in the library or his office, while she would work at home. Trisha decided to add a part-time job at a different organization because, she stated, “I do kind of feel that I’m always in his shadow. … That’s probably . . . why I started the other job; I kind of wanted something for just myself.” Eight participants mentioned they chose to commute separately to maintain work-home separation and enjoy some private time. It is interesting to note that only women reported feeling imposed upon by their husbands’ need for connection at work.

Effects on Marriage and Professional Life The second question asked how being in an academic couple affected participants’ marriages and professional lives. The following sections present both benefits and drawbacks.

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Benefits. All but five participants viewed working in the same organization as beneficial. The majority mentioned sharing experiences and contexts, and the practicality of working at the same place contributed to their marriage and careers. The following subsections outline the themes regarding the advantages of coworker-spouse relationships. Shared Experiences. Participants liked the idea of sharing events because work time then was also “together time.” For example, Anna mentioned: “If there are events from his department, I participate and the other way around. … Once in a while, I’d sit in his class just to sit in there, to learn.” Thus, going to events and attending her husband’s lectures was not only work but also family time. Equally important, participants appreciated shared work events because sometimes only one had to attend. For instance, Michael commented that for campus events or lectures, “at least one of us can go, be present.” The attending spouse could keep the other one updated on organizational events, and possibly be “counted” as two. Thus, shared work activities contributed to the work-life balance. Participants also indicated that their co-worker spouses provided professional support in the workplace. Many would discuss pedagogy, advising, curriculum issues, classroom technology assistance, and other work-related questions. For example, Sarah and Nora mentioned that their spouses would recommend an article. Michael and Chris described researching with their spouses and co-authoring articles: “We maintain two field projects and plan on collaborating more in the future.” Michael noted that “if we disagree on views and ideas, we can publish separately.” Such positive attitudes suggest that bonding between coworker-spouses contributes to professional collaboration and emotional support for each other. Participants also emphasized that shared understandings of colleagues and workplace culture facilitated communication about their work lives. Carl noted, “We go through similar things, we can relate better to each other.” Similarly, Jenna indicated that because her husband knew the same people, she “didn’t have to give the whole background of that person. I mean if you said . . . Joe pissed me off today because of this, [husband] could understand because he knew Joe.” Leila mentioned that when she had previously worked in another institution, “there was no connection whatsoever” and thus, neither one had talked much about work. When the spouses shared the workplace, they could discuss and understand the spouse’s work situation more clearly, which helped them feel more connected. Thus, the presence of shared friends, colleagues, and contexts was considered positive for marriage and work life.

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Twenty participants described how the shared understanding of the work environment also provided a way to relieve stress and vent safely. Craig indicated that his wife could vent about her work issues to him. Similarly, Nora said, “You don’t have to worry about, um, offending somebody or breaking ties, so you can just kind of say it how it is… It’s nice to have an outlet like that.” Other participants also mentioned how refreshing it was to be able to talk without self-censoring to somebody who knew “the cast of characters” (Bill) and who shared common experiences and frustrations. Practicality. Working in the same organization had a practical value in the participants’ work-life daily routine. As Sheryl said, “It’s really nice, just for some of those stupid, small things: I left my calendar at home, can you bring it?” Others reported sharing a parking permit or using a spouse’s printer when the other’s office printer is not working. These little conveniences were viewed as valuable features in the work experiences of coworker-spouses. Several participants indicated that their spouses being “trackable” was beneficial for a quick consultation in situations such as a sick child at school. Even when there was no emergency, participants found it comforting to know that their spouse was nearby. For example, Carl said: “She’s not far away. If I need to contact her either by e-mail or phone or even in person, it’s possible.” Participants appreciated that by sharing a workplace, they could resolve work and family issues quickly. Many also indicated that a shared workplace facilitated sharing of family responsibilities—such as dropping off and picking up children or even bringing a child to work if needed. Participants were able to adjust their schedules to be flexible. For instance, Nora said: “The people here respect that we are working parents and, umm, it’s that we both work in the same place [that] we can juggle our schedules a little bit.” Thus, sharing a workplace had many positive effects on family and work.

Drawbacks Despite all the positive and practical aspects of working at the same organization, participants also noted that there were some drawbacks. These included the inevitable entwining of their reputations, the omnipresence of work in their lives, and some salient gender inequities. Entwined identities. Participants noted that working in the same organization meant their spouse’s reputation greatly affected how others viewed them. Participants expressed concern that their individual experience, performance, and even political views voiced at work might

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affect the spouse’s reputation in the organization and among their shared colleagues. Most participants acknowledged feeling some pressure to perform well and monitor their interactions with colleagues to avoid embarrassing their spouse or negatively affecting their spouse’s reputation. Debbie (a staff member) mentioned that her husband once forgot to turn in grades for students, which embarrassed her because it affected her department. Bill (an administrator) noted that if somebody gets upset with him, his wife who works in an academic department sometimes feels the brunt of it. Similarly, Chris was conscious that his teaching evaluations and performance of other duties might directly influence how people perceive his wife or vice versa. In the same vein, Jake mentioned that he had to keep up his performance because “I feel if I am not asking questions or reading books … I’m laying her down, and vice versa. So we are keeping each other accountable for improving ourselves.” Beyond performing well on their jobs, the coworker-spouse arrangement created the need to be careful about what they said at work to avoid damaging the spouse’s work situation. Mark noted: “We need to make sure we don’t ruin it for the other person. So you don’t want to burn the bridges that might affect her job, her success.” In another example, Katie worried that her husband’s openness about their liberal views could impact her job negatively. Jenna also noted that she had to be careful not to express too much at work: “Maybe I was upset with somebody, but if I were to tell them … that person may have held it against my husband … It probably made me more conscientious of how I presented myself.” Thus, entwined identities presented a challenge for spouses working in the same organization. Gender/Situational Inequities. In some interviews, a familiar theme emerged—that of the full-time professional woman assuming the primary childcare and family care position because her “first responsibility is family and then work” (Nora). Some of the participants (both men and women) indicated that taking care of home and children was primarily a woman’s responsibility. For example, Chris explained his wife “was able to [teach from] home because it was all online. So we just had our first child. And it was a baby and so it was really easy to have her devote the necessary time to teach.” Interestingly, Chris thinks it is easy to teach online while also caring for a newborn—not to mention recovering from childbirth. Although many participants mentioned they took turns taking children to school and daycare, some male participants felt it was not their shared responsibility. For example, Jake said: “[we] tag team who will pick up kids. … I drive separately to work on purpose; it’s a good kind of release and separation for me.” Based on his comment, it seemed that he

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needed some release and separation from the children, and his wife did not. Other gender inequities emerged when the wife was the so-called “trailing spouse,” which was the general expectation (although one male participant in the study admitted that he had been the trailing spouse). For example, Sarah stated: It’s hard for academics to work in the same place, especially both professors. Usually, it’s one who got the job and the other one was brought along. It feels like not both of them earned it. For example, people may say ‘Yeah, she is a professor because her husband is a new dean and they had to give her a job.’ Though the second person had to work her butt off to get that job. … But it would still feel that one got it because of the other one; in academia it’s true.

Several other participants who felt their spouses were more valued also indicated concerns about being the unequal trailing spouse, which were in line with findings from the literature on gender inequities (Roos, 2008; Wheatley, 2013). Seven female participants expressed a desire to have their own identities and not be in the shadow of their spouses’ academic titles. Nancy noted she was identified more often as the wife of a higherlevel employee than by her own title. Lara talked about how it bothered her when another professor apologized for not recognizing her without her husband. She noted: “Sometimes I have a feeling that I am actually associated to [other faculty members] through my husband. … Like when they see me, they think of [my husband].” Another participant, Anna, felt her husband was “a light” and she was “a shadow.” Katie and Kathy did not like being called “Mrs.” because it ignored that they had doctoral degrees also. More women than men mentioned they had been viewed as a part of a pair rather than as individuals. A few female participants mentioned that having a different last name helped them maintain their own identities. Thus, while entwinement may affect both husbands and wives, it was women who more frequently brought up the insight about not having an individual identity. Other participants recounted comments from colleagues that indicated discomfort with the coworker-spouse arrangement. For example, Bill’s wife worked in a different department, but the two collaborated on a research project. When their joint article was published, Bill’s colleagues questioned him about her participation: “There was a little bit of grousing. ‘Well, why is her name on this?’ ‘Because she’s a co-author.’” His colleagues seemed to resent her inclusion, perhaps because she was in a different department.

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Some participants reported their colleagues expected them to act in gendered ways. Kathy said her male colleagues wanted her to sway the opinion of her husband, who worked in another department: “They want to say, why don’t you, y’know, why aren’t you getting him to toe the line with that?” Other women talked about how their colleagues expected them to hold the same professional opinions as their husbands. For example, Nelly reported: We had to do a lot of fighting in a sense to convince the administration that we can both be on committees, and we are both two professionals, and we’re separate, and we are not going to vote in support of each other.

Mark noted he didn’t “want to burn the bridges that might affect her job, her success. I am in a different spot. It’s kind of hard to affect me negatively. It would be easier to affect her.” It appeared Mark felt more confident either because he was a male or because his wife was “the trailing spouse.” In this and other cases, gender and work status may be difficult to separate.

Discussion This interpretive phenomenology of participants’ lived experiences and their communication documented how participants constructed and maintained work/life boundaries in different ways. For the majority, being coworker-spouses benefited their family, personal, and work lives. In contrast, no one mentioned the arrangement as being negative or potentially negative for the employer. Nevertheless, participants (more often women than men) faced some challenges in the workplace as coworker-spouses. In an earlier study of coworker-spouses, Adler et al. (1989) had noted three problematics: inseparability of identities, the interweaving of domestic and professional roles, and differential gender-based expectations of each member, which all appeared to some degree in the current study. In contrast to Adler et al., however, the interweaving of domestic and professional roles seemed to be viewed as an asset to the marriage among many of our participants. Adler et al. and our study both report enhanced intimacy and knowledge about the spouse as positive outcomes. Nevertheless, in our study, only women reported desiring more independence from their husbands at work so that they could achieve on their own terms. Some interesting details about the participants are not fully articulated in the findings above: Eleven of the participants noted that the female

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spouse had equal or higher rank than the male spouse. Similarly, for six participants the male spouse had been the “trailing spouse,” and in four other cases the partners had met at work and married after both were employed. Prominent in the interviews is that men who were married to equal or superior-ranked wives often offered accounts of why their wives had achieved as much or more than they had. For example, Richard noted, “[my wife has] always been far smarter than I anyway, and more flexible, so she, so she simply took the opportunity where she was to continue her education or work in another area.” Similarly, John said, “[my wife]’s a full professor, and I’m an associate. My, by going into the administration as I did, it pretty much kept, will keep me from becoming a full professor. Because I’m not doing the research anymore.” The female participants in this study did not offer accounts for their husbands’ success, perhaps reflecting a gendered assumption that the man would have the higherranked job. None of the participants in this study complained about broad-ranging gender inequities from their employer, but many of the women reported specific differential treatment/expectations from their colleagues, superiors, and even spouses. It is possible that this finding indicates that social change can be instituted by equal opportunity laws and social pressure, but it is often thwarted (intentionally or unreflectively) by individuals continuing the practices of gender stereotypes in their everyday interactions. Nevertheless, these gender stereotypes may be more openly addressed in academia as part of the campus conversation. Thus, the strong concentration of coworker-spouses in academic institutions is important for furthering gender equity in both home and the workplace because students also witness the workings of these marriages.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research The findings of this study provide insights into the lived experiences of how the coworker-spouse arrangement works, as well as how it may benefit the couple and institution. Nevertheless, it must be tempered by some limitations. Most interviewees were satisfied with at least some elements of the co-worker/spouse experience, and most were at present married to academic spouses. This suggests that the potentially most dissatisfied members of academic couples, which have ended in separation or divorce intertwined with career ruin, may be underrepresented in this study. Academic-couple melodramas, such as the ones that occurred between Phillip Robbins and Sara Bernal in the philosophy department of the University of Missouri, reaching intensity that landed their names in a

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feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Wilson, 2013), could offer additional and valuable insight into the advantages and disadvantages of such an arrangement. (According to the Chronicle’s article, for example, Robbins told his wife: “I know a lot of people, and I will talk to them, and you will never have a career in philosophy.”) Anecdotal evidence indicates that such cases are more common than publicly known and that marital problems can multiply at work. This is suggested by a quote from the Chronicle’s story about Robbins and Bernal: "It's one thing to have someone screaming at you at home, but then you've got it at the office, too. It is very easy to go on quarreling with someone” (Wilson, 2013, np). Future research should seek out and investigate how gendered expectations shape and even create such conflicts for some academic couples. Another important element is the effect of tenure (or lack thereof) on academic marriages and workplace relations. For example, what are the effects on academic couples’ personal and professional lives when one of the spouses (more often male) earns tenure and the other spouse does not? What are the effects on an academic unit or even on an entire university when such things happen? Future scholarship on this subject should not only expand the sample of participants to include academics with more diverse experiences, but should also pursue interviews with department chairs and other administrators who have had to deal with the fallout of academic couples.

Conclusion As the ranks of coworker-spouses grow in higher education and other fields, these couples are publicly enacting how men and women can work and live together as respected equals, and how the sharing of non-gendered work interests can enrich their private lives. Yet, as women at many institutions of higher education continue, on average, to make less money and face more professional obstacles than their male colleagues— including their husbands, for those coupled with other academics—the academic couple can also present a microcosm of the many dimensions of gender inequality that are still present in the U.S.

Author Note We acknowledge the assistance and insight of the co-editor of this collection, Dr. Miglena Sternadori, in expanding our discussion of the findings.

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Bibliography Adler, P. A., Adler, P., Ahrons, C., Perlmutter, M., Staples, W., & Warren, C. (1989). Dual-careerism and the conjoint-career couple. The American Sociologist, 20, 207-226. Austin, C. (2009). An investigation of workplace friendships and how it influences career advancement and job satisfaction: A qualitative case study. (Doctoral dissertation). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (305165832). Berman, E. M., West, J. P., & Richter, M. N. (2002). Workplace relations: Friendship patterns and consequences (according to managers). Public Administration Review, 62, 217-230. Bridge, K., & Baxter, L. A. (1992). Blended relationships: Friends as workplace associates. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 200225. Chudud, N., Tealdi, L., Howes, S., & Sprunt, E. (2008). HR Discussion: Addressing the needs of dual-career couples. The Way Ahead, 4, 8-12. Retrieved from http://www.spe.org/spe-site/spe/spe/twa/vol4/no1/HR_Discussion.pdf. Coleman, J., & Coleman, J. (2012, July 27). How two-career couples stay happy. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org. Creswell, J. W. (1997). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denker, K. J., & Dougherty, D. (2013). Corporate colonization of couples’ work-life negotiations: Rationalization, emotion management, and silencing conflict. Journal of Family Communication, 13(3), 242-262. doi: 10.1080/15267431.2013.796946 Edley, P. P. (2001). Technology, employed mothers, and corporate colonization of the lifeworld: A gendered paradox of work and family balance. Women and Language, 24(2), 28-35. Edley, P. (2001). Technology, employed mothers, and corporate colonization of the lifeworld: A gendered paradox of work and family balance. Women and Language, 24 (2), 28-35. Farley, D. (2007, April 27). In defense of spousal hiring. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. C1. Golden, A. G., Kirby, E. L., & Jorgenson, J. (2006). Work-life research from both sides now: An integrative perspective for organizational and family communication. In C. S. Beck (Ed.), Communication Yearbook (Vol. 30, pp. 143-195). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Halbesleben, J. R. B. (2010). Spousal support and coping among married coworkers: Merging the transaction stress and Conservation of

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Resources models. International Journal of Stress Management, 17, 384-406 Howard, J. (2008). Balancing conflicts of interest when employing spouses. Employee Responsibilities & Rights Journal, 28 (1), 29-43. Kirby, E. L., Golden, A. G., Medved, C. E., Jorgenson, J., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2003). An organizational communication challenge to the discourse of work and family research: From problematics to empowerment. In P. J. Kalbfleisch (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, (Vol. 27, pp. 1-43). Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S, (2008). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Morrison, R. L. (2009). Are women tending and befriending in the workplace? Gender differences in the relationship between workplace friendships and organizational outcomes. Sex Roles, 60(1-2), 1-13 Morrison, R. L., & Noland, T. (2007). Too much of a good thing? Difficulties with workplace friendships. University of Aukland Business Review, 9(2), 33-41. Newcastle, P. (2006, May 5). Balancing act: The next chapter. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. C2. Roos, P. A. (2008). Together but unequal: Combating gender inequity in the academy. Journal of Workplace Rights, 13(2), 185-199. doi:10.2190/WR.13.2.f Sias, P. M., & Cahill, D. J. (1998). From coworkers to friends: The development of peer friendships in the workplace. Western Journal of Communication, 62, 273-299. Sprunt, E.. & Howes, S. (2011). Results of dual-career couple survey, Journal of Petroleum Technology, 63(10), 60–62. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Taz, V. (2005, October 28). Not dead yet. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. C1. Valcour, M. (2015, April 14). Navigating tradeoffs in a dual-career marriage. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org. Wheatley, D. (2013). Location, vocation, location? Spatial entrapment among women in dual career households. Gender, Work & Organization, 20, 720-736. doi:10.1111/gwao.12005 Wilson, R. (2013, October 21). Faculty couples, for better or worse. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from www.chronicle.com.

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Wolf-Wendel, L. E., Twombly, S., & Rice, S. (2000). Dual-career couples: Keeping them together. The Journal of Higher Education, 71, 291-321. WorkingCouples.com (2015, November 5). Subscribe now. Retrieved from http://workingcouples.com/subscribe-now

CHAPTER NINE EXPLAINING THE GENDER WAGE GAP: THE ROLE OF DISCRIMINATION AND THE MINING INDUSTRY BLESSING UGWUANYI TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

AND CHIAN JONES RITTEN UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

Women have made remarkable strides in their participation in the labor market; yet, their wages continue to lag behind men’s. This chapter will look into the difference in earnings between men and women in the U.S. workforce and explore reasons for this gap in pay.

The Gender Pay Ratio The gender pay ratio is a measure of the difference between the wages paid to men and women. It equals the average earning of females divided by the average earning of males. Historically, the gender pay ratio in the U.S. was stagnant, with women’s wages averaging only 59 percent of men’s earnings until the beginning of the 1980s. From 1980 to 2000, women made great strides toward wage equality, but since 2000, the gender pay ratio has stagnated again, with women’s wages reaching an average of 78 percent of men’s. Figure 1 illustrates the historical trends in the gender pay ratio based on data on annual earnings of full-time, yearround workers.

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Figure 1: Gender Pay Ratio and Average Earnings of Full-Time, Year-Round Workers, Age 15 or Older

Source: DeNavas-Walt, Carmen and Bernadette D. Proctor (2014) “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013: Current Population Reports” available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60249.pdf

The gender pay ratio varies greatly by state and congressional district within the U.S. As seen in Table 1, Washington D.C. has the highest gender pay ratio with women making on average 91 percent of men’s pay, while Louisiana has the lowest, with women’s earnings averaging 66 percent of men’s.

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Table 1 Median Earning of Women Working Full Time Compared with Men’s Earnings in 2013 1 Washington, D.C.

91%

19 Minnesota

80%

37 Pennsylvania

76%

2 New York

86%

20 New Jersey

80%

38 Alaska

76%

3 Maryland

85%

21 Washington

80%

39 Idaho

76%

4 Florida

84%

22 Colorado

80%

40 Alabama

76%

5 California

84%

23 Virginia

79%

41 Michigan

75%

6 Arizona

84%

24 Missouri

79%

42 South Dakota

75%

7 Hawaii

83%

25 Illinois

79%

43 Oklahoma

75%

8 Nevada

83%

26 Kansas

79%

44 Nebraska

74%

9 Vermont

83%

27 Wisconsin

79%

45 Indiana

74%

10 North Carolina

83%

28 Texas

79%

46 Montana

74%

11 Georgia

83%

29 New Hampshire

78%

47 North Dakota

70%

12 Tennessee

83%

30 Connecticut

78%

48 Utah

70%

13 Delaware

83%

31 South Carolina

78%

49 West Virginia

69%

14 Rhode Island

82%

32 Kentucky

78%

50 Wyoming

69%

15 New Mexico

82%

33 Iowa

78%

51 Louisiana

66%

16 Massachusetts

82%

34 Ohio

77%

17 Maine

81%

35 Arkansas

77%

18 Oregon

80%

36 Mississippi

77%

Unites States Average

78%

Source: AAUW, “Median Earning of Women Working Full-Time Compared with Men’s Earnings in 2013” available at: http://www.aauw.org/resource/gender-paygap-by-state-and-congressional-district

It is important to note that although the gender pay ratio is a good indicator of the difference between men’s and women’s wages, it does not account for individuals’ specific occupation, industry, education level, or work experience. Therefore, it cannot be used to understand or estimate the existence of a pay gap between male and female workers with similar qualifications.

Explaining the Gender Pay Ratio For economists, earnings for all workers should be based on their marginal productivity (see Hellerstein, Neumark, and Troske 1999), usually measured as the output increase resulting from increasing labor by one unit. An individual’s marginal productivity equals the amount of

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additional output due to his or her employment. Theoretically, two workers with the same level of marginal productivity should be paid the same wage. If one worker earns less than other workers, then from a theoretical perspective, this must reflect that worker’s lower level of marginal productivity. What affects a worker’s productivity? Economists believe a significant role is played by human capital investments—resources presently invested in an individual to increase his or her marginal productivity in the future, and, therefore, future wages (see Blundell et al. 1999). Two forms of human capital investments have the potential largest effect on earnings: educational attainment and labor market experience (see Mincer 1974; Medoff and Abraham 1980). Increases in either or both of these investments are theorized to increase wages due to increases in marginal productivity.

Gender Differences in Educational Attainment Historically, women had fewer years of formal education than men. Table 2 shows that the percentage of both men and women who have completed four or more years of college has steadily increased over time, and nowadays, a higher percentage of women than men have completed at least four years of college. Table 2: Percentage of Four of More Years of College of the Population by Gender: 1940-2010 Men (%) Women (%) Year Four or more years of college Four or more years of college 1940 5.5 3.8 1950 7.3 5.2 1960 9.7 5.8 1970 14.1 8.2 1980 20.9 13.6 1990 24.4 18.4 1994 25.1 19.6 1998 26.2 21.7 2000 27.5 23.1 2004 28.5 25.1 2008 29.5 28.0 2010 27.8 35.0 Source: Infoplease, “Educational Attainment by Sex, 1910–2010 (percent of population age 25 and older)” available at: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779809.html

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Women have also recently earned the majority of post-high school degrees. As shown in Table 3, women now receive the majority of associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees. Although women receive only 49 percent of all First Professional degrees (examples include medicine, law, and theology), their share has drastically increased since 1960-1961. Table 3: Percentage of Degrees Awarded to Women by Level: 19601961 to 2010-2011 Year Associate Bachelor’s Master's Ph.D. First Professional 1960-1961 n.a. 38.5 31.7 10.5 2.7 1970-1971 42.9 43.4 40.1 14.3 6.3 1980-1981 54.7 49.8 50.3 31.1 39.1 2000-2001 60.0 57.3 58.3 44.9 46.2 2010-2011 61.7 57.2 60.1 51.4 49.0 Source: Blau, Francine D., Marianne A. Ferber and Anne E Winkler (2014) “The Economics of Women, Men, and Work, Seventh Edition.” Pearson Education, Inc. Boston, p. 169

As educational attainment increases, so do wages earned and employment levels, as seen in Figure 2. Since women have higher levels of education than men and wages increase along with educational attainment, it may be assumed that women should earn more than men. But this assumption does not take into account other factors that influence wages. Figure 2: Earnings and Unemployment Rate by Educational Attainment

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employment Projections,” available at: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

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Gender Differences in Labor Market Experience Women have historically had lower levels of labor market experience than men. Although the data available for gender differences in labor market experience is limited, existing data suggests that beginning in the 1980s, women’s experience in the labor market began to increase. The gap in full-time experience between men and women decreased from 6.6 years in 1979 to 3.5 years in 1989. The gender difference in tenure (the length of time with one specific employer) has decreased even further, with women having only 0.1 years less tenure than men in 2012 (see Blau, Ferber, and Winkler 2014, 197). Lower levels of labor market experience tend to lower women’s earnings compared to men’s, but this influence has steadily decreased.

Gender Differences in Union Membership Experience and formal training are not the only factors influencing wages. Union membership and choice of industry and occupation have also been tied to earnings (i.e., Blanchflower and Bryson 2003). Wages for unionized workers have historically been higher than for nonunionized workers. From 2003 to 2007 this wage premium was 20.6 percent for lowwage and 6.1 percent for high-wage unionized workers (Schmitt 2009). Traditionally, men were more likely than women to be union members. The overall percentage of union membership has declined for both genders, and the union membership gap between men and women has steadily decreased. Figure 3 shows the percentages of women, men, and all workers who were union members from 1983 to 2014. This convergence of union membership between men and women should act to help equalize their wages.

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Figure 3: Gender Differences in Union Membership as a Percentage of Employed Workers, Age 16 or Older

30.0 25.0 20.0 Total 15.0

Men Women

10.0 5.0 0.0 1983 1988 1993 1998 2003 2008 2013

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Affiliation Data from the Current Population Survey” available at: http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpslutab1.htm.

Gender Differences in Occupation and Industry Employed A worker’s chosen occupation and industry also influence wages. As seen in Table 4, men and women tend to be concentrated in different occupations. Occupations dominated by women (community and social services; education, training, and library; healthcare-related; personal care and service; and office and administrative support) tend to have lower hourly wages than occupations dominated by men (management; computer and mathematical; architecture and engineering; construction and extraction; and installation, maintenance, and repair). This difference is even more evident when considering the average level of educational attainment needed to work in the various occupations. For example, architecture and engineering—just like education, training, and library— typically require a college degree. The female-dominated occupation of education, training, and library work has average hourly wages significantly lower than the male-dominated architecture and engineering.

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Table 4: Percentage of women and average hourly wages of all employed by occupation in 2014 Occupation Management

Women (as a % of total) 38.6

Average Hourly Wage ($) 54.08

Business and Financial Operations

55.7

34.81

Computer and Mathematical

25.6

40.37

Architecture and Engineering

15.4

39.19

Life, physical, and social science

45.6

33.69

Community and social service

64.3

21.79

Legal

50.8

48.61

Education, training, and library

74.1

25.10

Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media Healthcare practitioners and technical

47.4

26.82

74.2

36.54

Healthcare support

87.6

13.86

Protective service

21.8

21.14

Food preparation and serving related

55.1

10.57

Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance Personal care and service

40.2

12.68

77.4

12.01

Sales and related

49.2

18.59

Office and administrative support

72.9

17.08

Farming, fishing, and forestry

22.4

12.09

Construction and extraction

2.6

22.40

Installation, maintenance, and repair

3.5

21.74

Production

28.0

17.06

Transportation and material moving

15.7

16.57

Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Household Data Annual Averages: 2014,” available at: www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics “Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2014 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States,” available at: www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000

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The choice of an industry also influences wages. Table 5 shows the percentage of women and the average hourly wages earned by all workers in different industries. Similar to occupations, besides financial activities, the industries dominated by male workers tend to have higher wages. For example, in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (heavily dominated by men), wages are significantly higher than in leisure and hospitality, where women are the majority of workers. Table 5: Percentage of Women and Average Hourly Wages of all Employed by Industry in 2014 Industry

Women Average (as a % of Hourly total) Wages ($) 24.7 9.63-23.21 Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 30.65 Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction 13.3 8.9 26.83 Construction 29.3 24.87 Manufacturing 45 17.04-28.18 Wholesale and retail trade 23 21.48 Transportation and utilities 38.8 34.87 Information 53.2 31.01 Financial activities 41.2 29.48 Professional and business services 74.7 24.94 Education and health services 51.4 14.09 Leisure and hospitality 52.8 22.19 Other services 45.4 n.a. Public administration Sources: Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, Household data: Annual Averages” available at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Industries at a Glance” available at: http://www.bls.gov/iag/. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Comparison of All Employee Average Hourly Earnings, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Before and After the March 2014 Benchmark” available at: www.bls.gov/web/empsit/compaeheu.txt

Theory suggests that the gender wage gap (the difference between the average earnings of men and the average earnings of women) can be explained by gender differences in labor market characteristics, including human capital investments, union membership rates, and choice of occupation and industry (see Horrace and Oaxaca 2001; Oaxaca and Randsom 1994). If a remaining gender wage gap still exists after these

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factors are controlled, it is typically referred to as labor market discrimination.

Labor Market Discrimination Economists typically define labor market discrimination as a situation in which two equally qualified, equally productive individuals are paid differently based on gender, race, ethnicity, etc., as defined by Lundberg and Startz (1983) and Becker (1971). Labor market discrimination exists when wages reflect factors other than employees’ labor market characteristics. Simply put, if a man and a woman with the same level of educational attainment, experience, union membership, and in the same occupation and industry are paid different wages, then discrimination is most likely the cause. There is ample evidence of labor market discrimination against women (see Bobbitt-Zeher 2011), including numerous documented court cases. For example, General Motors Corporation was sued for gender and racial discrimination in its employment practices and paid a settlement of $42.5 million to affected individuals (see Pear 1983). Bank of America also paid $39 million in a settlement to female brokers for gender wage discrimination (see Stempel 2013). Dollar General Company agreed to pay an $18.75 million settlement for a gender-based discrimination suit (see Leonhardt 2011). These are only a few examples of successful lawsuits related to gender-based labor market discrimination, and they are not representative of the numerous cases that do not lead to settlements. Experimental studies have found evidence of gender discrimination in hiring. In a study by Neumark (1996), men and women with very similar resumes applied for waiter positions at restaurants. In upscale restaurants, female applicants had a 40-percent lower probability of receiving a job offer than male applicants with similar resumes. Goldin and Rouse (2000) found that having a blind orchestra audition increased a female musician’s chance of success by 14.8 percent in the final round. Kennelly (1999) found many employers associate female employees with motherhood, even without knowing their family status, and assume this makes them more likely to be tardy and absent. These assumptions may lead to hiring decisions that favor men. Labor market discrimination is not limited to the hiring process but also extends to workplace promotions (see DeVaro, Ghosh, and Zoghi 2007). Olson and Becker (1983) found that women are held to higher standards than men and, therefore, receive fewer promotions than men

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with equal abilities. Blau and DeVaro (2007) also found that women face lower probabilities of getting promoted than men.

Measuring the Extent of Labor Market Discrimination Researchers have attempted to distinguish between the explained and the unexplained portions of the gender wage gap (e.g. see Fortin, Lemieux, and Firpo 2010). The explained portion is the part attributed to differences in labor market characteristics thought to influence productivity, such as educational attainment, labor market experience, union membership, and choice of industry and occupation (i.e., qualifications). The unexplained portion is that which cannot be explained by these characteristics. It is commonly recognized as labor market discrimination. A popular method to split the gender wage gap into these two components is the BlinderOaxaca decomposition method (Oaxaca 1973; Blinder 1973). The model is specified as seen below (see Jann 2007): R = E (YM) – E (YW)

(1)

Where E (YM) = expected (average) wage of men E (YW) = expected (average) wage of women The linear model specification is Y߬ = X൏IJȕIJ + ࣅIJ, E (ࣅIJ) = 0, IJ ࣅ {M, W}

(2)

X (includes variables such as educational attainment, labor market experience, union membership, and choice of industry and occupation) is a vector containing the predictors of wages and a constant. ȕ contains the slope parameters and the intercept, and ࣅ is the error term. Where: E(Y߬) = E (X൏IJȕIJ + ࣅIJ )

(3)

= E (X൏IJȕIJ) + E(ࣅIJ)

(4)

= E (X߬ሻ൏ȕIJ

(5)

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Assuming E(ȕ߬) = ȕ߬ and E (ࣅIJ) = 0 Substituting equation (5) above into equation (1) and rearranging the resulting equation gives: R = [E (XM) í E (XW)]൏ ȕW (ȕM – ȕW) (6)

+

E (XW)൏ (ȕM – ȕW) + [E (XM) - E(XW)]൏

From equation (6), the outcome difference can be separated into three parts: R=E+C+I

(7)

Where: E = [E (XM) í E (XW)]൏ ȕW XM = Men’s wage predictors (such as educational attainment, labor market experience, union membership, and choice of occupation and industry) XW = Women’s wage predictors ȕW = the slope for a given predictor variable for women, measuring the change in women’s wages resulting from of a unit change in the variable. Therefore, E = the difference in wages between men and women resulting from differences in labor market characteristics (explained portion). The wage difference resulting from differences in labor market characteristics is not considered discrimination because individuals are paid based on their productivity characteristics. The second part of equation (7) is: C = E (XW)൏ (ȕM – ȕW) It measures the differences in coefficients and intercepts between men and women. Coefficients are the slopes that estimate the rate of return to a given predictor variable. C constitutes wage differentials resulting from discrimination if men have higher returns (in terms of wages received) than women for equivalent labor market characteristics. The third part of equation (7) is: I = [E (XM) - E (XW)]൏ (ȕM – ȕW)

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It represents an interaction term indicating that both labor market characteristics and coefficients co-exist simultaneously between the groups. This part is influenced by discrimination because it contains (ȕM – ȕW), which measures differences in return to wage determinants (X) between men and women. Therefore, labor market discrimination is the combination of C and I. In sum, based on equation (7): R= Explained Portion (E) + Unexplained (Discrimination) Portion (C+I) The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method has been used extensively to understand the wage gap (e.g., Zajkowska 2013; Shatnawi, Oaxaca, and Ransom 2011; Horrace and Oaxaca 2001; see Kunze 2006). It entails treating women as men (or vice versa) by ascribing men’s labor market characteristics to women, and thus estimates women’s wages as if they possess men’s labor market characteristics. Any wage gap not explained by these characteristics is concluded to reflect labor market discrimination.

The Mining Industry’s Role in the Gender Wage Gap and Labor Market Discrimination In states like Wyoming, high gender wage gaps and low gender wage ratios have often been explained with their economy (see AAUW 2014). Because a high percentage of the workforce is in the mining industry, the dominant role of the energy sector has been blamed for Wyoming’s second-largest gender wage gap (Brown 2015; Barron 2012; Zhorov 2012). Ugwuanyi (2015) uses the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition method to determine how mining1 contributes to the gender wage gap in three states heavily dependent on this industry—Wyoming, North Dakota, and Texas. Wyoming and North Dakota have a large percentage of their labor force in the mining and logging industry2 (over 6.6. percent as of July 20153). Texas presents an interesting case because it also has a large mining industry but a smaller percentage of all workers in it (2.3 percent in July 20153), and thus may have a more diverse economy.

 1

According to the U.S. Energy and Information Administration, the mining industry consists of oil and gas extraction, quarrying, and mining of coal. 2 The Mining and Logging industry was used since this is the level of aggregation for employment data available at: http://www.bls.gov/eag/home.htm. 3 Information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics available at: http://www.bls.gov/eag/home.htm

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As shown in Table 1, in Wyoming women’s earnings average only 69 percent of men’s. North Dakota’s female workers do not fare much better, with women earning 70 percent of men’s wages on average. Texas has a much narrower gender wage gap, with women earning 79 cents per dollar earned by men. Since Wyoming and North Dakota have economies strongly tied to the mining industry, while Texas has a more diverse economic base, the gender wage ratios of the three states may offer justifiable evidence that a state’s heavy reliance on the mining industry is the main factor behind a large gender wage gap. Ugwuanyi (2015) analyzes data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) from 2009 to 2013 for full-time workers in all industries, the mining industry only, and all other industries to determine how the mining industry is tied to the gender wage gap and labor discrimination in Wyoming, North Dakota, and Texas. The natural log of weekly wages4 is used as the measure of earnings to minimize error in wages reported (Peterson and Morgan 1995), and years of education is used as a measure of educational attainment. Because labor market experience is not directly available from the CPS data, the potential experience of workers was estimated by subtracting years of education plus six from an individual’s reported age (that is, age minus years of education minus six). This estimation of experience is commonly used in the literature (e.g. Oaxaca 1973; O'Neill and Polachek 1993; Vecchio et al. 2013), and has not been found to lead to significantly different decomposition results compared to the use of actual work experience (Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebmer 2005). Union membership, industry, and occupation were also included. Race and ethnicity have also been shown to influence wages (see Oaxaca and Ransom 1999). Although they are not labor market characteristics and their influence is also a part of labor market discrimination (e.g., Cotton 1988; Broyles and Fenner 2010), they are included in this study to determine the extent of gender discrimination in the labor market. Ugwuanyi (2015) found that women in Wyoming have higher levels of educational attainment but fewer years of potential experience and a lower percentage of union membership. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, the gender wage gap for all industries in Wyoming from 20092013 was $12,929 for year-round workers. Thus, women working fulltime in Wyoming earned $12,929 less than men working full-time, on average. Based on the results presented in Table 6, women have lower levels of labor market characteristics than men, and 20.6 percent of the

 4

Data of weekly wages in main job were used

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gender wage gap can be explained by this difference (Explained). On the other hand, 70.6 percent of the gender wage gap is due to women being paid less for the same level of labor market characteristics as men (Coefficients). Also, 8.8 percent of the wage gap is due to the interaction between the level of labor market characteristics and the returns to that endowment (Interaction). In total, 79.4 of the gender wage gap for all industries in Wyoming is unexplained; meaning that women are losing $10,267 a year from discrimination. Women’s wages in all industries in Wyoming average $31,928 per year; therefore without discrimination, women’s wages would average over 32 percent more per year. Table 6: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Results for Wyoming Gender Wage Gap

All Industries1 Mining Only

2

$12,929 17,452

Explained (%)

20.6*** 52.9

***

Coefficients (%)

70.6*** 102.9

***

***

Interaction (%)

Unexplained (%)

8.8***

79.4

-47.1***

47.1

*

All other Industries 10,635 6.89 82.8 10.3 93.1 Besides Mining3 * Significant at Į=.1, **significant at Į=.05, ***significant at Į=.01 1 Number of Observations = 12,134, 2Number of Observations = 2,185, 3Number of Observations = 9,949

The gender wage gap for workers in the mining industry is much higher than for all industries, with women making an average of $17,452 less a year than men. This result seems to justify the claim that the mining industry is one of the main drivers of the gender wage gap in miningheavy states. The main cause of the gender wage gap in mining is women having lower levels of labor market characteristics than men. Interestingly, within the mining industry, only 47.1 percent of the gender wage gap is due to discrimination, whereas over 79 percent of the gender wage gap is due to discrimination in all industries and over 93 percent of the gap reflects discrimination in all industries other than mining5 (Table 6). These results indicate that discrimination plays a large role in the gender wage gap in Wyoming. In other words, the mining industry works to reduce the role of discrimination against women.

 5

Since the unexplained portion of the wage gap is insignificant, then this portion is not significantly different than zero. This may indicate that none of the gender wage gap is explained and thus all is unexplained (i.e., due to discrimination)

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Similar results emerged for North Dakota (Ugwuanyi 2015), where women have higher educational attainment and also slightly more potential experience than men. As shown in Table 7, the gender wage gap is larger in the mining industry than in all industries in North Dakota— $15,319 and $10,631, respectively. Yet, the gap due to discrimination is larger in all industries than in the mining industry. Women in all industries have higher levels of labor market characteristics than men and, therefore, should earn more. Because women should earn more than men but are, in fact, paid less, -17.9 percent of the gender wage gap is explained by the labor market characteristics held by women. Therefore, discrimination explains the entire wage gap plus the amount that women should earn above male wages. Discrimination, thus, explains 117.9 percent of the gender wage gap for all industries. Women in North Dakota should earn over $1,900 more than men per year, but because of discrimination earn $12,534 less a year than men with the same level of qualifications. With average wages of $32,900 a year, women in North Dakota would see a 38 percent increase in wages if discrimination were eliminated. Table 7: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Results for North Dakota

All Industries1

Gender Wage Gap

Explained (%)

Coeffi cients (%)

Intera ction (%)

Unexplained (%)

$10,631

-17.9***

110.7*

7.2***

117.9

-10.2

87.5

**

Mining Only2

15,319

12.7

95.9** *

All other Industries 10,410 -18.5*** 111.1* 7.4*** 118.5 3 ** Besides Mining * Significant at Į=.1, **significant at Į=.05, ***significant at Į=.01 1 Number of Observations = 8,067, 2Number of Observations = 273, 3Number of Observations = 7,794

The interaction term for the mining industry is not significantly different than zero. Thus, discrimination explains about 87.5 percent of the gender wage gap in the mining industry. In all other industries, discrimination accounts for 118.5 percent of the gender gap, meaning women should earn $1,925 more per year than men, but are, in fact, paid $10,410 less. Discrimination leads to women losing $12,225 a year in all industries besides mining in North Dakota. These similarities between Wyoming and North Dakota suggests that although the mining industry may be perpetuating the gender wage gap in

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these states, the percentage due to discrimination is, in fact, lessened by the strong influence of this industry. In Texas, women working full time have more education and similar potential experience; however, they are less likely than men to be union members. Similar to Wyoming and North Dakota, in Texas, the gender wage gap is the largest in the mining industry (Table 8). Yet, the results of the decomposition suggest Texas has very different discrimination results. In the absence of discrimination, Texan women’s average earnings in mining of $32,250 a year would increase by over 43 percent, which is noticeably larger than in either Wyoming or North Dakota. Table 8: Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Results for Texas Gender Wage Gap

Explain ed (%)

All Industries1

$8,400

-10.4

Coeffic ients (%) 94.5***

Mining Only2

8,603

-126.7

166.7**

Intera ction (%) 15.9***

Unexplai ned (%)

60.0

226.7

110.4

*

All other Industries 7,536 -9.5* 95.2*** 14.3*** 109.5 3 Besides Mining * Significant at Į=.1, **significant at Į=.05, ***significant at Į=.01 1 Number of Observations = 33,483, 2Number of Observations = 990, 3Number of Observations = 32,493

As seen in Table 8, the mining industry has the highest discrimination compared to the rest of the industries in Texas. Although the interaction term for the mining industry is insignificant, the significance of the coefficient terms indicates that at least 166.7 percent of the gender wage gap in mining is due to discrimination against women. This result suggests that women have higher levels of labor market characteristics than men, and based on these characteristics should earn $5,738.20 more per year, but instead, earn $8,603 less. In total, women in the mining industry in Texas lose over $14,0006 a year due to discrimination. Women in all other industries also have higher levels of labor market characteristics than men and, therefore, should be paid more but earn less. However, the amount of discrimination is lower than in the mining industry. Women in all other industries should be paid $715 more annually

 6

This amount could be significantly higher with more observations. If the interaction term where significant, then women would lose over $19,500 a year from discrimination.

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than men but lose a total of $8,252 a year from discrimination. Although this is a significant amount of earnings lost from discrimination in all other industries, it is sufficiently smaller than the over $14,000 lost by women in the mining industry due to discrimination. The findings have many economic and policy implications. Focusing solely on the gender wage gap for Wyoming and North Dakota would indicate that the dominance of the mining industry in is indeed a major cause of it. The lower gender wage gap in Texas might indicate that even in states with a large mining industry, the existence of a more diverse economy would lower the gender wage gap. A deeper look into the decomposition results indicates, however, that this is not as simple when considering the contribution of discrimination in explaining the gender wage gap. In both Wyoming and North Dakota, although the mining industry may increase the gender wage gap, it works to decrease the percentage attributed to discrimination against women in all industries. On the other hand, in Texas (which has a smaller gender wage gap), the mining industry actually increases the level of discrimination against women in all industries. It is interesting to note that although Wyoming has the largest gender wage gap among the three states, it also has the lowest amount of discrimination. The social implications suggest that combating the gender wage gap should focus on eliminating labor market discrimination against women. In the presence of discrimination, policies aiming to increase women’s labor market qualifications will have little influence on women’s earnings. For example, in North Dakota and Texas, women have higher levels of labor market characteristics (qualifications), but due to discrimination are still paid less than men. The findings also suggest that a policy focusing on the mining industry to combat the gender wage gap may be somewhat successful, but will not be able to eliminate the gender wage gap due to the dominance of discrimination in other industries. In addition, the existence of a more diverse economy may also not be enough to combat the gender wage gap. The pervasive existence of discrimination suggests that a successful policy must address the entire economy and not focus solely on the mining industry.

Conclusion Although women have steadily increased their participation in the labor market, they still continue to earn less than men. Economists believe such a gap should be due to differences in educational attainment, experience, union membership, and choice of occupation and industry. If,

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after controlling for these characteristics, a portion of the gap is not explained, it is considered labor market discrimination. The use of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method shows that the mining industry does increase the overall wage gap for mining-heavy states, but also acts to reduce the prevalence of labor market discrimination against women in economies highly dependent on mining. Further, a more diverse economy, such as in Texas, does not mean lesser prevalence of gender discrimination. These results suggest gender-equity policies need to address discrimination against women in all industries rather than focusing only on the mining industry.

Bibliography AAUW.2014. “Hey! Why Are Women Paid Less than Men Are in My State?” March 26. http://www.aauw.org/2014/03/26/state-by-state-paygap/. Barron, Joan. 2012. “Report: Wyoming has the Nation's Largest Gender Wage Gap.” Star Tribune, April 16. http://trib.com/news/state-andregional/report-wyoming-has-nation-s-largest-gender-wagegap/article_833dc410-96f8-5102-b2c4-3f11c137e424.html Becker, Gary S. 1971. “The Economics of Discrimination, 2nd Edition.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Blanchflower, David G., and Alex Bryson. 2003. “What Effect Do Unions Have on Wages Now and Would ‘What do Unions Do’ be Surprised?.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 9973. Blau, Francine D., Marianne A. Ferber, and Anne E. Winkler. 2014. “The Economics of Women, Men, and Work; 7th Edition.” Pearson Education, Inc. Boston. Blau, Francine D., and Jed DeVaro. 2007. “New Evidence on Gender Differences in Promotion Rates: An Empirical Analysis of a Sample of New Hires.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 12321. Blinder, Alan S. 1973. “Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates.” Journal of Human Resources 8(4): 436-455. Blundell, Richard, Lorraine Dearden, Costas Meghir, and Barbara Sianesi. 1999. “Human Capital Investment: The Returns from Education and Training to the Individual, the Firm, and the Economy.” Fiscal Studies 20(1): 1-23. Bobbitt-Zeher, Donna. 2011. “Gender Discrimination at Work: Connecting Gender Stereotypes, Institutional Policies, and Gender Composition of Workplace.” Gender & Society 25(6): 764-786.

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Brown, Trevor. 2015. “Is the Energy Industry Fueling Wyoming's Wage Gap?” Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 19. http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2015/03/19/news/19local_0319-15.txt#.VoV4Knhbu-Q Broyles, Phillip, and Weston Fenner. 2010. “Race, Human Capital, and Wage Discrimination in STEM Professions in the United States.” International Journal of Sociology 30(5/6): 251-266. Cotton, Jeremiah. 1988. “On the Decomposition of Wage Differentials.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 70(2): 236-243. DeVaro, Jed, Suman Ghosh, and Cindy Zoghi. 2012. “Job Characteristics and Labor Market Discrimination in Promotions: New Theory and Empirical Evidence.” Social Science Research Network: Working Paper. Fortin, Nicole, Thomas Lemieux, and Sergio Firpo. 2010. “Decomposition Methods in Economics.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16045. Goldin, Claudia, and Cecilia Rouse. 2000. “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of Blind Auditions on Female Musicians.” American Economic Review 90(4): 715-741. Hellerstein, Judith K., David Neumark, and Kenneth R. Troske. 1999. “Wages, Productivity, and Worker Characteristics: Evidence from Plant-Level Production Functions and Wage Equations.” Journal of Labor Economics 17: 409–46. Horrace, William C., and Ronald L. Oaxaca. 2001. “Inter-Industry Wage Differentials and the Gender Wage Gap: An Identification Problem.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 54(3): 611-618. Jann, Ben. 2008. “A Stata Implementation of the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition.” The Stata Journal 8(4): 453-479. Kennelly, Ivy. 1999. “That Single-Mother Element: How White Employers Typify Black Women.” Gender & Society 13(2): 168-192. Kunze, Astrid. 2006. “Gender Wage Gap Studies: Consistency and Decomposition.” Empirical Economics 35(1): 63-76. Leonhardt, Megan. 2011. “Dollar General to Pay $19 Million to End Gender Bias Action.” Law 360, October 28. http://www.law360.com/articles/281538/dollar-general-to-pay-19m-toend-gender-bias-action Lundberg, Shelly L., and Richard Startz. 1983. “Private Discrimination and Social Intervention in Competitive Labor Market.” The American Economic Review, 73(3): 340-347.

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Medoff, James L., and Katharine G. Abraham. 1980. “Experience, Performance, and Earning.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 95: 703736. Mincer, Jacob. 1974.“Schooling, Experience, and Earning.” Columbia University Press: New York. Neumark, David with the assistance of Roy J. Bank, and Kyle D. Van Nort. 1996. “Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 111(3): 915-942. Oaxaca, Ronald L., and Michael. R. Ransom. 1999. “Identification in Detailed Wage Decomposition.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 81(1): 154-157. —. 1994. “On Discrimination and the Decomposition of Wage Differentials.” Journal of Econometrics 61(1): 5-21. Oaxaca, Ronald L. 1973 “Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Market.” International Economic Review 14(3): 693-709. Olson, Craig, and Gary S. Becker. 1983. “Sex Discrimination in the Promotion Process.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 36(4): 624-641. O'Neill, June, and Solomon Polachek. 1993. “Why the Gender Gap in Wages Narrowed in the 1980s.” Journal of Labor Economics 11(1): 205-228. Pear, Robert. 1983. “GM Agrees to Pay $42 Million to End Case on Bias.” The New York Times, October 19. http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/19/us/gm-agrees-to-pay-42-millionto-end-case-on-job-bias.html Peterson, Trond, and Laurie A. Morgan. 1995. “Separate and Unequal: Occupational-Establishment Sex Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap.” American Journal of Sociology 101(2): 329-365. Schmitt, John. 2008. “The Union Advantage for Low-Wage Workers.” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May. Shatnawi, Dina, Ronald Oaxaca, and Michael Ransom. 2011. “Race, Gender, Ethnicity, College Choice and the Labor Market.” American Economic Review 101(1): 588-592. Stempel, Johnathon. 2013. “Bank of America to Pay $2.18 Million in Racial Discrimination Case.” Huffington Post, September 23. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/bank-of-america-racialdiscrimination_n_3977581.html Ugwuanyi, Blessing. 2015. “Explaining the Gender Wage Gap: The Role of the Mining Industry.” Master’s Thesis. ProQuest (Forthcoming). Vecchio, Nerina, Paul A. Scuffham, Michael F. Hilton, and Harvey A. Whiteford. 2013. “Difference in Wage Rates for Males and Females in

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the Health Sector: A Consideration of Unpaid Overtime to Decompose the Gender Wage Gap.” Human Resources for Health 11(9). Weichselbaumer, Doris, and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer. 2005. “A MetaAnalysis of the International Gender Wage Gap.” Journal of Economic Survey, 19(3): 479-511. Zajkowska, Olga. 2013. “Gender Gap in Poland - Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition.” Quantitative Methods in Economics, 14(2): 272-278. Zhorov, Iriana. 2012. “Gender Wage Gap Persists in Wyoming.” Wyoming Public Media, August 31. http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/gender-wage-gap-persistswyoming.

CHAPTER TEN TAKING TIME “OFF”: GENDER AND RACE AS FACTORS AFFECTING YOUNG ADULTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD WORKERS REQUESTING PARENTAL LEAVE KAYLA R. NALAN-SHEFFIELD, S. JEAN CARAWAY, HALEY N. SCHWENK, RENATA J. SURETTE, AND JUSTIN FANG UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

Despite increasing attention to the difficulties facing U.S. parents who return to work after having a child and despite attempts to broaden the appeal of parental leave (e.g., Family Medical Leave Act, 1993; Landeau, 2010), traditional biases in the workplace persist. These biases may lead women and members of racial minorities to have a different experience with leave policies and returning to work in comparison to white men (Armenia & Gerstel, 2005). The traditional ideal worker model, as detailed by Greenberg, Ladge, and Clair (2009), expects employees to work full time and be committed to their work above and beyond all else. Given these attitudes, workers who seek access to leave policies because they are expecting children (through pregnancy or adoption) may face unintended negative consequences in promotion eligibility and workplace support. The time when teenagers transition into adulthood offers a unique opportunity to study the formation of perceptions regarding career and family choices, especially since these individuals have or will soon enter the workforce with expectations about their rights as workers. Young adults in the U.S. often have to learn to reconcile the expectations of their employers and families. To investigate what factors affect this process, this study sought to understand college students’ perceptions of workers who request parental leave through an online experiment using brief

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narratives about fictional workers. To contextualize the investigation, this chapter begins by reviewing the literature on gender discrimination in the workplace, gender stereotypes in child rearing and nurturing at work, and race discrimination at work. The study’s methodology is outlined next, followed by a presentation of results and a discussion of the findings.

Literature Review While scholarship on how parental leave affects workers’ organizational status is relatively limited, much literature exists about workplace discrimination on the basis of gender and race. The following subsections outline several subfields in which this study is grounded.

Gender Stereotypes of Child Rearing and Work Despite the increasingly egalitarian attitudes toward gender roles in the U.S. (Cotter, Hermensen, & Vanneman, 2011), women still tend to contribute more than their fair share of childcare duties at home (Hook, 2010). Studies indicate developed countries in the West have made large improvements in the last 50 years toward egalitarian household roles for working heterosexual couples, with spouses increasingly sharing household duties, such as cleaning, laundry, and cooking (Russell, 2011). Despite these changes, gender roles in parenting still exist, with women (in general) being more often responsible for childcare even when both parents work outside the home (Hook, 2010). Moreover, women may be more apt to leave work to tend to young children, while fathers are more likely to spend longer hours at work outside the home (Voicu, Voicu, & Strapcova, 2009). Perhaps as a result of these traditional parental roles, women face many stereotypes at work. Role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) posits that female leaders in the workplace tend to experience less favorable attitudes from others regarding their leadership skills than do male leaders. Subsequently, women face more difficulty than men in obtaining leadership roles; they are also often held to higher standards of competence when in such roles (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Further, a meta-analysis by Koch, D’Mello, and Sackett (2015) shows that in male-dominated work environments (where women make up less than 35% of the workforce), females experience greater discrimination in hiring, compensation, and promotion. In these environments, men also tend to adhere to more stringent gender roles (i.e., support of traditional divisions of labor, including males as leaders in the workforce). This

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pattern is not seen in workplaces where women make up more than 65% of the workforce (Koch et al., 2015). Male-dominated work environments tend to have higher salaries and prestige; yet, this is precisely where women tend to face the most discrimination (Koch et al., 2015; Roth, 2009). Koch and colleagues (2015) further indicate that workplace stereotypes vary depending on the sex distribution within a particular career field. In male-dominated work environments, men are favored in competence evaluations and in hiring and salary decisions, whereas in integrated jobs (with roughly equivalent numbers of male and female workers), the male bias is evident in competence evaluations and promotion decisions, but not in the realm of hiring, salaries, or performance evaluations. In femaledominated workplaces, women tend to be favored in hiring, job performance ratings, and competence evaluations (Koch et al., 2015). Organizational citizenship behavior has also been linked to gender. For example, in a study exploring communal workplace behaviors, Heilman and Chen (2005) found work-related altruism (i.e., helping others at work) may not be as optional for women as it is for men. This kind of behavior has been recognized as increasing the functioning of organizations, but it is often not compensated. Men who perform communal behaviors at work experience a boost in performance evaluations, while women who do not perform these tasks are evaluated more poorly (Heilman & Chen, 2005).

Gender Discrimination and Parental Leave Much like in regard to evaluation and compensation, men and women encounter differing responses when requesting parental leave and flexible schedules to fulfill familial responsibilities (Williams, 1999). Employers often mistreat pregnant women by denying them promotions and paid leave, giving them poor performance reviews, implicitly permitting derogatory comments about their physical appearance, and pressuring them to resign (Davis, Neathey, Regan, & Willison, 2005; McDonald, Dear, & Backstrom, 2008). Workplace discrimination can also affect men if they ask for parental leave. Studies suggest such men are more likely to be perceived as selfish and having low organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., not exceeding the expectations of mandatory job responsibilities). This perception could lead to lower performance ratings (MacKenzie, Podsakoff, & Fetter, 1991). This reflects the traditional view of men as “breadwinners” who are less involved in child rearing than women (Berry & Rao, 1997; Russo, 1976). Thus, men who request family leave are at risk for low rewards

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(e.g., promotions and pay raises) and high penalties (e.g., loss of respect or job). Further, men who request leave are more likely to be feminized for “acting like a woman,” contributing to the perception that they are less hardworking, weaker, and less dominant than men who do not request leave (Heilman & Wallen, 2010; Rudman & Mescher, 2013). Based on this literature, we posed the following first set of hypotheses for this study: H1a: Men requesting parental leave will be perceived as showing less workplace devotion than women requesting parental leave. H1b: Men requesting parental leave will be perceived as having more feminine qualities (such as being more communal, weak, and more likely to help others at work) than women requesting parental leave. H1c: Women requesting parental leave will be perceived as more dominant than men requesting parental leave. H1d: All employees requesting parental leave, regardless of gender, will be less likely to be recommended for promotions and other workplace rewards.

Racial Discrimination and Work Gender is not the only factor in workplace discrimination. Racial discrimination is also evident in employment rates and wage disparity. Bertran and Mullatinathan (2004) showed that when hiring managers are considering a resumé, having a “White” name equals roughly eight more years of job experience in a given field. Further, hiring managers tend to see African-American males as lacking in “soft” skills, such as motivation and ability to interact with colleagues and customers in a professional way (Moss & Tilly, 1996, 2001). Little wonder that African Americans are currently twice more likely than their Caucasian counterparts in the U.S. labor force to be unemployed (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). Regardless of gender, African Americans and Hispanics also make less money than Caucasians and Asian Americans (Ashton, 2014). This pattern has endured in spite of the implementation of affirmative action programs and other legislation (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004; Leonard, 1990). African-American men face an especially high risk for wage disparity. While U.S. men, overall, make more than women, African-American men make less than Asian-American women (Ashton, 2014). In the context of parental leave, African-American men are more likely to be severely penalized, such as demoted or terminated, and are seen as poor workers when they request family leave (Rudman & Mescher, 2013). While

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legislation has targeted the gap between racially privileged and minority employees (e.g., Affirmative Action, 2000), it is clear that inequality remains pervasive in U.S. society. Based on the literature on racial discrimination in the workplace, the following second set of hypotheses emerged: H2a: African-American workers requesting parental leave, regardless of gender, will be perceived to be less devoted to their work than Caucasian employees requesting leave. H2b: African-American workers requesting parental leave, regardless of gender, will be perceived as more likely to be associated with feminine characteristics than Caucasian employees requesting leave. H2c: African-American workers requesting parental leave, regardless of gender, will be less likely to be recommended for workplace rewards and more likely to be recommended for workplace punishments than Caucasian workers requesting leave. H2d: African-American men requesting leave will be perceived to have lower workplace devotion than African-American women requesting leave. H2e: African-American men requesting leave will be more likely to be recommended for work punishments and less likely to be recommended for workplace rewards than African-American women requesting leave.

Method This study sought to evaluate college students’ attitudes toward employees who request parental leave. The stimuli included narratives about fictional workers, whose gender and race were manipulated, serving as independent variables. The dependent variables included attitudes toward workers who request parental leave—specifically, perceptions of being a poor worker (e.g., higher likelihood of missing work), femininity stigma (i.e., acting like a woman), and professional advancement. Data were collected through an online experiment with a 2 (gender) x 2 (race) between-subject design. The stimuli and measures were presented via the research website PsychData.com. The university’s Institutional Review Board approved the study.

Participants The participants were 331 college students (72.2% female, 27.8% male) enrolled in psychology courses at a mid-sized university in the U.S.

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Midwest, who were recruited through the university’s SONA system and received extra credit based on the amount of time spent participating. After reading a brief description of the study and providing informed consent, they completed a 7-item demographic questionnaire asking about their age, gender, ethnicity, race, marital status, educational standing, and program of study. The mean age was 19.72 (SD = 2.99). Most participants were single (N = 235; 71.0%), in their first year in college (N = 166; 50.2%), and Caucasian (N = 301; 90.9%). Other races included American Indian (N = 10; 3.0%), Asian (N = 9; 2.7%), Black/African American (N = 8; 2.4%), and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (N = 1; 0.3%). Participants’ college majors included nursing/pre-nursing (N = 71; 21.5%), biology, sciences, or health fields (N = 70; 21.1%), and psychology/social sciences (N = 49; 14.8%).

Stimuli and Experimental Manipulation Participants were assigned to read one of four vignettes. The vignettes depicted a conversation between an employee and a human resource manager. All vignettes contained identical text, with the exception of the gender (male or female) and race (African American or Caucasian) of the employee. The manipulation was a modification of that used by Rudman and Mescher (2013), who were explicit about the race of the worker in their stimuli, which were transcriptions of interviews between an HR manager and a worker, and referenced membership in race-specific organizations, such as the Black History Association. By contrast, the current study sought to examine subtle forms of discrimination by using only the workers’ names and pronouns to imply their gender and race. The names Jacob (Caucasian male) and Leigh (Caucasian female) were chosen based on previous research (Rudman & Mescher, 2013), and Jadeveon (African-American male) and Latisha (African-American female) were chosen based on popularity. The last name was Williams in all vignettes. The text of the vignette follows: Jadeveon Williams works for a pharmaceutical company and is the project manager for a product that is set to launch in three months. However, he is expecting his first child within the next few weeks. Jadeveon met with the HR manager of his company and requested a 12-week intermittent paternity leave to care for his newborn child. He explained that he would like to be present for his child's doctor's appointments and spend as much time with his child as he could.

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Manipulation check. To ensure the manipulation was effective, participants completed a questionnaire after reading the vignette, asking them to identify the employee’s race (African American, Caucasian/White, or other). If participants chose “other,” they were asked to specify.

Dependent Variables The dependent variables were attitudes toward the workers requesting leave. They were operationalized through a combination of measures—the same as utilized by Rudman and Mescher (2013). They are described in the following subsections. Workplace behavior and devotion. The Organization Citizen Behaviors Scale (OCBS; Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983) measures altruism and organizational compliance in the workplace. Participants were asked on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much so) to rate how likely the employee mentioned in the vignette was to engage in specific workplace behaviors. These behaviors included “orienting new employees, even though it is not required” and “taking unnecessary time off work.” For example, participants in the condition receiving the vignette above were asked: “How likely is Jadeveon to take unnecessary time off work?” In accord with Rudman and Mescher’s (2013) work, participants also answered four questions related to workplace devotion and commitment. Specifically, they rated on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much so) how likely the worker was to be committed to his or her career/organization, as well as how likely s/he was to be an ideal worker and be respected by peers (Blair-Loy, 2004). Scores were averaged for each inventory. Femininity stigma. Based on previous literature (Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, 2010), participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much so) the degree to which they perceived the workers as having traditional feminine characteristics (i.e., weak, naïve, insecure, emotional) and communal traits (i.e., warm, supportive, humble, good listener), or traditional masculine characteristics of being agentic (i.e., intelligent, competitive, confident, a strong leader) and dominant (i.e., dominant, aggressive, intimidating, arrogant). For the sake of consistency with the use of these measures in previous literature, scores for each index were summed. Workplace consequences. Participants were asked to make recommendations for the employees in the vignettes (Allen & Russell, 1999; Rudman & Mescher, 2013) by rating on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much so) the degree to which they believed the employee was

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eligible to receive four rewards (recommendation for leadership role; promotion; executive training; a high-profile project) and five punishments (salary reduction; demotion; termination in case of company downsizing; decreased responsibilities; encouragement to seek alternative employment). Scores were averaged for each index.

Results Data Cleaning and Reduction Data were cleaned, and respective items were reverse-coded. Twelve participants were excluded because 85% or more of their responses were missing (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2012). The results indicated that 95 participants (28.7%) had been randomly assigned to the African American/male condition, 73 (22.1%) to the African American/ female condition, 77 (23.3%) to the Caucasian/male condition, and 86 (26.0%) to the Caucasian/female condition. Manipulation check results indicated the race manipulation was unsuccessful because many participants could not differentiate the character’s race based on the first name. Therefore, the four groups were collapsed into two groups based only on gender. Of all participants with valid data, 172 (52.0%) were assigned to read a vignette about a male worker and 159 (48.0%) about a female worker. There was no manipulation check for gender because the vignettes included gender pronouns.

Workplace Behavior and Devotion A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to determine whether perceptions of workplace behavior and devotion, employees’ masculine/feminine traits, and workplace consequences differed based on the gender of the employee requesting parental leave. No statistically significant difference emerged with regard to workplace behavior measured via the OCBS between attitudes toward male (M = 6.26; SD = 1.41) and female (M = 6.07; SD = 1.37) employees. Male and female employees requesting parental leave were perceived as equally likely to engage in prosocial, altruistic behaviors within the workplace, F = 2.31, df (1), p = .13. There was also no statistically significant difference between perceptions of female (M = 6.98; SD = 1.97) and male (M = 7.17; SD = 2.04) employees’ devotion to work, F = 0.76, df (1), p = .38. Thus, H1a was not supported.

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Femininity Stigma The MANOVA results suggested that when compared to women (M = 4.42; SD = 0.96), men (M = 4.90; SD = 0.86) requesting parental leave were perceived to have more feminine qualities, including being regarded as communal, F = 12.61, df (1), p < .001. However, there was no statistically significant difference between perceptions of male (M = 3.52; SD = 1.65) and female (M = 3.27; SD = 1.70) employees as weak, F = 5.10, df (1), p = .18. Thus, H1b was partially supported. There was no statistically significant difference in overall perception of agentic qualities possessed by men (M = 6.49; SD = 1.60) and women (M = 6.54; SD = 1.88), F = 0.06, df (1), p = .80. However, women (M = 4.27; SD = 1.65) requesting parental leave were perceived as more dominant than men (M = 3.85; SD = 1.46), F = 6.14, df (1), p = .01. Thus, H1c was supported.

Workplace Consequences Results suggest there was no statistically significant difference in perceptions of the likelihood of male (M = 6.51; SD = 2.08) and female (M = 6.32; SD = 2.04) employees to be recommended for workplace rewards, F = 2.87, df (1), p = .41. No significant difference emerged for the perceived likelihood of workplace punishments for women (M = 3.37; SD = 1.82) and men (M = 3.41; SD = 1.91), F = 0.17, df (1), p = .83. Thus, H1d was not supported.

Discussion This study aimed to investigate young adults’ attitudes toward workers requesting parental leave across gender and race. Contrary to what the earlier literature suggests, there were no differences by the gender of the workers requesting leave as to whether they (a) deserved extra rewards or punishments and (b) were likely to engage in prosocial behaviors in the workplace. The latter contradicts literature on gender stereotypes viewing women as more communally oriented and thus more likely to engage in workplace altruism (Eagly & Steffen, 1986). One possible explanation may be reflective of the data collection site, a small town surrounded by rural areas, where both men and women have been found to engage in more altruistic workplace behaviors than residents of urban areas (Smith, Orga, & Near, 1993). Alternatively, the present study may be a marker of emerging attitudes that increasingly favor egalitarian gender roles in the

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workplace and also reflect the limited experience college students have as being part of the gendered U.S. workforce. The lack of a statistically significant difference by gender in employees’ perceived devotion to work is in line with previous findings showing that both men and women requesting family leave are seen as less devoted to their work (Mackenzie et al., 1991; Wayne & Cordeiro, 2003). However, the study did not include any conditions in which the employee in the vignette is not requesting any leave, so it is not possible to evaluate to what degree perceptions of work devotion are affected by parental leave request. The finding that men requesting leave were perceived as more communal and less dominant supports previous findings regarding the feminine stigma attached to men invested in child rearing and taking time off from work (Rudman & Mesher, 2013). However, male and female workers requesting a leave did not differ in perceptions of agentic qualities (i.e., competitive, achievement-oriented) or perceptions of weakness. The failure of the racial manipulation is inconsistent with previous research suggesting occupational decisions can be influenced by the racial background implied by first names (e.g., Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). One possibility is the generational and cultural shift in naming children, including an increase in gender-neutral and novel names (Grossman, 2015). The results suggest that, given the increase in the diversity of names that are in circulation, a name is no longer sufficient to label a person as being a part of a racial group. Alternatively, it is possible the racial manipulation failed because college students in the predominantly Caucasian state where the study was conducted have had much less exposure to African-American names and the racial background attached to them than young adults in more diverse areas of the country. It is noteworthy that many participants responded to the manipulation check by writing that race should not matter or labeling the workers as simply human. These responses can be interpreted as reflecting a shift in perceptions about race.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research The failure of the racial manipulation was undoubtedly one of the limitations of this study, but it also represents an interesting venue for future research on college students’ “non-awareness” of race. Future research may want to make the race variable more salient in the study, perhaps by adding color photographs of the characters in the vignettes. Additionally, the sample was highly homogenous in demographic

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characteristic, which may compromise the generalizability of results. The between-subject design adds some power, but it does not allow for investigation of individual differences concerning attitudes based on gender and race. Future research should utilize a larger, more diverse participant sample. The use of only one vignette presents challenges related to singlemessage design, which is, however, acceptable when there is “a guarantee of rigorous, feature-by-feature matching to eliminate confounding” (Jackson, O'Keefe, Jacobs, & Brashers, 1989, p. 367). Because the vignettes were extremely brief and the only changes in each included the first name and corresponding pronoun, we can argue that such a guarantee indeed existed in our study and that there are no confounding variables. On the other hand, the brevity and the formal tone of the study’s stimuli present some concerns about generalizability. The vignettes we used bore a limited resemblance to so-called “naturally-occurring messages” (Jackson et al., 1989, p. 365), which tend to contain richer, more informal, and potentially lengthier narratives. Indeed, the studies on which ours was based employed such natural messages. For example, each participant in Rudman and Mescher’s (2013) study read a somewhat lengthy job interview transcript (with different conditions reflecting gender/race manipulation), and in the study by Moss-Racusin, Phelan, and Rudman (2010), each participant watched a 15-minute job interview, featuring either a male or female participant. Lengthier and more “natural” stimuli are, however, likely to introduce potential confounding variables necessitating multi-message design—as conducted, for example, by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2002), who sent four racially differentiated resumes of varying quality to each job ad in their study. Future research on race- or gender-related discrimination in the workplace should employ both more “natural” narratives (for generalizability’s sake) and multimessage designs (for purposes of reliability).

Conclusion As more women and racial minorities are entering the U.S. workforce, one may hope that employees will have fair and equal opportunities to meet the demands of work and family. The findings of this study, which suggest more egalitarian attitudes may be emerging, are encouraging. However, it is important to remember that attitudes do not necessarily translate into behaviors (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977). In spite of the federal mandates holding most employers to parental and medical leave standards, future research should continue to explore the elements of and the

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unavoidable changes in the complex attitudes toward men and women who request and use parental leave.

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Cabrera, S.F., Sauer, S.J., & Thomas-Hunt, M.C. (2009). The evolving manager stereotype: The effects of industry gender typing on performance expectations for leaders and their teams. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33, 419-428. doi: 10.1111/j.14716402.2009.01519.x Cotter, D., Hermsen, J. M., & Vanneman, R. (2011). The end of the gender revolution? Gender role attitudes from 1977 to 2008. American Journal of Sociology, 117(1), 259-289. doi: 10.1086/658853 Davis, S., Neathey, F., Regan, J. & Willison, (2005). Pregnancy discrimination at work: a qualitative study. Equal Opportunities Commission. Working Paper Series No 23. Retrieved from http://www.maternityaction.org.uk/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2013/09/eocpregnancydiscrimqualitativestudy.pdf Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review, 109(3), 573-598. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.109.3.573 Eagly, A.H., & Steffen, V.J. (1986). Gender stereotypes, occupational roles, and beliefs about part-time employees. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 10, 252-262. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1986.tb00751.x Eliezer, D., & Major, B. (2012). It’s not your fault: The social costs of claiming discrimination on behalf of someone else. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 15(4), 487-502. Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, 29 U. S. C. §§ 2601-2654 (2006). Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/ Greenberg, D., Ladge, J., & Clair, J. (2009). Negotiating pregnancy at work: Public and private conflicts. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2(1), 42-56. doi: 10.1111/j.17504716.2008.00027.x Heilman, M. E., & Chen, J. J. (2005). Same behavior, different consequences: Reactions to men’s and women’s altruistic citizenship behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(3), 431-441. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.90.3.431 Heilman, M. E., & Wallen, A. S. (2010). Wimpy and undeserving of respect: Penalties for men’s gender-inconsistent success. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(4), 664-667. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.01.008 Hook, J. L. (2010). Gender inequality in the welfare state: Sex segregation in housework, 1965-2003. American Journal of Sociology, 115(5), 1480-1523. doi: 10.1086/651384

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Jackson, S., O'Keefe, D. J., Jacobs, S., & Brashers, D. E. (1989). Messages as replications: Toward a message ̺ centered design strategy. Communications Monographs, 56(4), 364 384. Koch, A. J., D’Mello, S. D., & Sackett, P. R. (2015). A meta-analysis of gender stereotypes and bias in experimental simulations of employment decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(1), 128-161. doi: 10.1037/a0036734 Landau, E. (April 9, 2010). Breastfeeding rooms hidden in health care law. CNN. Retrieved from www.cnn.com. Leonard, J. S. (1990). The impact of affirmative action regulation and equal employment law on black employment. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4(4), 47-63. MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., & Fetter, R. (1991). Organizational citizenship behavior and objective productivity as determinants of managerial evaluations of salespersons' performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(1), 123-150. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(91)90037-T McDonald, P., Dear, K. & Backstrom, S. (2008) Expecting the worst: circumstances surrounding pregnancy discrimination at work and progress to formal redress. Industrial Relations Journal, 39(3), 229– 247. Moss, P., & Tilly, C. (1996). “Soft” skills and race: An investigation of black men’s employment problems. Work and Occupations, 23(3), 252-276. doi: 10.1177/0730888496023003002 —. (2001). Stories employers tell: Race, skill, and hiring in America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Moss-Racusin, C. A., Phelan, J. E., & Rudman, L. A. (2010). When men break the gender rules: Status incongruity and backlash toward modest men. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 11, 140-151. doi: 10.1037/a0018093 Roth, L. M. (2009). Leveling the playing field: Negotiating opportunities and recognition in gendered jobs. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2(1), 17-30. doi: 10.1111/j.17504716.2008.00025.x Rudman, L. A., & Mescher, K. (2013). Penalizing men who request a family leave: Is flexibility stigma a femininity stigma? Journal of Social Issues, 69(2), 322-340. doi: 10.1111/josi.12017 Rudman, L. A., Moss-Racusin, C. A., Phelan, J. E., & Nauts, S. (2012). Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice toward female leaders. Journal of

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III. GENDERED WORK IN LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE

CHAPTER ELEVEN WOMEN’S WORK: MOTHERHOOD AND THE MODERN WOMAN IN BARBARA KINGSOLVER KIERA BALL UNIVERSITY OF SIOUX FALLS

Feminism has been a movement focused not only on equality but also on freedom for women throughout much of the twentieth century. Feminism seeks freedom from patriarchal constraints that tell women (and men) that they have prescribed roles and that women’s primary role must be within the home, caring for children and the household. While feminism desires to free women from this limited scope of life, some feminist messages have been interpreted as suggesting that women should not be involved with child-bearing or child-rearing at all. In her iconic book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan paints a picture of motherhood and housewifely duties that is nothing short of drudgery, stating that, according to “…the mystique, the root of women’s troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination and nurturing maternal love” (Friedan 69). It is easy to interpret this sort of rhetoric as an implication that women, then, ought not to be mothers or housewives, and instead should find fulfillment in themselves, and their capabilities outside the home. However, Stephanie Coontz argues, in her book Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s that, “Contrary to many caricatures of the work, The Feminine Mystique never urged women to leave their families, or even pursue full-time careers” (Coontz 32). Instead, Friedan contended for a balance of duties inside and outside the home, proposing plans for women’s education even after they were wives and mothers. However, her message has often been misinterpreted, as Ann Snitow calls The Feminine Mystique a “demon text…by which [she] means[s] books demonized, apologized for, endlessly quoted out of

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context, to prove that the feminism of the early seventies was, in Friedan’s words of recantation, ‘strangely blind.' [Friedan] excoriates her earlier self for thinking too much about ‘women alone, or women against men’, but not enough about ‘the family’” (Snitow 35). It is clear that Friedan herself sees that her message of autonomy for women can easily be misconstrued as a call for women to abandon their domestic lives in favor of the individuality that many of them lack when devoted only to the care of their husbands and children. Though this message of opposed identities may be liberating for some women, it has negated and challenged many others’ desires for motherhood by implying that traditional “women’s work” is somehow negative in itself, that we must not, as women, let ourselves long for or enjoy motherhood, lest we cease to be “modern women” and slip back into the traditional motherhood that Friedan so vividly describes as draining women of one’s sense of self. In a way, that message requires that we choose between motherhood and modernity; we can either be mothers, or we can enter the workforce and find fulfillment by engaging in tasks that have been typically assigned to men. However, this divide has been detrimental to many women, forcing them to choose one part of themselves over another, leading them to think that the gulf between the workplace and child-rearing is insurmountable. In recent decades, an idea much closer to Friedan’s intended message has emerged, and many scholars and authors are exploring the concept that women might find fulfillment in both identities. One such author is Barbara Kingsolver, who explores the work women do both as mothers and in the workplace in many of her novels, including The Bean Trees (1988), Animal Dreams (1990), and The Poisonwood Bible (1998). Kingsolver seems to suggest that these women’s work is to find a way to balance modernity and mothering. She sets her characters free to embrace both parts of themselves, showing that it is not by shunning their maternal desires and responsibilities that each becomes a whole woman, but by understanding herself as a combination of complex identities. She also rejects the modern, rather masculine American ideal of independence in the traditional sense, as each protagonist is only able to embrace her varied identity by being part of a community, supported by other women. To understand why Kingsolver and other authors are working now to repair the relationship between women’s rather estranged dual identities as modern professionals and mothers, it is perhaps first necessary to understand what motherhood has meant for women during the twentieth century. According to Terry Arendell, author of “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship,” the discussion

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about motherhood in recent years has shared a common theme, centering around “…the social practices of nurturing and caring for dependent children” (1192). However, the dissension that has arisen around what it means to be a mother lies in exactly how we nurture and care for children. In her landmark book that began much of the contemporary work on feminism and motherhood, Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich lists several characteristics commonly (if erroneously) assigned to an earlier version of mothering. These traits will be helpful to use when contrasting what we will call “traditional mothering” or “motherhood as institution” and contemporary mothering: First…a ‘natural’ mother is a person without further identity, one who can find her chief gratification in being all day with small children, living at a pace tuned to theirs; that the isolation of mothers and children together in the home must be taken for granted; that maternal love is, and should be, quite literally selfless…I was haunted by the stereotype of the mother whose love is ‘unconditional’, and by the visual and literary images of motherhood as a single-minded identity. (22-23)

This vision of motherhood is one that was, as Rich states, taken for granted in the earlier part of the twentieth century, and it gained ground especially in the 1950s and ’60s. These ideas surrounding motherhood are echoed by sociologist Sharon Hays later in the twentieth century, who uses the term “intensive mothering” to explain this phenomenon, stating that “[t]he model of intensive mothering tells us that children are innocent and priceless, that their rearing should be carried out primarily by individual mothers and that it should be centered on children’s needs, with methods that are informed by experts, labor-intensive, and costly” (quoted in Green 6). This type of mothering is all but unattainable for most women. Although second-wave feminism sought to break women out of this way of mothering and free them to pursue their own interests outside of motherhood, author Sharon Green tells us that the ideas of intensive mothering made a comeback in “the late 1980s and early 1990s” because of “a more general conservative backlash…that emphasized ‘family values’ and saw the changing role of women at home and in the workplace as a threat to these” (Green 6). Though we might like to assume that we have come far enough that women’s value and identities are not wrapped up in their ability to bear and raise children, it remains a topic of much discussion, for as Arendell asserts, motherhood has “[e]specially since the 19th century…been presumed to be a primary identity for most adult women. That is, womanhood and motherhood are treated as synonymous identities and categories of experience” (1192). Often, when these two ideas are

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conflated, “intensive mothering” is still what is expected of women, wherein a mother is required to devote all time and energy toward her children, and which is “exclusive, wholly child-centered, emotionally intensive and time-consuming” (1194). Though there are some mothers who did fit into this mold and were able to survive, or even thrive in this environment, there are many more women who found this identity incredibly stifling. Rather predictably, there are many women who were and are unable to fulfill the demands of intensive mothering, especially as more and more women entered the workforce in the latter part of the twentieth century. It is this single-minded, intensive mothering that second-wave feminists have pushed so hard against because, as Rich says, “mainstream” ideas of “motherhood as institution ha[ve] ghettoized and degraded female potentialities” for much of “recorded history” (13). The feminist movement rightly desires that women be able to follow their dreams of fulfillment, wherever they wish, including the world outside the home and away from the demands of little children. However, as more and more women have entered the workforce in the past sixty years, many have had trouble balancing their family lives with their new identities found outside the home. Many might even feel that their work outside the home is now more important, useful, or fulfilling than bearing or mothering children, or that it should be, whether or not they find this to be the case. In their article “The Importance of Motherhood among Women in the Contemporary United States,” Julia McQuillan and colleagues argue that “[t]he reality of contemporary social structures in the United States—including workplace organizations, the structure of public education, and the gendered division of childcare and housework—make combining employment and motherhood challenging for most American women” (478). Rosanna Hertz, author of Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice agrees, stating that “…some scholars suggested that it would be difficult to have children and continue to be employed simultaneously, and some early second-wave feminists argued that family obligations to nurture children would make competing equally with male peers difficult…” (4). McQuillan et al. add that the “much lower rates of motherhood among managers, for example, suggest that women see motherhood as a likely barrier to career success” (478). Though some career women may want to have children and raise a family, they feel they are unable to lead complete lives both inside and outside the home. According to research from Mary Blair-Loy and Pamela Stone, “most of the women they interviewed highly valued both motherhood and career success but could not negotiate workplace demands so as to enable them to

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carry out their goals” (quoted in McQuillan et al. 480). Motherhood has become, instead of something expected of women and the sole part of their identity, a dream that must go unrealized for many, if they want to live and compete in the workforce; in other words, “working” and “mothering” have become mutually exclusive terms for many women. However, this false dichotomy is exactly the idea that Kingsolver is trying to combat as her protagonists often find themselves in this frame of mind early in her novels. They learn to embrace both of their identities in her novels, showing that these “competing devotions” (quoted in McQuillan 478) are worthy callings for women, and can be complementary instead of polarizing. Kingsolver’s first novel, The Bean Trees, explores the relationship between motherhood and independence and the ways in which they are viewed as “opposed identities” (McQuillan et al. 492). The novel, set in 1978, begins with an account of the independent Marietta. Marietta considers herself lucky to have escaped high school by graduating without being pregnant or having plans to be married. Motherhood, to her, signals the death of independence, the becoming of a domestic, subservient wife, a slave to her husband and inevitable future children. This desire for something other than motherhood is not a usual one for girls in her experience, as she tells her audience: “Believe me, in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off of a poppyseed bun, and you looked at every day as a prize. You’d made it that far” (4). She wants to leave her hometown and see the world, creating an identity for herself as an independent woman as she goes. Marietta leaves town at age twentythree to drive across the country, changing her name as she goes to the more fitting and unisex Taylor. In her article, “The Loner and the Matriarchal Community in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven,” Loretta Murrey comments that “Taylor Greer takes on both the traditional male role of loner and the traditional male name (or surname) of Taylor” (157). Taylor is determined to assert her independence, something that men do more frequently and with more ease, and her name change signifies this inner desire. However, she gets only to the Cherokee Reservation in Oklahoma before she finds herself in the very situation she thought she left behind in Pittman, Kentucky. While stopped at a diner on the Indian reservation, she is given a baby by a woman who claims the baby will be better off with Taylor than where she is. Taylor accepts the baby and leaves the reservation, realizing later that she has, perhaps somewhat unwittingly, just become a mother. Before exploring Taylor’s situation further, it is perhaps necessary to stop and explore the assumptions Taylor holds about the “masculine”

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quality of independence and its superiority to other qualities. We have already looked intently at what it meant to be a mother, or to be a woman (as these words often meant the same thing) in the earlier part of the twentieth century, but we have not yet exposed what it meant to be a father, or to be a man. Adrienne Rich, writing in 1976, points out that “[w]oman’s status as a childbearer has been made into a major fact of life. Terms like ‘barren’ or ‘childless’ have been used to negate any further identity. The term ‘non-father’ does not exist in any realm of social categories” (11). Men have not been assigned identities because of their children in the way that women have, perhaps because of their lack of physical connection to a developing fetus, allowing them to see themselves as standing apart from the mother-and-baby circle. This independence, this separateness from women and even their own children, as well as from other men, has become an identity marker for men as childbearing has been for women. Just as “motherhood” and “womanhood” were interchangeable words for many during most of the twentieth century, “independent” and “masculine” were often viewed as synonymous; an American man was not expected to rely on others, or to need or ask for help, whatever the situation. Women like Taylor entering the workforce in the latter half of the twentieth century often felt pressure to conform to this “masculine” ideal, showing the men (and women) around them that they were equal to men in terms of independence, as well as worth. The relationship we see between masculinity and independence is one that has also been explored in recent motherhood scholarship as researchers seek to understand how mothers are integrated into spheres considered traditionally belonging to men. In his book, A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life, Neil Gilbert stresses that “[t]he normative expectation that women should participate in the labor force to the same extent as men emanates from an ideology of gender equality” (97). Though it is true that genders are equal in value and should have the same sorts of opportunities in the workplace, the idea of “gender equality” can be and, indeed, has been, manipulated to force women to adopt the masculine mindsets present in the public sphere— teaching them to adopt independence as the norm and to put more emphasis on their work life than their home life. Gilbert goes on to say that “[t]he view of childbirth as an interruption in labor-force participation that should be limited as much as possible has not yet gained complete acceptance in the United States. However, the ideology of feminists embraces a powerful expectation that women should be engaged in a lifetime of paid employment—just as men are” (100). Though having the

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option to leave the private sphere is indeed advantageous for women, an insistence on women giving up their mothering duties for their work outside the home can be just as detrimental as equating womanhood with motherhood. Indeed, Gilbert contends that …at the same time that the male model of a lifetime devoted to paid employment supports the American dream of mobility and success, it overshadows and to some extent blocks out alternative paths that might be equally sensible for women who have other ambitions in life…It imposes a static view of women’s roles and the value of their work throughout the life cycle, based on the demands of the market and traditional male activities. (100-101)

By advocating that women participate in the workforce in the same way as men in the later part of the twentieth century, society swung the pendulum of motherhood completely in the other direction, so much so that women, like Kingsolver’s Taylor, viewed motherhood or traditional “womanly” tasks or characteristics as negative. When she first receives the baby who comes to be known as Turtle, Taylor resists her new identity, and seeks a way to reverse the situation, thinking “I’d pay a hundred and five [dollars] to get this [child] back to its rightful owner” (30). She clearly understands her new responsibility to this child as contrary to her recently achieved independence. However, when she reaches Arizona, she encounters a new type of woman, one that embraces independence and yet can mother people at the same time. Mattie owns a tire shop, and is not a mother in the traditional sense, but cares for and shelters illegal immigrants who have no other place to go. This type of motherhood is made even more subversive to the idea of traditional, intensive mothering because Mattie quite willfully chooses to mother children not her own, outside of any traditional or even recognizable family structure, taking on this work only after her husband passes away. It is clear that for Mattie, her identities both as an independent business owner and as a caregiver and surrogate mother are not mutually exclusive, but are compatible and even complementary; it is through her business that Mattie has the means to care for those who need caring. Mothering does not mean, for Mattie, that she has to enter into the institution of motherhood that, as Rich states “degrade[s] female potentialities” (13). Instead, Mattie’s independence and her mothering are harmonized into one whole identity. It is through Mattie that Taylor is first introduced to the idea that threads Kingsolver’s novels: women can be part of the modern workforce and mothers at the same time, finding fulfillment in both roles as they support each other as women and mothers.

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It takes Taylor some time to realize that she needs the support of others to be an effective mother. After some searching, Taylor finds a place to live in Tucson with another woman who is recently divorced and raising her own young son. Together, and with Mattie’s example, Taylor and Lou Ann are able to join together as a family, helping each other find out what it means to be a mother without losing a sense of personhood. Taylor confronts her greatest fears, learning how to be an independent woman while yet coming to a new understanding of herself as Turtle’s mother. Lou Ann, too, is empowered by the arrangement, becoming more confident in herself during the time she and Taylor live together. At the beginning of the novel, Lou Ann is a rather content stay-at-home wife and mother, and though she retains her responsibilities as a mother while living with Taylor, she eventually finds a way to connect that identity to a new, more confident version of herself she finds in the workplace. Though she is driven to find a job out of necessity, she finds she enjoys her work in the local salsa factory as much as she enjoys mothering, which is something she would not have been able to do without Taylor’s influence and support. Taylor and Lou Ann are not the only characters in Kingsolver’s novels who find that they are more able to understand themselves as whole women by accepting their dual roles as modern working women and mothers through the support of a community of women. In Animal Dreams, Kingsolver’s fourth book, Codi Noline is introduced as a savvy, intelligent, and autonomous woman, reluctant to be in her hometown of Grace, Arizona, where she finds herself for the sake of her dying father. She has taken a job as a biology teacher at the high school she attended fifteen years earlier, but she seems unwilling to allow herself to become attached to anything in Grace, including the house she stays in. Her friend even refers to her as a “home-ignorer” (79). In her article, “Barbara Kingsolver’s Anti-Western: ‘Unraveling the Myths’ in Animal Dreams,” Naomi Jacobs compares Codi to “an archetypal Western hero,” who “regards love and connection as dangers to avoid” (2). It is almost as if Codi feels she will be able to preserve her independence to a greater degree if she rejects community and commitment and reserves the right to leave at any moment. Jacobs asserts that “[w]henever she becomes involved with other people, she protects herself by assuming that these connections are temporary” (2). She has worked outside of her home her entire adult life, and seems quite comfortable with that part of her identity, viewing herself as a modern woman; she even states of her longest romantic relationship that she and her previous boyfriend Carlo “were exes from the start. Having no claim on each other was the basis of our

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relationship” (201). Traditionally, it is not the woman in the relationship who seeks for it to be an open one without commitment. It appears that Codi’s desire for independence, even in her romances, is indicative of her lifestyle as a modern woman who has taken on the masculine ideal of being self-sufficient, separate from all others, and not needing any support. Her understanding of herself as a modern woman is interrupted when her high school sweetheart Loyd comes back on the scene, and as she tells more of her story through flashbacks and in a roundabout way, we find that she was pregnant once before, in high school, with Loyd’s baby, and she never told him about this. As a pregnant and motherless fifteen-yearold, she, perhaps subconsciously, starves herself and her baby until she miscarries, unwilling and unable to accept a new identity as a mother at that point in her life. Throughout the novel, her central understanding of herself, buried beneath the surface, is her failure to care for and love this child, her failure as a mother. After the death of her own child, Codi seems to give up the nurturing element of her identity, deceiving herself into thinking she can be whole by ignoring her failure and embracing independence as others embrace relationships. As Jacobs claims, “[r]ather than steeling her for heroic action, this avoidance of emotion incapacitates her” (2). Just as Taylor was unaccustomed to the idea that women need support from one another to be effective mothers, Codi is unable to be a mother because of her inability to accept help or support from, or even connection to, others besides her sister Hallie, who has left her to follow her own calling to help rebels overthrow a corrupt government in Guatemala. As Codi, devoid of her sister’s presence, is faced with her hometown, her father, and Loyd, she begins to confront the identity she has constructed for herself, realizing that she is not quite whole. Jacobs tells us that “…Kingsolver recasts these conventional heroic attributes [independence and self-sufficiency] as forms of cowardice and sources of weakness. This Lone Ranger is aimless and despairing for lack of community and a past denied” (2). It is through her friend Emelina’s influence and her experiences with the Stitch and Bitch club (which begins as a women’s sewing group and ends up rallying to raise money to save the town from Black Mountain Mining, a company that intends to dam the river that runs through the canyon, effectively killing the town’s orchards and major source of income) that she finally finds the strength to truly look at herself and let go of her identity as a mother-failure. Jacobs compares the Stitch and Bitch club to an old-time Western posse, stating that “[w]hen the women ride forth in a chartered bus to defeat their enemies, they do constitute a kind of posse, armed not with guns, but with

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wit, ingenuity and the collective wisdom of the town” (8). The women’s resilience and determination, and above all, their reliance on each other, save the town from a lingering, withering death. Codi’s time spent connecting with Emelina and the other women not only shows her what it means to be loved, but it also gives her a place to ground herself; she discovers at one of their meetings that her late mother’s extended family live in Grace, something her father never told her. She now has a family, roots, and, suddenly, a new community to support her and teach her how to forgive herself for her failure to care for her unborn child. Once Codi is able to understand herself as part of a larger whole and let go of her reluctance to commit to others, which masquerades in her life as the American virtue of fierce individualism, she can begin to grow as a woman and as a mother. However, though she lets go of her identity as an individualist, she doesn’t find herself being subjugated to a man’s will or slave to her children, as one might expect from an independent woman who gives up her self-sufficiency. Instead, in a paradoxical way, she finds herself free from her old failures, able to construct a new identity that is wholly her own and not reflective of her failures. She ends the book pregnant, this time embracing her new role of mother. Codi is no longer forced to choose between her identities simply because she cannot do it all on her own. By becoming fully involved in her town, her family’s past, and her new, growing family, she finds herself acting out of her own desires, as an independent person. Perhaps for the first time, Codi finds out what she wants and can act on it instead of reacting to life defensively, out of fear. Codi’s experiences are representative of Kingsolver’s larger ideas about women and the work they do, separately and corporately: in Kingsolver’s novels, each woman needs an individual strength, supplied by the community, to accept herself as modern woman and mother. In these two books, it might seem that Kingsolver is advocating for women to embrace motherhood over and above their work outside the home, or, at least, suggesting that that is the work modern women often have to do as they contemplate their identities. However, not all of her books are set in that type of environment; The Poisonwood Bible, written in 1999 but set in 1959, tells the story of the Price family’s journey into and out of the Congo as missionaries through the eyes of the women and girls in the family. At the beginning of the story, Orleanna embodies the perfect “intensive mother,” at least on the outside. She is quick to agree with her husband, and strives to raise her children to be perfect American girls, even while outside the United States. She even brings Betty Crocker cake mixes with her to Africa to celebrate her daughters’ birthdays properly in the year they plan to be gone, as well as a cast-iron frying pan

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and pinking shears. However, though she won’t admit it to herself until she is pushed to her breaking point, Orleanna knows that her relationship with her husband and children is not normal or healthy, no matter how “natural” it appears to be during the 1950s and ‘60s. Orleanna is a woman oppressed by her domestic duties and longing for the independence that Kingsolver’s other two protagonists embraced so freely, and for good reason. Orleanna states in her beginning monologue, which comes after the story is finished chronologically, that she “washed up there [the Congo] on the riptide of my husband’s confidence and the undertow of my children’s needs” (Kingsolver 8). As the story continues, we find that Nathan Price, Orleanna’s husband, is a harsh and demanding man, whose obstinacy and confidence in his mission to bring the word of God to the Congo trump his desire to keep his family safe. Though ordered by the Mission League to leave the Congo when civil war breaks out, he refuses and forbids his family to leave as well, in spite of the cool reception they have met with in the Congo, largely due to his unwillingness to learn the local language or integrate into the culture. When the situation grows more and more dire, Orleanna is forced to make a choice: she can either be a compliant, dutiful wife who respects and obeys her husband’s (fanatical) orders or she can keep her children safe by taking matters into her hands and leaving the Congo without Nathan. She finally chooses the latter, but not until her youngest daughter dies of a snake bite. When Ruth May dies, Orleanna washes and prepares her body, and this is perhaps the first scene in the book where the natives of the village they live in are able to interact with the Price family on an equal level, as they have all known the loss of a child or children. As she lays out Ruth May’s body in the yard, the women of the village come and join the Price family, leading the mourning in their own language. It is with this chorus of women’s voices as a background that Orleanna begins her life as an independent woman. She begins giving away everything they brought with them—including the cast-iron pan—and her second daughter Leah tells us that she drags heavy beds and a desk into the yard “…by herself, even though I know for a fact that two months ago she couldn’t have moved them” (371). Orleanna seems to draw strength from the community of women who join her and lead her in her grief. As they leave behind the village, Ruth May’s dead body, and Nathan, it is the women of the village who shelter and protect Orleanna and the Price girls on the first stage of their journey out of Africa. By the time Orleanna decides to leave her husband in the Congo, it is too late to be flown quickly to safety. She leads her remaining three daughters out of the Congo on foot, braving the wilderness and their

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ignorance of it to try to reach safety after they leave the protection of the community of women. Ironically, it is her duty to her children and her identity as a mother that leads her to her independence. Though she has been a mother for seventeen years, it is not until that part of her identity is threatened that she realizes what it means to be a mother, to “nurture and care for dependent children” (Arendell 1192). Mothering, for Orleanna, has always meant being part of the institution of motherhood. However, when faced with this situation, she realizes that mothering does not simply mean bearing and raising children while unquestioningly following the demands of a husband. Mothering, as we saw earlier in Mattie’s example from The Bean Trees, is the choice to provide for those around one who cannot provide for themselves, to nurture and to love others to keep them safe, as the village women do when Orleanna and her daughters are leaving. Orleanna can only do this as she stops relying on her husband and begins to have confidence in herself and the women around her, as well as her teenage daughters, who are also quickly becoming women. Together, they are able to leave the Congo for safety, abandoning former versions of themselves behind in the jungle of confused identities. Through this experience, which required greater independence and self-reliance than she had ever needed before, Orleanna is able to let go of her earlier identity that had been wrapped up in the institution of motherhood. She becomes capable of caring for her children and herself in a way that combines both of her identities as a modern, independent woman and a loving mother. Viewing motherhood as an institution—as Rich, Hays, and Arendell have pointed out— encourages us to believe that all mothers must fit the same mold and that mothering can only happen inside a structured, perfectly balanced family unit that is exclusively child-centered. This definition of mothering, though, is too narrow for women to fit into well, or even at all, which is what each of Kingsolver’s protagonists discover. They also realize, though, that shunning their maternal sides for complete independence is not a road to freedom, either. Orleanna becomes the best mother she can be when she pairs this role with her newfound independence. Taylor and Codi become whole women when they realize that they can cast off the individualistic independence they have bought into and accept others’ support to become mothers without giving up their personhood. All three women need to accept their roles as mothers, and they can do so only with the support of a community of other women. At the same time, each needs to be free to understand herself independently from her children, and realize that the terms “independence” and “mothering” are not diametrically opposed. Kingsolver clearly illustrates

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through these three novels that the work these women need to do isn’t the kind of work that brings to mind the quintessential 1950s housewife, nor is she out to convince her readers that motherhood really is work—though she would clearly agree that it is. Neither is she attempting to sway her readers into thinking that paid work, work outside the home, is more fruitful and fulfilling than caring for children. Instead, Kingsolver lays out for her readers the work that women must do: they must find an accord in themselves between their identities as mothers and as modern women, knowing that in any work they do, they must accept the support from their community, which will further their own strength and independence.

Bibliography Arendell, Terry. “Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade’s Scholarship.” Journal of Marriage and Family. 62.4 (2000): 1192-1207. JSTOR. 30 Jan. 2015. Coontz, Stephanie. Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic Books, 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 28 December 2015. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 2013. Kindle file. Gilbert, Neil. A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print. Green, Sharon. “What Does it Take to Be a ‘Good Mother?’: Contemporary Motherhood Ideology and the Feminist Potential of Lisa Loomer’s Dramaturgy.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. 28.1 (2013): 5-22. Project MUSE. 18 Apr. 2015. Hertz, Rosanna. Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. Jacobs, Naomi. “Barbara Kingsolver’s Anti-Western: ‘Unraveling the Myths’ in Animal Dreams.” Journal of American Popular Culture 1900-Present. 2.2 (2003): 1-12. Web. 30 Dec. 2014. Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Dreams. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. Print. —. Bean Trees. New York: Harpertorch, 1988. Print. —. Poisonwood Bible. New York: Harper Collins, 1998. Print. McQuillan, Julia, et al. “The Importance of Motherhood among Women in the Contemporary United States.” Gender and Society 22.4 (2008): 477-96. JSTOR. 29 Dec. 2014.

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Murrey, Loretta Martin. “The Loner and the Matriarchal Community in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven.” Southern Studies 5.1-2 (1994): 155-163. Web. 30 Dec. 2014. Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. New York: Norton, 1976. Print. Snitow, Ann. “Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading.” Feminist Review 40 (1992): 32–51. JSTOR. 30 Jan. 2015.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE INTERSECTION OF L. T. MEADE’S PROFESSIONAL AND DOMESTIC VICTORIAN CELEBRITY JACQUELINE H. HARRIS BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY – IDAHO

Relatively unknown today, L. T. Meade was once a household name, cited as one of the most prolific writers of nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury literature. Born Elizabeth “Lillie” Thomasina Meade on June 5, 1844, in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, Meade was the eldest of six children born to the Reverend Richard Thomas Meade and Sarah Lane. Determined to make her way as an author, Meade’s ambition drove her to leave her home and family, strike it out on her own in London, and make a profound impact upon the writing world of her era. By her death in 1914, L. T. Meade had authored over 250 novels for more than thirty publishers with contemporary book sales estimated in the multi-millions (“The Library”). Meade published in many genres and with multiple collaborators, edited Atalanta magazine, received recognition from Strand Magazine as one of their most popular contributors, and frequently appeared on Bookman’s monthly list of U.K. best-sellers (“Portraits” 674, Garriock 228). Yet, L. T. Meade’s life and work receive little attention in modern literary studies. L. T. Meade’s life exemplifies a historical case study of a middle-class woman’s attempt to balance a professional life with the demands of Victorian domesticity. This work-life balance intensified with Meade’s complicated commitment to both the growing contemporary feminist movement and her decision to sustain longstanding Victorian ideologies that stressed women’s positions as wives and mothers. Within this framework, Meade negotiated public and private opinions regarding the proper spheres for the female sex. As her celebrity grew, and as later shown in an analysis of one of her 1894 interviews in London’s The Sunday Magazine, the intersection of L. T. Meade’s

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professional and domestic Victorian celebrity set her at odds in both worlds. Meade’s volume of work is an invaluable investigation for feminist, literary, and historical scholars. An introduction to her childhood, literary dreams, prolific career, and home life helps modern audiences understand the immense pressures to which Meade submitted to achieve both public and private success. A gifted storyteller from her youth, Meade and her younger sister were tutored by a governess at home while her younger brothers attended a formal boarding school (Garriock 227, Mitchell “Meade,” O’Toole 46). Because of her gender and prevailing social ideologies about the feared damage of fiction for young women, Meade was forbidden to read a novel until age fourteen; she began writing soon after that (“The Library”). In a 1901 interview, Meade recalled the conversation she had with her father wherein she announced her desire to earn money. Her father responded, “I hope you will never say that sort of thing again. There never yet has been a woman of our family who earned money” (quoted in “Personal” 28). Meade’s mother, on the other hand, did not believe her aspirations: “She smiled, and told me to mind my lessons, and be a good girl” (quoted in “Personal” 28). Meade made up her mind and at age fifteen began writing her first novel in earnest (Kungl 88-89). Her later fondness for writing numerous girls’ school stories and university novels attests to her unfulfilled scholastic dreams (Frith 116). L. T. Meade’s dedication to writing never faltered. When notorious London publisher Thomas Cautley Newby (1797-1882) promised to print Ashton Morton if she could sell forty advance copies, Meade sold seventy. After her mother’s death and her father’s remarriage, Meade moved to London to pursue her writing career (Mitchell “Meade”). Of the move, Meade said, “I came up to London…determined to fight my own battle and to abide by the result” (quoted in Black 225). Having arranged to live with friends in Paddington, Meade learned upon her arrival that their house had burned down the night before. Lastminute living arrangements placed her in Sun Street, Bishopsgate, in the East End, an area Meade described as one in which the sun never shone (Black 225). Meade joined a group of writers who wrote in the British Museum’s Reading Room under the guidance of well-known librarian and superintendent, Richard Garnett (1835-1906) (Garriock 227, Bittel para. 4, O’Toole 47, Bell). Meade kept her spirits up and wrote in the museum daily. Her industriousness and willingness to produce popular fiction enabled her to support herself financially from the onset of her career, making her one of the few middle-class women writers of the nineteenthcentury who never experienced early failures or manuscript rejection

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(Garriock 227, Mitchell “Meade,” Bittel para. 4, Kungl 64). The joy she found in her publications provided an incentive for her to continue her work (Black 226). On September 20, 1879, Meade married city solicitor and Unitarian Alfred Toulmin Smith, though she continued to publish under “L. T. Meade” or “Mrs. L. T. Meade,” the name she adopted for both public and private life (Mitchell “Meade,” Doughty 404, Garriock 227). Meade and Smith spent the majority of their married life in London, and together had four children, one of whom died in infancy. The pace of Meade’s writing never flagged despite her increased participation in additional professional activities, including editing, collaborating, advocating women’s causes, and writing an average of between five and ten novels per year (Garriock 227, Reimer “Tales” 28-32). Estimates suggest Meade likely earned between £600 and £1,000 a year, whereas only one in five Victorian novelists earned over £400 (Reimer “Tales” 28-32, Bittel para. 4). From 1887 to 1893, Meade served as co-editor of Atalanta, the monthly, illustrated middle-class girls’ magazine. Atalanta’s title refers to the character in Greek mythology who refused to marry unless her suitor first defeated her in a race, a reference that underscores the magazine’s celebration of women (Mitchell “Atalanta” 26, Moruzi 120, Reimer “L. T.” 196). Meade’s respected position as an established author allowed her to attract highly celebrated figures to the magazine (Doughty 404, Moruzi 121). In so doing, Meade was both well-connected and well-respected for her editing and publishing excellence. The magazine aimed for an intellectually high level and promoted education and employment for young women (Mitchell “Atalanta” 26, Mitchell “Meade,” Onslow 249, Moruzi 127). Meade worked to maintain the magazine’s advanced stance on female work outside the home while balancing conservative expectations about women’s roles as wives and mothers. While one article may encourage girls to preserve tradition, another would argue females should be allowed to study science and math at the university level if they so desired (Moruzi 127, Doughty 404). In addition to editing Atalanta, Meade contributed scores of articles and short stories for dozens of additional periodicals. Of her unflagging schedule as a mother, wife, writer, and editor Meade reported: It was harder work altogether than you can imagine…much as I liked it. I had to breakfast at half-past seven to be ready for my shorthand writer at eight; from eight to nine I would dictate some three thousand words. Then I attended to household duties until my second secretary came, and worked till half-past eleven, when I always went to town for my editorial duties, which occupied me until seven. Then home to dinner, and I spent every

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evening correcting proofs, etc. This lasted many months, and I had no holidays. An “eight-hours day” would have seemed very little work to me! (quoted in Black 226-227)

Evidencing the struggle Victorian women faced in balancing public and private life, Meade cited the combined pressures of raising growing children and novel writing with making it increasingly difficult to sustain her editorial duties (Moruzi 120, Black 226). Readers felt the marked loss in Atalanta magazine at her departure. Meade’s 250 novels cover a myriad of genres, including girls’ school stories, children’s literature, sensation fiction, romances, plays, short stories, university novels, essays, problem novels, Robinsonades, and ghost stories. Meade also authored crime stories with Robert Kennaway Douglas and detective fiction in consultation with Robert Eustace and Clifford Halifax, physicians who could provide her with the medical details her stories required (Halloram 283, Chan 69). She has been credited with originating the medical mystery subgenre, and her fiction greatly contributed to The Strand, a literary magazine that often went to press with nothing from a female writer, nothing featuring a female character, nor anything intended for a female audience (Mitchell “Meade,” Pound 70). When The Strand played a key role in the 1890s’ short-story culture, Meade was among the highest-paid contributing writers (Chan 60). L. T. Meade also actively participated in New Journalism, progressive women’s organizations, and philanthropic causes, including the annual Ladies’ Literary Dinner, London’s Pioneer Club, the Employment Bureau of the Lyceum Club, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Child. Meade became increasingly well-known as a celebrity, both popular and respected, attested by frequent magazine interviews and features that placed her alongside the greatest writers of the Victorian era (Garriock 228). L. T. Meade’s biography reveals a woman whose life would seem to be in conflict with Victorian conventions. As with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Gaskell, and other female writers, Meade represented the achievement of a tireless professional woman. However, interviews cast her amid the familial warmth of a traditional, domestic home life, suggesting that Meade labored to balance an obsessive work pace with public demands and private family life (Dawson 133-34). The intersection of Meade’s public and private lives—her writing and editing careers, her public charitable work and participation in women’s groups, her home life, and child-rearing—are evidenced in an 1894 interview in London’s The Sunday Magazine. While the interviewer credits Meade’s editorial work and writing career, the magazine frames the author within a

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domesticated sphere, an attempt to underscore her compliance with Victorian-era ideologies about women’s place in the home. Though this six-page article begins by praising Meade’s work ethic, the narrative turns quickly to repeatedly emphasizing Meade as mother-aswriter set within an idealized Victorian home. The unnamed interviewer begins by praising Meade as “one of the most industrious modern writers of fiction”—then having produced approximately eighty novels, less than a third of her life’s output (“Mrs. L. T. Meade at Home” 615”). The interview notes that Meade’s novels have “found their way into almost every reading home in the land; have been translated into many languages; have delighted and instructed young and old alike, and, fascinating as they are, they have never struck an unworthy note or pandered in any single line to a depraved taste” (615). The writer additionally compliments Meade’s stories and their versatility, mature judgment, and sweet pleasure. These lines of praise, however, are soon intermingled with a subtle lowering of Meade’s professional profile. The interview argues that many readers see Meade on the same level as a “personal friend”—a distinct separation from the notable stature of the potential power and influence of the novelist established in the interview’s introduction (615). The writer emphasizes that this reason—Meade’s personable nature and the deflated position in which she has just been subtly painted—are certainly what the male editor had in mind when “he commissioned me to seek the interview” (615). The narrative then credits L. T. Meade’s profound success not to her work ethic, industry, conviction, or even personality, but to her role in the home. This is done by furtively placing words in Meade’s mouth: “Mrs. Meade owes much of her inspiration to the fact that her house is a home, and her home is a family, where the merry voices of children now and again fall pleasantly upon the ear. With her domestic claims are the holiest and most delightful, and are in nowise subordinated either to those of the publisher or the public” (616). While the balance of women’s public and private lives are still certainly worthy of praise and attention over one hundred and twenty years later, it is highly disturbing how the interviewer repeatedly directs attention away from Meade’s intellect and professional accomplishments and steers readers toward her home and her children. A lengthy portion of the article that follows focuses on Meade’s physical surroundings including the furnishings and “nicknacks” [sic] around her home (616). Less attention is given to the interviewer’s conversation with Meade and her answers than to the physically domesticated space in which the article repeatedly frames the narrative. This focus is evident from here on in the interview:

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In the pretty drawing-room which I had the pleasure of a long interview, one is confronted on all sides with signs that even the house claims its proper share of her womanly attention. Its beauty, order, and comfort are as great as the house which knows no “copy” and proof.” Her children are as sweet and wholesome and simple-natured as herself. Her drawing-room is another expression of her character. (616)

This emphasis on design and the gendered “womanly attention” evidenced in the home’s décor would suffice for an article on the house itself, but is off-putting in the context of a professional author interview.

Figure 1 (above). A photograph of L. T. Meade’s drawing room. Included in her 1894 interview with The Sunday Magazine titled “Mrs. L. T. Meade at Home.”

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Figure 2 (above). A photograph of L. T. Meade’s home study. Included in her 1894 interview with The Sunday Magazine titled “Mrs. L. T. Meade at Home.”

Artwork, photographs, drawings, bookcases, books, cabinets, brackets, and knickknacks all receive extensive narrative attention (see Figures 1 and 2). The interview details the contents of the drawing-room’s purported femininity—and instead of turning back to the author’s professional successes, comments on her body: Looking at Mrs. Meade, one would not think that she could have been working hard for seventeen years, producing an average of four or five volumes a year. A face fresh in colour, a manner as free from care as it is full of thought, voice clear and kind and firm, a figure matronly, and a spirit all candour and hope, go to make up the impression which make one feel that you are in the presence of a typical English lady, and to explain the pleasant, wholesome fascination of her writings. (616)

By so doing, the article objectifies Meade by sorting and categorizing her person along with the items lining the bookcases and mantels. The writer demeans Meade by portraying her as a decorative item to admire as opposed to a complex, subjective and productive human being.

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The interviewer further directs attention away from Meade’s imagination and the actual craft of plotting her stories, developing setting and theme, and fine-tuning characterization by evaluating Meade’s management of her secretaries and applauding the divide between Meade’s public and private worlds. Meade never wrote her novels by hand and instead dictated her novels-in-progress to stenographers, producing an average of 2,000 words per day each year (Mitchell “Meade”). She then revised the typewritten transcripts (Meade). In an 1892 interview when asked about her writing schedule, Meade responded, “I never wait for an inspiration… I might never write at all if I did. I write every day at a certain hour…. I have a great many books promised against a certain time. I always write against time” (Meade). Instead of pursuing a line of questions about this interesting and famed work process, the Sunday Magazine interviewer asks surface-level questions about the numbers of secretaries she employs, the female secretaries’ skills in typewriting and shorthand, and whether Meade finds the noise of the typing distracting. The interviewer’s line of questioning is surprising, particularly given Meade’s fame for her feverish productivity. Two years earlier, in an interview published by The Young Woman magazine, Meade said of her writing process, “I often sit down, my secretary has a blank sheet of paper, I say “Chapter I.,” and that is all I know when I begin. I suppose my ideas do flow very rapidly, for some writers who are very much beyond me in power can’t write quickly. They have to think out their subjects a great deal. I could not write if I gave much labour to my work” (Meade). When pressed here regarding her unique approach to writing, Meade informed readers, “[A]s a rule, I dictate straight ahead continuously, and never pause for an instant. I see the whole scene, and I talk on as I see it…. Of course all writers must feel they do better work one day than another, but there is no day I don’t write except Sunday” (Meade). Given this background, Meade composedly and professionally responds to the inane question from The Sunday Magazine by detailing that she works year round, increases the number of secretaries in summer months when the publishing season peaks, and is not in the least bothered by the sound of typewriters and secretaries at work. Unsurprisingly, the interviewer refuses to engage in further conversation about Meade’s work habits or comment on her unflagging work pace, and instead turns the attention back to Meade’s additional responsibilities and roles as a wife and mother: “Mrs. Meade never works in the evening, but devotes this time to her family, to private reading, and such social duties as she feels free to undertake” (619). It is further telling that the printed pages of the magazine’s interview that focus the most on Meade’s professional writing

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process have been surreptitiously framed with a photograph that does not show the author at her work desk (in fact, no such picture appears). Instead, the picture shows her in the garden with two of her children (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. A photograph included within L. T. Meade’s 1894 Sunday Magazine interview.

Such treatment of Meade’s professional success was not limited to this Sunday Magazine feature. Interviewers frequently commented upon the appeal of Meade’s private life as a wife and mother within an idealized domestic space. An interview in 1896 described the “cultivated artistic” taste of her home and described the furnishings as “dainty,” “simple,” “unconsciously graceful,” “well arranged,” and “good,” a stark contrast from the interviewer’s weary travels (Black 223). This particular interview

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concludes with an observation of Meade’s domestic role: “Presently [Meade] goes up to bid good-night to the little ones” (Black 228). Meade, however, was unwilling to submit herself to the victimization of Victorian gender role ideologies. Instead, she carefully constructed her public persona to satisfy stereotypes and the public’s curiosity regarding the women professionals all the while maintaining her private, professionalized life. Seth Koven adds that Meade “zealously protected and shaped her public image…project[ing] a reassuring image of bourgeois respectability, feminine charm, domestic comfort, and maternal solicitude” (206). Several scholars have investigated Meade’s dynamic role in this divide, supporting the argument that Meade’s position was fraught with challenges but one that she navigated as a “New Woman” as evidenced in this Sunday Magazine interview. Janis Dawson argues Meade meticulously monitored and crafted her public image in the literary marketplace by drawing inspiration from industrious writers like Harriet Martineau and Anthony Trollope (133). In so doing, Dawson argues Meade was able to take advantage of contemporary news stories, debated issues, and popular genres to successfully construct a prolific fin-de-siècle career (133). Though The Sunday Magazine interviewer failed to ask Meade for her opinions regarding political issues, she nevertheless used the platform to underscore her position as a dedicated mother, author, and editor. Very familiar with the literary marketplace, Meade knew that The Sunday Magazine was an Evangelical journal focused on providing readers with Sabbath-dayworthy uplifting moral tales and other short pieces. The first editor of the journal, Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873), placed significant emphasis on including morally inspiring illustrations and visuals that would support the journal’s ideologies (Cooke). This legacy is evidenced in the photographs positioning Meade’s interview in a solely domestic framework, an angle of which she would have been aware and which she likely encouraged while posing for the magazine’s staff around her home and in her garden with her children. Megan Norcia argues that L. T. Meade charted new territory with her female Robinsonade, Four on an Island: A Story of Adventure (1892). In a story where a female hero sets off in the traditionally male role of an adventurer, Meade’s portrayal of Isabel Fraser suggests females can “revise the role of female agency” (Norcia 348). Norcia argues that Meade accomplishes this by placing Isabel in a larger, international setting, in which she can thrive in an imperialistic adventure while maintaining domesticity, an act of “patching together socially polarized archetypes— the masculinized adventure hero and the Angel of the House—thereby

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widening the sphere of agency and activity in which girls and women could act” (347). By so doing, Meade “helped to shape the climate and the consciousness of the girls who would become the women who participated in First Wave feminism” (Norcia 327). Simply by exposing young readers to a woman who was wife, mother, and working professional, Meade’s Sunday Magazine interview provided girls with an additional model for their lives. These goals corresponded with her editorship of Atalanta magazine, which included informational articles on not just the domestic sphere but also on female education and employment opportunities. Interestingly, Meade not only encountered and combatted gender stereotypes but drew on them as she subverted their messages. Sally Mitchell contends that while Meade’s use of traditional female domestic roles within her writing added to her widespread appeal, this choice may have inadvertently prevented her work from surviving beyond her own generation (“Meade”). The resurgence of Meade studies in contemporary scholarship, however, reveals how far-reaching her legacy is. Although she did not use the term, L. T. Meade presented herself as a “New Woman” who could capably manage a home, raise children, commute into London for editorial work, write thoroughly professional fiction, and enjoy a public life (Mitchell “Meade”). She served on the managing committee of the Pioneer Club, where independent women of the 1890s met for social events and debates on contemporary issues (Mitchell “Meade”). Meade’s 1894 Sunday Magazine interview demonstrates how one of the most prolific writers of the Victorian period could have been belittled and dismissed by sexist interviewers, but instead constructed and maintained an interrelated professional public and domestic private persona as a marketing strategy within the Angel-of-the-House-meetsNew-Woman political era. L. T. Meade was a progressive, independent woman successfully pursuing professional opportunities while choosing to uphold a traditional domestic role. This tireless life is worthy of examination by twenty-first century feminist scholars who experience similar work-life balance struggles and encounter work environments that often remain cynical or dismissive of working women.

Bibliography Bell, Alan. “Garnett, Richard (1835-1906), librarian and author.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2014. Web. 8 July 2014. .

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Bittel, Helen. “Required Reading for ‘Revolting Daughters?’: The New Girl Fiction of L. T. Meade.” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 2.2 (Summer 2006): 36 paragraphs. Print. Black, Helen C. “Mrs. L. T. Meade.” Biographical Sketches (1896): 22229. Chan, Winnie. “The Linked Excitements of L. T. Meade and… in the Strand Magazine.” Scribbling Women and the Short Story Form: Approaches by American and British Women Writers. Ed. Ellen Burton Harrington. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print. 60-73. Cooke, Simon. “The Sunday Magazine.” The Victorian Web. 1 Apr. 2013. Web. 28. Jan. 2016. Dawson, Janis. “‘Write a little bit every day’: L.T. Meade, SelfRepresentation, and the Professional Woman Writer.” Victorian Review 35.1 (Spring 2009): 132-152. Print. Doughty, Terri. “Meade, Elizabeth Thomasina (1844-1914).” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Eds. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor. London: British Library, 2009. Print. 404. Frith, Gill. “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the School Story.” eds. Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Urwin, and Valerie Walkerdine. Language, Gender, and Childhood. London: Routledge, 1985. 113-36. Print. Garriock, Jean B. “L. T. Meade (Elizabeth [Lillie] Thomasina Meade Smith).” The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ School Stories. Eds. Sue Sims Sue and Hilary Clare. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000. Print. 227-230. Halloram, Jennifer. “L.T. Meade.” The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story. Ed. Andrew Maunder. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print. 283. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2004. Print. Kungl, Carla T. Creating the Fictional Female Detective: The Sleuth Heroines of British Women Writers, 1890-1940. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006. Print. “The Library.” The Sunday School Journal. Eds. J. L. Hurlbut and J. M. Freeman. New York: Eaton & Mains. 31.1 (Jan. 1899): 513. Print. Meade, L. T. “How I write my Books. An interview with L. T. Meade.” The Young Woman, Vol. 6 (1892): 122-123. Incl. in Victorian Women’s Magazines: An Anthology. Eds. Margaret Beetham and Kay Boardman. New York: Manchester UP, 2001. Print. 214-215.

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Mitchell, Sally M. “Atalanta (1887-1898).” Dictionary of NineteenthCentury Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Eds. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor. London: British Library, 2009. Print. 26. —. “Meade, Elizabeth Thomasina (1844-1914).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP. May 2007. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. . Moruzi, Kristine. Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. Print. “Mrs. L. T. Meade at Home.” The Sunday Magazine 23 (1894): 615-620. Print. Norcia, Megan A. “Angel of the Island: L. T. Meade’s New Girl as the Heir of a Nation-Making Robinson Crusoe.” The Lion and the Unicorn 28.3 (Sept 2004): 345-62. Print. O’Toole, Tina. The Irish New Woman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print. Onslow, Barbara. “Girls’ Magazines.” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland. Eds. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor. London: British Library, 2009. Print. 249-250. “Personal Gossip about Authors.” The Writer: A Monthly Magazine for Literary Workers, Volume XIV January-December 1901. Boston: Writer Publishing Company, 1901. Print. 28-30. “Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives: Mrs. L. T. Meade and Mr. H. G. Wells.” Strand Magazine 16 (July-Dec. 1898): 674-675. Print. Pound, Reginald. The Strand Magazine, 1891-1950. London: Heinemann, 1966. Print. Reimer, Mavis. “L. T. Meade (5 June 1844 – 26 October 1914).” British Children’s Writers, 1880-1914. Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Ed. Laura Zaidman. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 1994. Print. 186-198. —. “Tales Out of School: L. T. Meade and the School Story.” Diss. U of Calgary, 1994. Print.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE CLASS-BENDING LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE FACTORY GIRL: REJECTING THE WESTERN CAPITALIST FANTASY IN CLARA VIEBIG’S “THE CIGAR FACTORY GIRL” AND “MARGRET’S PILGRIMAGE” REBECCA ELAINE STEELE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING

Early-19th-century industrialization in England, Ireland, and America gave birth to the literary figure of the factory girl, who has been celebrated and glorified.1 She makes her first appearance in Sarah Savage’s 1814 novel The Factory Girl, and goes on to populate numerous songs sung across the UK and the U.S. in the 19th century. Industrialization came much later to Germany and even later to the Eifel region, a low-mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. Industrialization had its first effect on the Eifel region by calling its men away for months at a time, leaving the women behind to maintain farms in their absence. Eventually, factories were built in the Eifel, such as the cigar factory featured in Clara Viebig’s short story “The Cigar Factory Girl” (“Die Zigarrenarbeiterin”). Together with “Margret’s Pilgrimage” (“Margrets Wallfahrt”), Viebig’s story of the factory girl concludes her collection of short stories Children of the Eifel (Kinder der Eifel, 1897). I will argue that these two texts stand as a kind of corrective and critique of the earlier representations of the beautiful factory girl, who incites the love of a rich 1

For an in-depth discussion of the Anglo-American factory girl, see Amal Amireh’s The Factory Girl and the Seamstress. For an overview of literature on female mill workers, see Judith Ranta’s Women and Children of the Mills.

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man. Instead, Viebig rejects the glorification of factory work by demonstrating its horrendous health effects, and challenges the commodification of virtue by presenting two women who share their sexuality instead of exchanging it. Problematic for all of the texts under discussion is the middle-class status of the authors, who write about the working-class experience.2 In the following, I will first discuss the trope of the factory girl made popular in Anglo-American novels and songs. I will then read Viebig’s two short stories against this trope. In the end, I will show that Viebig presents a feminist alternative to the Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl with a celebration of the naturalness of female sexuality. The Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl can be found in a series of songs, which originated in the Irish folk tradition and numerous Anglo-American novels. The following is an example of a typical factory girl song, which originated in Ireland:3 “The Factory Girl” The sun was just rising one fine May-day morning, The birds from the bushes so sweetly did sing, Where the lads & the lasses so merrily moving, To yonder large building their labour begin. I spied a fair damsel more brighter than Venus Her cheeks like the roses none could her excel Her skin like the lily that grows in yon valley This blooming young goddess, the factory girl. I stepp’d up to her, this beautiful creature, She cast upon me a proud look of disdain, Stand back sir she cried and do not insult me, Tho’ poor I am, poverty is no sin. I said my fair damsel no harm is intended, But one favour grant me pray where do you dwell? At home sir she answered and was going to leave me, I am but a hard working factory girl.

2

Richard addresses this issue in “Genres of Work” by looking at literary representations of factory girls as well as various writings by working-class women including Ellen Johnston, who was known as the factory girl. For more on Johnston, see also Boos and Klaus. 3 I would like to thank Julie Lyon, a former student, for calling my attention to the existence of this Irish ballad, which launched such a fruitful reading of Viebig’s texts.

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I stood all amaz’d while on her I gaz’d, Such modesty and prudence before ne’er did see, I said my sweet charmer, my soul’s great alarmer, If you will go with me a lady shall be. She said sir, temptations are used in all nations Go marry a lady and you will do well So let me alone sir, the bells are a ringing, I am but a hard working Factory girl. I stood in a flutter, knew not what was the matter, Young Cupid the goddess my heart had trapan’d, I said lovely maid if you’ll not be my bride, My life I will waste in some foreign land. What pleasure in treasure where love it is wanting, Your beauty upon me has now cast a spell, I’ll marry you speedy and make you a lady, If you will be mine, dear factory girl. She gave her consent and a licence was purchas’d, The bells they did merrily echo and ring, To church then they went, and so they were returning, The bridesmen and maidens so sweetly did sing This lovely young couple live happy together She blesses the hour she first saw her swain, This Factory girl she is made a rich lady, And married a ‘squire of honour and fame.4

The factory girl songs have a common storyline: an exquisitely beautiful woman stands out among the other factory girls, and piques the interest of an incredibly wealthy man.5 She rejects his initial advances and remarks on their class inequality. He makes clear that his intentions are noble by proposing marriage. In some versions she accepts him, and they live happily ever after. In other versions, she completely rejects his advances, recognizing that his love could never bridge the class gap between his wealth and her poverty. If the lover is rejected, the song generally concludes with a proclamation of the man’s undying love for “his” factory girl: 4

Published in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 22 (1855): 356-7. This song is older than 1855. As Cohen notes, Greenway dated the “Lowell Factory Girl” around the 1830s, which itself was a rewriting of the Irish folk song (4). 5 The unnamed author of “A Latter-Day ‘Pastourelle’” reads the factory girl as a kind of industrial pastourelle, which originally described a rural encounter between a shepherd girl and a knight (5).

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With these words she vanished and then she did leave me, And all for her sake, I’ll go wander away, And in some deep valley where no one will know me I will mourn for the sake of my factory girl.6

In some variations, the man recounts his riches in an effort to sway the girl: “Well I have fine houses adorned with ivy, / Gold in my pockets and silver as well” (“Latter-Day ‘Pastourelle’” 9). Other factory-girl song commonalities include narrating from the man’s point of view, the complete absence of descriptions of factory work or its ill-health effects, and, particularly in the songs with a wedding at the end, the suggestion that factory work is a mere stepping stone to becoming a wife.7 The exclusive focus on the factory girl, with little to no mention of the actual work or products, and the story’s culmination in marriage suggest that virtue is the commodity.8 These features of the factory girl can be 6

Qtd. in “A Latter-Day ‘Pastourelle’” (9). The unnamed author estimates that the lyrics were published in 1843, but that the “the original ‘Factory Girl’ [..] predates that year and belongs to an early epoch of industrialization” (7). 7 Kanzler argues that the transition expectation was true of the first generation of millworkers: “This first generation of female mill workers – daughters of yeomen farmers – tended to understand their sojourn at the factory as temporary, typically geared toward saving some money before they would get married” (29). 8 The Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl is slightly different in the American versions of this song. The most popular was the “Lowell Factory Girl” song. There, the woman has the narrative point of view and the difficulties of factory work are explicit: No more shall I work in the factory To greasy up my clothes, No more shall I work in the factory With splinters in my toes […] No more shall I hear the drummer wheels A-rolling over my head, When factory girls are hard at work, I’ll be in my bed. […] No more shall I see the super come All dressed up so fine

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found in American author Sarah Savage’s 1814 The Factory Girl. It is the first novel explicitly featuring a factory girl as the titular protagonist.9 The novel tells the story of an 18-year-old orphan, Mary Burnham, who lives with her grandmother. She works in a cotton factory to support the two of them, initially against her grandmother’s wishes. Mary proves her grandmother’s concerns wrong. Not only are her morals nor eroded by the factory work, but she can also exert a moralizing influence on the other factory workers and even on the owner: “Mary’s correct judgement had taught her, that it was not only her duty to exercise virtues, but that she must endeavor to make them appear amiable and desirable to others, by a conciliating manner, and an innocent conformity to general customs” (9). Like in the previous texts, Mary’s virtue functions as a commodity and, as Thomas Lovell argues, “Work, in every possible context and especially in the new realm of the factory, expands the operation of virtue” (1). The virtuous Mary is pursued by William, a factory worker soon to be promoted to overseer (5), who later proves to be a rogue (20). There is certainly a suggestion that his wealth and class allow him to behave in this manner, which can be read as a critique of capitalism, even as Mary’s factory work is glorified. She makes the transition from schoolgirl to factory girl to wife by marrying a common farmer.10 Like the factory girls of the eponymous ballads, Mary stands out among the other factory workers. In her case, it is because she refuses to For I know I’ll marry a country boy Before the year is round. (Merriam 272) However, the drudgeries recounted here are less acute, as the Lowell factory girl is about to make the successful transition from school girl to factory girl to wife. Her trials will soon be in the past tense. 9 American author Laura Jean Libbey’s late-nineteenth-century formulaic romance novels, called dime novels, feature a factory girl’s quest for Prince Charming like Daisy Brooks or a Perilous Love (1883) or another title Pretty Madcap Dorothy or How She Won a Lover” (1891). A different kind of factory girl is found in socalled industrial novels. There, she is a secondary character, who “was an emblem of social, moral, and economic anxiety that could not be reconciled with normative gender roles or the return to the family to which mid-century novelists retreated as an antidote to the disorder of industrial life” (Richard 2-3). When she does appear in a novel, it is as a secondary character who is killed off or disappears. An 1832 play by Douglas Jerrold, The Factory Girl, features a father, a daughter, and a son, who are all “absorbed into the middle class” (Newey 38). 10 By contrast, Lovell reads Mary’s marriage as akin to another job she takes on: “[…] Mary enters her final job on the same terms as she has entered her previous phases of work: marriage is not a higher state or accomplishment of a final goal but simply another duty in her series of duties” (17).

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attend dances—not for any religious reasons, but because she considers the winter dances a waste of money (8). In addition, Mary is known for her “diligence and uniform pleasantness” (8). The actual factory work is virtually absent from the narrative. In fact, Mary’s work is described as “neither difficult nor laborious” (6). In this version of the factory girl trope, absolute virtue trumps beauty, for Mary is “anything but […] handsome” (7). This can be seen especially in the character William, who calls her “anything but […] handsome” and even “ugly” (7), but pursues her because of her virtuous influence, which contrasts the behavior of the other factory girls: “He had passed the evening before with much less satisfaction than he had expected. For though he had laughed, talked, and danced, with the prettiest, gayest young women of the party, he could not but wish that the gentle, modest Mary Burnham had made one of them” (14). The Western capitalist fantasy of the beautiful, virtuous factory girl and her class-bending love affair is challenged in “The Cigar Factory Girl” by German naturalist author Clara Viebig.11 To be sure, several familiar features appear in Viebig’s “The Cigar Factory Girl,” such as the extraordinary factory girl, a wealthy man who approaches the factory girl, their obvious class disparity, and her initial rejection of his advances. Maria Josefa stands out among the factory girls in several ways. First, she is “the best worker, the most nimble” (“die beste Arbeiterin, die flinkste,” 171).12 Second, unlike the other girls, who laugh and joke throughout the workday, Maria Josefa keeps to herself, “presse[s] her lips” (“preßt[] die Lippen aufeinander,” 171), and “[does] not look up” (“[sieht] nicht auf,” 171). Her introversion extends to what little life she has outside of the factory, where she “look[s] at no lad” (“sie [sieht] keinen Burschen an,” 171). She shuns the weekly fairs and dances (171). Here, she echoes Savage’s Mary Burnham, who shuns the superficiality of the other factory girls, and refuses their invitations to the dance.13 She concentrates instead on her earnings with her repeated mantra “thirty pennies per hundred, thirty pennies!” (Dreißig Pfennig das Hundert, dreißig Pfennig!” 171).

11

Fleissner and Askey call into question Viebig’s status as a genuinely Naturalist writer. Both comment on her combination of Romantic and Realist elements. 12 Translations from German are mine. 13 Mary’s decisions are based in her clear moral superiority and extreme economic pragmatism. When she rejects the invitation to a dance, she explains that the rejection is not because it is a dance, but because of the cost that would be incurred to organize a dance in the winter instead of having one outside in a meadow in the summer (8).

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The wealthy man of the factory girl trope, who sees the factory girl and desires her, finds a counterpart in Viebig’s text as well. The man, called the Fremde (foreigner), watches Maria Josefa daily as she leaves the factory (175). The descriptions of the man and his house emphasize the obvious class disparity. The Fremde lives in Upper-Manderscheid, while Maria Josefa lives, significantly, in Lower-Manderscheid. His wealth and life of leisure are described as follows: “In Upper-Manderscheid in a new white house, which glows brightly in the sunshine, lived one, who was different from all others in the village. He was dignified, a man of the city […]. He traveled through the forests and hunted, or he sat around and painted” (“Oben zu Manderscheid in dem neuen weißen Haus, das im Sonnenschein grell leuchtet, wohnte einer, der war anders als all die anderen im Dorf. Der war fein, ein Stadtherr […]. Er strich durch die Wälder und jagte, oder er saß herum und malte,” 174-5). By contrast, Maria Josefa lives in a “dark cottage that is stuck to the mighty castle ruins like a swallow’s nest” (“dunklen Hütte, die wie ein Schwalbennest an die mächtige Burgruine gekleckst ist,” 171) in Lower-Manderscheid, which is not brightly lit but “grey in grey” (“grau im Grau,” 174). Echoing the lovesick bard’s ivory, gold, and silver from the ballads, the narrator repeatedly mentions the “flashing ring” (“blitzender Ring,” 179) on the Fremde’s clean hand (175). When the Fremde visits the factory, he observes the factory girls at work and playfully runs his bejeweled hand through the tobacco leaves.14 Just as the factory girl rejects the rich man in the ballads, Maria Josefa initially refuses the Fremde. He greets the factory girls each day, and they respond, but Maria Josefa “does not say hello” (“grüßt[] nicht,” 175). When he comes to the factory and speaks to her, “she puts [her head] down lower and lower” (“sie senkt[] [den Kopf] tiefer und tiefer,” 176). During that visit, he asks her to come work for him, but she completely rejects being in the domestic service of a stranger (177). Viebig critiques the Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl by explicitly describing actual factory work and the ensuing ill-health effects. The titular factory girl, Maria Josefa, is introduced with “disheveled brown strands of hair” (“zerzausten brauen Strähnen,” 171), and she “squints with slightly reddened eyes” (“mit leichtgeröteten Augenlidern blinzelt[] sie”). The text repeatedly returns to the red and inflamed eyes (171, 177, 180). In fact, all of the factory girls have “the same reddened squinting eyelids” 14

“The hand of the gentleman with the clean nails and the flashing ring rummaged in the rustling brown leaves and let them playfully glide through his fingers” (“Die Hand des Herrn mit den blanken Nägeln und dem blitzenden Ring wühlte in den raschelnden brauen Blättern und ließ sie spielend durch die Finger gleiten,” 175-6).

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(“dieselben geröteten blinzelnden Lider,” 171). She and the other girls are surrounded by a “penetrating tobacco odor” (“durchdringender Tabakgeruch,” 171), and an “acrid haze” (“beißender Dunst,” 171) wafts from their hair. The full extent of the physical damage due to the factory work is even evident in their voices: “when they spoke, their voices were muted” (“wenn sie sprachen, klangen ihre Stimmen bedeckt,” 171). The first several paragraphs of the text focus on the factory girls’ allencompassing work lives. The story opens with a clock striking 12 and the girls leaving the factory in Upper-Manderscheid for their lunch break in Lower-Manderscheid. After the previously mentioned health effects are depicted, the narrator describes the debilitating working conditions in the factory: From seven in the morning until noon and then again from early afternoon until into the darkened evening the girls cowered in the low rooms of the tobacco factory in Upper-Manderscheid. They bent their young bodies over the containers with the dried leaves, their fingers rustling diligently. The acrid odor filled their eyes with tears; a tickling cough tortured their throats. The windowpanes were filmed over from the thick air. Von morgens sieben bis zum Mittag, und dann wieder vom frühen Nachmittag bis an den dunklen Abend, hockten sie zu Ober-Manderscheid in den niedrigen Zimmern der Tabakfabrik. Sie bückten die jungen Leiber über die Gefächer mit den vertrockneten Blättern, emsig raschelten ihre Finger darin; der beißende Geruch füllte die Augen mit Tränen, ein Kitzelkusten quälte die Kehle. Die Fensterscheiben liefen an in der dicken Luft. (171)

While the text opens with the factory girls walking in the sunlight—much like the factory girls of the ballads—it quickly turns to actual factory work and the abysmal working conditions. The text reverses the Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl by suggesting that the rich man is only ever interested in a kind of genteel slumming, not marriage. The Fremde suggests that Maria Josefa come work for him as his domestic help. She correctly sees through this offer, recognizing that he wants to purchase unfettered access to her body. Here is how she responds to his request: “’domestic help? No!’ Her lips curled up with disdain” (“’In Dienst? Ne!’ Geringschätzig verzogen sich ihre

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Lippen,” 177).15 Viebig also makes clear that factory work is not just a transition from being a school girl to becoming a wife. In what seems like a further parallel with the factory girl trope, the initial rejection turns into acceptance, but with crucial differences: The rich man never speaks of marriage, and the factory girl rejects a commodification of her virtue by sharing, not exchanging intimacy. With this shift, Viebig demonstrates the naturalness of female sexuality and the unnaturalness of its repression. The first example of sexual repression occurs immediately after the description of Maria Josefa’s ill health, the terrible working conditions, and her status as the most industrious and concentrated worker: And yet, she was young. Her slender limbs quivered with life, her blood simmered at times and pulsed with desire; on uneasy nights, she tossed and turned restlessly on her paillasse, and the whispered voices of lovers from a bush sent shivers down her spine. But she looked at no lads. She did not let anyone give her a colorful ribbon or a sugared heart at any fun fair; she never went to a dance. Und doch war sie jung. In ihren schlanken Gliedern zuckte es von Leben, das Blut siedete ihr zuzeiten und klopfte verlangend; in beklommenen Nächten warf sie sich ruhelos auf den Strohsack, und hörte sie im Busch ein Liebespaar flüstern, lief’s ihr heiß und kalt über. Aber sie sah keinen Burschen an. Sie ließ sich auf keiner Kirmes ein buntes Band oder ein Zuckerherz schenken; sie ging nie zum Tanz. (171)

Here we can see the obvious desire and repression at the same time, signaling the importance of pleasure from the beginning, even as it is automatically and almost irrevocably shut down. The text marks other moments of sexual repression. When Maria Josefa encounters young men and women singing a love song, “the lonely girl cringe[s] and presse[s] her hands over her ears” (“die Einsame zuckt[] zusammen und preßt[] die Hände an die Ohren,” (174). She suffers many sleepless nights, where she imagines her lover and sees the suckling babe at the breast of her overseer’s wife. On those nights, she prays in desperation, and the narrator notes that “she had never prayed as much as she had during the previous months” (“So viel hatte sie noch nie gebetet wie in den letzten Monaten,” 179). On one particularly sleepless night,

15

Most of Maria Josefa’s speech is patterned after a dialect from the Eifel, which I have elected to translate into standard English for simplicity. It is not meant as an erasure of her unique voice.

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Maria Josefa relives an encounter with the Fremde in her fantasy, which leads to another attempt at repression: In the darkness two eyes bored into hers; eyes which could completely see through her – and a hand moved back and forth before her, it came closer and closer, it swept so closely over her cheek and chin that she felt the breath of wind. The hand reached out to her shoulder, to her breast - - […] With a wild gesture she threw her arms over her head, she sobbed: ‘No, no – I won’t do it – but no – but no.’ [D]urch’s Dunkel pierced sich zwei Augen in die ihren, Augen, die einem durch und durch sehen – und eine Hand fuhr vor ihr hin und her, kam näher und näher, strich ihr so nah über Wangen und Kinn, daß sie den Lufthauch spürte, streckte sich aus nach ihrer Schulter, nach ihrer Brust - - […] Mit einer wilden Gebärde warf sie die Arme über den Kopf, sie schluchzte: ‘Ne, ne – euch duhn et net – doch net – un doch net!’- - - (180)

His penetrative gaze prefigures their final encounter. The depth of Maria Josefa’s sexual repression is expressed in her extreme reaction to the discovery that her cat, the Graue, has become a mother. At that moment, the cat comes to represent her mother Lena, the woman who ran around with every man, until she was left alone and pregnant with Maria Josefa. Just as Maria Josefa rejects Lena, to whom she does not even refer as her mother until much later in the text, so too does Maria Josefa reject the motherhood of the Graue. When she first sees the kittens, she reacts in disgust: “Ugh!” Maria Josefa twisted her mouth and spat. “Ugh, you disgusting animal!” No sign of joy was left on her face as she nastily stared at the young brood, eyebrows drawn together. When the Graue snuggled and purred against her dress, she lifted her foot, ready to kick: “You weren’t supposed to do that – I don’t want it!” A tightly-held [sic] breath of air lifted her chest; she turned away with her eyes squeezed shut. “Ba!” Maria Josefa verzog den Mund und spuckte aus.”Ba, dau eklig Dier!” Keine Spur von Freude war mehr in ihrem Gesicht; böse mit zusammengezogenen Brauen starrte sie auf die junge Brut. Als die Graue schwänzelnd und schmeichelnd um ihr Kleid strich, hob sie den Fuß zum Stoß: “Dau sollst net – ech will net!” Ein gepreßter Atemzug hob ihr die Brust; die Augen klein zukneifend wandte sie sich ab. (173; emphasis mine)

We can see the parallel here in particular in the “Dau sollst net – ech will net!” The “I don’t want it” implying both: “I don’t want you to do this” and “I don’t want to do this.”

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Much later, when Maria Josefa sees the Graue “meowing miserably” (“mauzte kläglich,” 179), desperately looking for her kittens, we learn that in her rage at the cat’s “licentious” behavior, Maria Josefa had thrown the tiny kittens in the river to drown. As the little bodies were dragged away in the water, she watches without emotion (“Mit eigener Hand hatte Maria Josefa die [Jungen] in den Bach geworfen, wirbelnd waren die kleinen Leiber dahingerissen worden; teilnahmslos hatte sie ihnen nachgestarrt,” 179). At the sight of the Graue’s debilitating loneliness, she feels remorse for what she has done. This marks perhaps the first step on her path to forgiving her mother and accepting herself.16 From this point on, Maria Josefa and the cat are "inseparable," because they are both alone. Reversing roles, Maria Josefa, the motherless child, treats the cat, the now childless mother, like her baby. Ultimately, the text shows that Maria Josefa’s budding sexuality is entirely natural by aligning her with the cat as well as through echoes of her pent-up desire in the rushing waters of the river and the call of the stag. Maria Josefa has more in common with the Graue than with her fellow factory girls. Both are "young, barely full-grown” (“jung[], kaum ausgewachsen[],” 173). Both ensure that an audience follows their moves: The cat turns to confirm that Maria Josefa is following her into the next room; Maria Josefa turns to confirm that the wealthy foreigner is following her with his eyes. The “bent tail” (“gekrümmte[r] Schwanz,” 179) of the grieving cat is echoed in Maria Josefa’s bent head. When she encounters the Fremder at the cigar factory, she bends her head down: “She could not have lifted her head, not for anything in the world; she lowered it more and more” ("Sie hätte den Kopf nicht heben können, um alles in der Welt nicht; sie senkte ihn tiefer und tiefer” 176). Both Maria Josefa and the cat have sparkling eyes. The cat’s eyes “sparkled” ("funkelten,” 179) as she laps up the love and attention Maria Josefa showers on her. At the end, after Maria no longer represses her sexual desires, she dances “with fluttering skirts and sparkling eyes” ("mit flatternden Rocken und funkelnden Augen" (174). As previously mentioned, she demands the same kind of celibacy from the cat as she initially practices herself. The naturalness of Maria Josefa’s sexuality is also echoed in the pathetic fallacy of the river Lieser, wherein her human emotions are attributed to an element of nature. Already the feminine gender of the Lieser (the majority of German rivers are masculine) connects Maria 16 Because Maria Josefa sees the cat as a representation of her mother, the drowning of the kittens could be read as a kind of symbolic abortion of herself.

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Josefa to the river. At the beginning of the text, the Lieser is “frothing” ("schäumend[]," 174), but after Maria Josefa encounters the Fremde at the factory, the Lieser “rushes wild and frothy white, swollen by a tumbling deluge” (“rauscht wild und weißschäumend, von stürzenden Güssen geschwellt" (170). The following day, Maria Josefa’s work in the factory is described as "wild" (180), linguistically connecting her to the river. Finally, the night Maria Josefa decides to meet the Fremde, the river echoes her unbridled desire: “The Lieser crashes stormily and floods the banks” (“Stürmisch tost die Lieser und schlägt übers Ufer," 180). In addition, Maria Josefa significantly drowns the kittens in the very river which echoes her sexual desire, doubling the sign of sexual repression. Other echoes of human emotion in nature can be seen in the bellows of the stag in rut, seemingly calling to Maria Josefa: “The stags bugled in the steaming forests” (“In den dampfenden Wälder schrien die Hirsche,” 178) and “the stags bugled dully in the near forest” (“die Hirsche schrien dumpf im nahen Wald,” 180). The naturalness of Maria Josefa’s sexuality is underscored by the location. She meets the Fremde in nature, at the castle ruins, an emblem of decrepit social norms. To be sure, the sexual encounter is not explicit, but there are several indications that some measure of physical intimacy takes place. At one point, Maria Josefa remembers past intimacies with the Fremde: “with this hand, he had gently caressed her cheeks and chin the other day, the other day in the ruins – and yesterday - ?!” ("mit dieser Hand hatte er ihr sanft um Wangen und Kinn gestrichen, neulich in den Ruinen - und gestern - ?!" 179). Near the end of the text, Maria Josefa can be found running through the forest, rushing toward someone, with clear sexual intent as she heeds the call of the human stag: The night dew falls on her hair like tears, her clothes become wet. - - Come, Maria Josefa, come – come - - - ! With burning mouth, thirstily opened, with a throbbing, feverish pulse, Maria Josefa goes through the night, at first slowly, then swiftly. The Lieser roars, the ruins tower like darkish clumps – now, now the first trees are rustling! She runs more and more swiftly […]. Her breast quivers and trembles under her threadbare dress, her forehead glows; there is no sense, no thought, only throbbing, chasing, and rushing. [...] There is the fir tree, at its trunk a shadow, a form! She rushes forward, her arms outstretched, her head thrown back - And yet! Der Nachttau fällt ihr gleich Tränen auf’s Haar, ihre Kleider werden feucht. - - - Komm, Maria Josefa, komm – komm - - - ! Mit durstig geöffnetem, heißem Mund mit klopfenden, fiebernden Pulsen geht Maria Josefa durch die Nacht, erst langsam, dann rasch. Da braust die Lieser, da

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ragen die Ruinen wie schwärzliche Klumpen – jetzt, jetzt rauschen die ersten Waldbäume! Sie geht rascher und rascher […]. Unter dem fadenscheinigen Kleid zittert und bebt ihre Brust, ihre Stirn glüht; da ist kein Sinn, kein Gedanke, nur ein Pochen, ein Jagen und ein Drängen. […] Da ist die Tanne, an ihrem Stamm ein Schatten, eine Gestalt! Sie stürzt voran, die Arme vor sich gestreckt, den Kopf hintenüber geworfen - - - Und doch! (181)17

The final “and yet!” (“und doch”) with the copious dashes recalls the previous “but not” (“doch net,” 180), clearly hinting that a sexual encounter has now occurred. The German “doch” — a word essentially untranslatable into English — refuses the validity of the previous statement. In addition, Viebig’s copious dashes recall the pregnant dash in Kleist’s Die Marquise von O…, which undeniably signaled sexual intercourse. The significance of this moment is heightened by the fact that it is the only section in the story written in the present tense. Everything before and everything after is told in the imperfect. After the encounter, Maria Josefa has completely changed. The focus of her life has shifted away from the factory work, away from her selfalienation and self-commodification, to pleasure. At the end of the text, Maria Josefa is living life to the fullest, dancing at every fun fair “with flowing hair” (“mit wehenden Haaren,” 181) — in contrast to her previously “disheveled” locks. By crafting a woman who accepts her sexuality, Viebig rejects the strictures of societal expectations for femininity: “Viebig’s writing thus demonstrates the invalidity of the bourgeois feminine ideal without appearing to directly challenge it” (Askey 132). In the end, the Fremde is nowhere to be found, and Maria Josefa has become reconciled with her mother and her past. Viebig’s rejection of the Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl, which began with “The Cigar Factory Girl,” is completed by “Margret’s Pilgrimage,” the final short story of her Children of the Eifel collection. In this supplemental critique of the factory girl trope, the focus in on the representation of a certain kind of wage labor and the “virtue as commodity” paradigm. The most obvious critique of the factory girl trope is a complete reversal of the workplace: here, wage labor is performed at home. In this way, Margret can cleverly combine her wage labor with household duties. For example, “she spun for the rich farmer’s wives for her daily bread and 17

There is perhaps a subtle suggestion of miscegenation here: The Fremde was associated with the ruins from the beginning and here they are “like darkish clumps” (“wie schwärzliche Klumpen,” 181) and later he is a shadow. There is an earlier mention of his “tanned” (“gebräunt”) skin (176). 

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tied the goat to her big toe with a chord, so that the animal could graze but not run away (“sie spann um’s liebe Brot für die reichen Bauernfrauen und hatte die Ziege mit einem Strick an ihre große Zehe gebunden; da konnte das Tier grase und lief doch nicht weg,” 184). The text also functions as a corrective to Viebig’s “Cigar Factory Girl.” At her alternative workplace, Margret is able to completely avoid the ill-health effects. In contrast to Maria Josefa’s reddened, inflamed eyes, Margret has the “bright eyes of a girl” (“helle[] Mädchenaugen,” 187), which are “laughing brown” (“lachenden braunen” 184), “clear” (“klar[],” 197), and “open” (“offen[],” 197). The only reddening found in Margret’s face is because she is “so fresh and red-cheeked” (“so frisch und rotwangig,” 186), with her “sweet face blushing with eagerness” (“vom Eifer geröteten, lieblichen Gesicht,” 197). “Margret’s Pilgrimage” approaches sexual repression, the challenge to “virtue as a commodity,” and sexual acceptance in a different way. Margret ostensibly leaves home on a pilgrimage to a holy relic in the city of Trier, hoping to obtain healing for her sick mother. However, certain elements in the text and the conclusion make it clear that Margret’s pilgrimage is the path to accepting her sexuality by overcoming her anxiety and by finding herself. Like her cigar-factory counterpart, Margret must ultimately learn to come to terms with her desires. Like Maria Josefa, she looks at other couples with envy, but her repression mechanisms are less severe. When she contemplates “to have a sweetheart is something lovely” (“so ein Schatz war doch was Schönes!” 187), she immediately tells herself that she will never have a “Schatz” because of her poverty. Margret’s sexual repression, for the most part, reflects her fear of male sexuality. Two attacks confirm this fear, but once she meets a man who treats her with respect and does not force himself on her, she can finally accept her sexuality. Like Maria Josefa, she does not exchange, but shares intimacy, thereby refusing to commodify her virtue. Margret is attacked twice by men while on her pilgrimage, giving expression to her fears of violent male sexuality. The first attack happens at an inn, where Margret hopes to spend the night on her way to Trier. A young man lecherously says she can stay with him, and “wanted to embrace Margret” (“wallet Margret umfassen”), but she is able to rebuff him and run away (190). The second attack is more serious. Two men approach her in Trier when they see her crying because she could not get into the cathedral where the relic had been displayed during a service. One of the men says he will help her, although he clearly does not believe in the strength of relics, and wants to take advantage of her innocence. She

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encounters the two men again after she leaves Trier, and they suggest she should repay their “kindness”: “you still owe me a sign of gratitude” (“einen Dank bist du mir aber noch schuldig,” 195). Margret misunderstands his intentions, curtsies, and takes his hand, declaring that once she knows where he lives, she will gladly bring him a thank-you gift (195). The man who had previously been described as quite friendly was now “no longer as nice; he reached his arms out and pressed the unwilling girl to himself” (“lange nicht mehr so nett; er streckte die Arme aus und preßte die Widerstrebende an sich,” 195). Margret pushes him away, resisting the violence, and before anything else happens, Valentin, a young farmer appears. Before Margret’s second frightful encounter, she has already begun to recognize a change in herself. When she wakes on the first morning on her own, “she appear[s] differently to herself, wonderfully foreign and unknown” (“sie selbst [kommt] sich anders vor, wunderbar fremd und unbekannt,” 191). After overcoming the two sexual assaults, Margret discovers another, non-violent side of male sexuality in Valentin, when he escorts her home from Trier. After spending many harmonious hours together on the road, with Valentin’s arm around her for much of the trip to protect her from the rain, Margret is safely delivered to her door. In a reversal of the encounter of the two violent men, when Margret takes Valentin’s hand to thank him, he does not take advantage of her but requests a kiss. Margret then takes the final step toward accepting her sexuality: “Margret, shy little Margret threw both arms around his neck and truly gave him quite a proper kiss directly on his mouth!” (“Margret, die kleine schüchterne Margret schlang beide Arme um seinen Hals und gab ihm einen rechten, echten, wahrhaftigen Kuß, mitten auf den Mund!” 199). The text concludes with “Thus Margret’s pilgrimage came to an end” (“So endigte Margret’s Wallfahrt,” 199), suggesting that the goal of the narrative, the titular pilgrimage, was not the visit to the holy relic, but Margret’s overcoming her fear and obtaining a “Schatz.” The rape-like violence Margret originally experiences is replaced by a more positive version of male sexuality. Clara Viebig’s alternative to the Western capitalist fantasy of the factory girl presents two characters who share many similarities. Both Maria Josefa and Margret are caretakers for their relatives (Maria Josefa takes care of her grandfather, and Margret cares for her mother). Both are industrious: Maria Josefa is “the best worker, the most nimble” (“die beste Arbeiterin, die flinkste,” 171), and Margret has “industrious fingers” (“fleißigen Finger,” 184). Both start out as women who labor for others, but by the end of the novellas, they have learned the value of their own

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happiness and pleasure—a lesson that surprisingly foreshadows the evolution of feminist philosophies in the 20th and 21st centuries. Although there is no evidence that Viebig was familiar with the factory girl in Anglo-American literature, by concluding her short story collection Kinder der Eifel with two texts that intermingle work and female sexuality, she taps into the cultural phenomenon of the factory girl and turns the trope on its head. Viebig’s factory girl rejects commodification and becomes an agent of her own desire.

Bibliography “A Latter-Day ‘Pastourelle’: ‘The Factory Girl.’” Ceol: A Journal of Irish Music 1.3 (1963): 5-10. Amireh, Amal. The Factory Girl and the Seamstress. Imagining Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. New York; London: Garland, 2000. Askey, Jennifer Drake. “’I read it secretly’: Clara Viebig’s Struggle with Naturalism.” Excavation 15.3-4 (2001): 120-133. Boos, Florence. The 'Queen' of the 'Far-Famed Penny Post': 'The Factory Girl Poet' and Her Audience.” Women's Writing 10.3 (2003): 503-526. Cohen, Norm. Where is the Lowell Factory Girl? A Tangled Yarn from the Textile Mills. Occasional Paper No. 5 for the Fund for Labor, Culture & History. US: Cohen, 2005. Fleissner, O.S. “Ist Clara Viebig konsequente Naturalistin?” PMLA 46.3 (1931): 917-929. Kanzler, Katja. “Discourses of Production and Consumption in New England ‘Factory Girl’ Literature.” Anglistik und Englischunterricht 82 (2014): 29-44. Klaus, H. Gustav. “New Light on Ellen Johnston, ‘The Factory Girl.'” Notes and Queries 55.4 (2008 Dec): 430-433. Lovell, Thomas B. “Separate Spheres, and Extensive Circles. Sarah Savage’s The Factory Girl and the Celebration of Industry in Early Nineteenth-Century America.” Early American Literature 31.1 (1996): 1-24. Merriam, Eve. Ed. Growing up Female in America: Ten Lives. Boston: Beacon P, 2001. Newey, Katherine. “Climbing Boys and Factory Girls: Popular Melodramas of Working Life.” Journal of Victorian Culture 5.1 (2000 Spring): 28-44.

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Ranta, Judith A. Women and Children of the Mills: An Annotated Guide to Nineteenth-Century American Textile Factory Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. Richard, Melissa Jill. “Genres of Work: Working Identities and the Factory Girl in Victorian Literature.” Diss. U of North Carolina, Greensboro, 2014. Savage, Sarah. The Factory Girl. Boston: Munroe, Francis & Parker, 1814. Tamburro, Frances. “The Factory Girl Song.” Southern Exposure 2.1 (1974): 42-51. Viebig, Clara. Kinder der Eifel. Alf: Rhein-Mosel-Verlag, 1998.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE VALUE IN WOMEN’S EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA: HANNAH WEBSTER FOSTER’S THE COQUETTE AND THE BOARDING SCHOOL CAROLINE MARTIN

Hannah Webster Foster’s two epistolary novels, The Coquette (1797) and The Boarding School (1798), push post-Revolutionary American understanding of middle-class women’s education and employment beyond conventional 18th-century boundaries. As Foster interweaves a discussion of female learning with the topic of women’s “proper” place in the public and private spheres, she forces readers to question what makes a woman useful and valuable in the new republic of America. Additionally, Foster plays with the very term “employment,” suggesting that occupation for sheer amusement and pleasure can lead to trouble. Retaining some degree of conventionality, Foster points to marriage as the traditional way in which18th-century women are expected to employ themselves, which largely relegates them to the private sphere of the home. On the other hand, through the female letter writers in her novels, Foster proposes that women, whether single or married, may find ways to contribute to early American society beyond the confinement of the home. What is more, the very act of writing in which Foster and her female characters engage works to bridge the gap between the private and public realms. The female characters in both of Foster’s texts are united in their desire for agency, acting as representatives of post-Revolutionary America’s newfound independence. While the plot lines of the novels vary fairly radically, I find it crucial to consider Foster’s texts as companion pieces, Boarding School acting as the educational tract so lacking within the pages of Coquette. In Coquette, we are presented with the story of Eliza

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Wharton, a character based on real-life New Englander Elizabeth Whitman. Coquette was popular in Foster’s time, and even into the Victorian period, largely because the novel centered on a highly sensationalized story based on true events. Within Foster’s text, Eliza has been raised with a single goal in sight: to marry, and marry well. Just so, Eliza’s early education has instilled in her an “implicit obedience to the will and desires of [her] parents” (Foster, Coquette 5). The expectations of family, friends, and early American society converge to box Eliza into a place where marriage exists as virtually the only option allowed to a woman. Unable to make a good marriage, Eliza falls prey to a rake, becomes pregnant, and dies in childbirth along with her baby. Although Foster’s characters in Boarding School have likewise been taught that marriage should be their eventual goal, they are also instructed by headmistress Mrs. Williams to cultivate skills beyond the purely domestic. Alongside reading letters from former boarding school students, Mrs. Williams inserts verbal lessons, gently guiding the young women listening (and the ones reading Foster’s book) to seek to perpetually educate and employ themselves in ways that befit a lady. No real plotline exists in this novel, yet Foster manages to raise important questions about women’s place in the public and private sphere in post-Revolutionary America. Woman’s role in early American society has been central to the scholarly dialogue surrounding Foster’s texts. Significant to this conversation is Cathy Davidson’s seminal Revolution and the Word, which provides a useful look at early American literature and its readers. Davidson gives most of her attention to Coquette, with Boarding School receiving only a handful of mentions. Like other academics, Davidson suggests Foster’s novels, Coquette especially, aim to entertain and educate young American women. Building upon Davidson’s discussion of Foster’s works carrying a particular message, Karen Weyler analyzes themes of marriage and coverture within Coquette as Foster’s method to make political insinuations about America. Similar to the foci of Davidson and Weyler, scholars who look at Boarding School also highlight womencentric themes within the novel. Boarding School was never as popular as Coquette, and even today it has not garnered half as much scholarship as Foster’s first novel. Just as Coquette has been analyzed as a didactic text, Gwendolyn Foster examines Boarding School as it fits into the conduct fiction genre, suggesting that Foster uses this conventional mode to point to a subversive message, critiquing the state of female education in America.

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Foster rightly identifies Boarding School as a controversial novel for its time, though the text does not deal so blatantly with issues of female sexuality and marriage as Coquette. Instead, Foster uses the focus of female education in Boarding School to pinpoint and criticize weaknesses in the system of female education in early America. In many ways, Foster suggests female education as it stands (at the time of the novel’s writing) is too steeped in pursuit of frivolous and impractical skills. Moreover, though Foster’s two novels are seemingly stand-alone works, Foster deftly uses the text of Boarding School to further the conversation of female education started by Eliza’s tragic story in Coquette. Jennifer Desiderio and Angela Vietto make an apt proposal regarding this connection between Foster’s novels, stating: “The texts…work together as a pedagogical diptych of sorts: one-half depicting the consequences of a young woman following vice and the other half showcasing the achievements of young women following virtue” (23). As Desiderio and Vietto spell out, Coquette acts as a sort of harsh lesson for young female readers, while Boarding School shows women how to empower themselves through employment. Additionally, while in Coquette Foster implies that little room exists for women to move beyond the strictures of marriage, in Boarding School she extends the conversation to point to ways early American women may engage themselves beyond the scope of marriage. In the end, although marriage proves potentially limiting for many early American women, Foster creates a dialogue between her novels, using female education and employment to posit ways women can work toward independence in both the public and private spheres. Alongside a discussion of female education and employment appears the ever-present topic of marriage, always in the background of Foster’s novels. The strictures of marriage may, Foster suggests, be in part superseded by the very ways in which a woman both educates and employs herself. Eliza in Coquette seems to lack the practical education given to the students and letter writers in Boarding School, which may partially explain the ease with which Eliza gives into a life of amusement and frivolity. Foster especially punctuates Coquette with a language of bondage in the context of Eliza’s exploration of her marriage options with much trepidation. As Eliza sees it, marriage is a potential form of imprisonment, and she worries that she is “too volatile for a confinement to domestic avocations” (53). Eliza’s volatility implies she somehow fails to meet the norm of early American womanhood, which makes her unfit for marriage and its duties. In this case, her “volatility,” suggestive of her independent nature, comes across as a negative trait. While Foster’s readers indeed might have categorized Eliza as atypical, Foster posits that

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Eliza’s fears about marriage are warranted. What is more, Foster’s female characters in Boarding School express concerns about marriage very similar to Eliza’s, emphasizing that women’s fear of marriage is widespread. Davidson very aptly, in her introduction to Coquette, raises the question Foster herself cannot answer: “How does one escape the social parameters of female powerlessness and female constraint?” (xx). Although, as Davidson points out, Foster does not provide readers with an answer, she does imply that by better educating and employing themselves, women in early America may begin to push against the restraints of society. For Foster, female education and employment are intertwined. As she uses the term, “employment” refers to the ways a woman engages herself and uses her time. Employment, therefore, may be done with entertainment in mind or to make oneself useful. Education, in turn, acts as a way for a woman to enrich and employ herself. Though the word “employ” scarcely appears in Coquette, Eliza’s constant search for a suitable husband may be viewed as a task or a career she must carry through. In Coquette, the “employment” emphasis is mainly in finding a husband who will support a woman for life; virtually all her education up to the point of marriage has worked toward preparing her for her presumed eventual roles as a wife and mother. Eliza has been conditioned, both by family and friends, to see marriage as a career. The consequences for not successfully completing her task, Foster suggests, are severe, since Eliza’s lack of marriage prospects leads to her depression, seduction, and death. After Eliza marries, she must still keep herself “employed,” though this will no longer be in finding a husband but in fulfilling domestic tasks and ensuring that they align with her husband’s career. In many ways, the woman marries her husband’s career as much as she marries the man. Eliza worries about her suitor’s occupation as a minister: “But [Boyer’s] situation in life! I dare not enter it. My disposition is not calculated for that sphere. There are duties arising from the station, which I fear I should not be able to fulfill; cares and restraints to which I could not submit” (Foster, Coquette 39). As Eliza states here, if she were to marry Boyer, she would have to take on his career, or “enter it.” Further, Eliza views this potential career as confining; she would be forced to “submit” to certain duties and to carry out certain responsibilities she feels would prove binding. Having to confine herself to the same man for life further disconcerts the fun-loving and flirtatious Eliza. Writing to her friend Lucy, she expresses her enjoyment of social functions, stating: “From a scene of constraint and confinement, ill-suited to my years and inclination, I have just launched into society. My heart beats high in expectation of its fancied

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joys” (Foster, Coquette 29). Though she does not reference this in explicit terms, Eliza more or less relishes acting as a female coquette. Moreover, just as Eliza notes here, she has been previously denied social pleasures due to an early betrothal her family arranged for her with a young minister. This minister dies early in the novel, temporarily thus freeing Eliza from the feared bonds of marriage. While she partakes in the pleasures of social events, the pressure remains for her to marry, a notion that she cannot help but continually resist. Laura Korobkin sheds some light on Eliza’s inability to give herself in marriage, suggesting, “Eliza’s rebellion is…an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to achieve a specific goal: marriage to a man with wealth and position sufficient to guarantee a life of idle luxury and endless socializing” (80). Eliza’s “goal” and her employment are one and the same here; again, Eliza has been raised to view finding a husband as a form of a career. Moreover, her absorption with seeking her own pleasure rather than engaging in useful activities to educate and better herself eventually leads to disaster, culminating in Eliza’s death. Unlike Coquette, Boarding School makes frequent use of the term “employment” and occupation, interweaving this with thoughts on female education and skills needed in the lives of the “useful” 18th-century woman. One Boarding School letter writer, Cleora Partridge, worries that young women lack the practical skills needed to manage a family before they marry. Foster uses the highly practical voices of young women like Cleora to suggest a perpetual need to self-educate in early American society; more to the point, Foster urges readers to recall Eliza’s plight in Coquette, where lack of mental enrichment and useful employment lead to moral dissipation. In this instance from Boarding School, Cleora suggests that, rather than learning such skills after marriage, women should strive to acquire and build their knowledge of managing a family beforehand: “Young ladies of fashion are not obliged to the task, and have too seldom any inclination to perform duties which require so much time and attention; and with which, perhaps, they have injudiciously been taught to connect the idea of servility” (283). Cleora’s situation, because her mother has been ill, allows her to make active use of the practice of family management within her parents’ home. Moreover, Cleora has a thirst for seeking out and learning useful skills, which Eliza does not. On the other hand, Cleora implies that something is lacking in the area of female education. Ladies of “fashion” are urged to cultivate abilities, such as singing and dancing, which verge on the frivolous instead of the useful. In the end, Foster suggests with this example that employment that does not contribute in some way to home or society is a waste of time. While Eliza stands for an example of how a young woman should not employ herself,

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Foster peppers the text of Boarding School with many instances of useful engagement. Though Foster uses both Coquette and Boarding School as educational tools, the former seeks to entertain readers in ways that the latter does not. Boarding School, therefore, becomes the place where Foster can address the themes of female education and employment that she started in Coquette. Building off this theme of didactic literature intended for a female audience, Davidson underscores that Foster’s female readers were continually being taught how to behave, including through the very novels they read. As Davidson establishes, “Female education was…in a number of the first sentimental novels, an education in the value of playing the proper sexual roles available to women” (Revolution 110). Foster’s characters mainly consist of middle-class young women who have been conditioned to marry and make good wives. Davidson here highlights, with the very term “value,” the fact that the skills these women are expected to acquire will work to enhance their usefulness to their future husbands and American society as a whole. Davidson’s mention of women “playing the proper sexual roles” suggests an amount of artificiality in the way early American women are supposed to behave. What is more, women are expected to “act” in a particular way, which in itself could involve playing a role. Eliza certainly plays her role well as a light-hearted female coquette; however, her overengagement as a coquette leads to her downfall. Foster does not, through Eliza’s story, condemn employing oneself in pleasurable pursuits, but she does suggest this kind of occupation needs to be tempered with useful employments. Jeffrey Richards also highlights this emphasis on female artificiality, proposing, “In The Coquette and The Boarding School, Hannah Foster imagines a social world whose attractions women must resist, yet on whose stage women must know how to perform if they are to live in the world at all” (243). Eliza may engage in the social attractions Richards refers to, but only to an extent. The moment Eliza becomes caught up in social frivolities—to the point that she is literally seduced by them—her shortcomings in the areas of female education and employment become evident. Richards suggests Foster has a keen awareness of woman’s place in the public social world of early America, and Foster’s readers would have been similarly cognizant of such social mores. Foster uses the example of a very thorough female education in Boarding School to imply that Eliza’s education in Coquette has in some way fallen short. Further, a proper education should encourage a young woman to enrich her mind continually; she should always be seeking to engage herself in useful employments, which Eliza does not.

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Foster does not necessarily tout boarding schools as the best form of female education, but she does endorse its very thoroughness (and everpresent tones of morality) to establish how crucial a good education is for young women. In stark contrast, John Bennett’s Strictures on Female Education (1787) provides an opposing look at opinions on female education during the early American period. Bennett criticizes boarding schools for young women, suggesting they cultivate “artificial” dispositions. As Bennett posits, “If women wish to please, they should consider that nothing can please long, but the simplicity of nature…they were certainly born for something more important, and that when the short reign of their charms, shall expire, they will be able to procure a durable esteem by nothing but the solid qualities, and the domestick [sic] virtues” (125). This statement proves jarring since Bennett essentially implies that nature, not education, is responsible for the skills a woman has. Contrary to this, Foster promotes female education as a way to cultivate and enrich a woman’s inherent abilities. Bennett’s thoughts here also reflect those of Eliza’s friend Lucy, who stresses that once the “inestimable jewel” of virtue or esteem vanishes, little value exists for a woman (Foster, Coquette 133). Unlike Lucy, though, Bennett points to domestic skills as a means, beyond purity, for a woman to garner respect. Though the topic of female education is not directly addressed in Coquette, its very absence indicates that there is a problem in this area. Because Eliza fails to enrich herself through any of her methods of employment, she fails in carrying through her primary task, which is of course to secure a husband. Foster indicates that female employment— particularly the type of employment—acts as a way to measure female usefulness, and, therefore, a woman’s value within early American society. Moreover, both looking for a husband and simply keeping oneself pure, as Weyler considers in her article on Coquette, are ways for women to occupy themselves and, ultimately, to establish their worth or value. In turn, when discussing ways in which young women can further and enhance their “usefulness,” Foster touts the importance of female education. In fact, she begins Boarding School with a brief dedication to the “young ladies of America,” wherein she asserts she has created the text with a lesson in mind, “Convinced of the many advantages of a good education, and the importance of improving those advantages” (178). Since America is still in its infancy, it becomes particularly crucial to ensure that its future leaders—women especially—receive a thorough education because they will be expected to educate the generations to come. The advantages Foster refers to in Boarding School point back to Eliza’s unfortunate outcome in Coquette; perhaps, had Eliza been educated

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differently or more thoroughly, she might not have succumbed to the charms of a rake. Often accompanying a discussion of necessary feminine skills comes the topic of amusing oneself, or seeking pleasure as a less beneficial form of employment. To her students in Boarding School, Mrs. Williams states, “It is by no means amiss for youth to seek relaxation from severer cares and labours…Guard, then, against those amusements which have the least tendency to sully the purity of your minds” (218). Mrs. Williams also advises students to enrich their knowledge in areas such as reading, writing, and music, but there seems to be an understanding that amusements should be tempered in favor of that that is utilitarian. What is more, too much pleasure and amusement can lead to moral dissipation, which would “sully the purity of [female] minds,” thus detracting from a woman’s intrinsic value within early American society. With the introduction of pleasure, one cannot help but bring in a discussion of how this ties to female sexuality—a connection that is inevitable. A woman’s purity establishes her value in the marriage market; if she loses this purity because she falls prey to the pleasure of sex (as Eliza does), her value is negated, perhaps even gone altogether. Foster does not linger on a discussion of premarital sex, yet the topic remains ever-present, especially when Eliza falls pregnant and cannot hide the very fact that she has been sexually educated. Indeed, Foster spends limited time, textually, from the point where Eliza and Sanford begin their affair to the point where Eliza dies from complications of childbirth. The majority of Coquette centers on frivolities Eliza engages in and social functions she attends. These frivolities—the ways Eliza “employs” herself—are what Foster implies lead to Eliza’s downfall. In the same way eating too many sweets is bad nutrition, Foster suggests engaging in too few useful or practical forms of employment can be detrimental to one’s moral character. Eliza’s friend Lucy, unaware that Eliza has truly “fallen,” expresses fear over Eliza’s actions. Lucy’s censure of Eliza relates to the fact that, at this point in the novel, Eliza has botched her chance for marriage to a respectable clergyman. Lucy urges Eliza to break ties with the rake Sanford, and points to a woman’s virtue as being her main bargaining chip within early American society: “No female, whose mind is uncorrupted, can be indifferent to reputation. It is an inestimable jewel, the loss of which can never be repaired. While retained, it…ensures the esteem and respect of all around us” (133). Lucy does not outright state this, but female virginity essentially equates female reputation. Having lost that, Eliza’s own feelings of negated self-worth become evident when she virtually silences herself by the end of Coquette. As the novel comes to a

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close, fewer and fewer letters from Eliza appear. In the end, not only can a woman’s purity add to her potential value, but so can the very way in which she engages herself. Eliza’s employments are too steeped in seeking pleasure, inevitably leading to her ruin. When Mrs. Williams in Boarding School warns her students that amusement can ruin purity, she harkens readers of Coquette back to Eliza’s seduction and eventual demise. Eliza serves as the example Mrs. Williams urges young women not to emulate. Eliza enjoys acting the part of the coquette and seems to forget that she is expected to marry— marriage is her “job.” She emphasizes the need to pursue amusements after having cared and mourned for her deceased almost-fiancé: “I am a poor solitary being, who need some amusement beyond what I can supply myself. The mind, after being confined at home for a while, sends the imagination abroad in quest of new treasures, and the body may as well accompany it, for ought I can see” (15). Eliza’s mind needs enrichment, which in itself serves as a sort of education. Indeed, Foster wants female readers to enrich themselves continually with constant education. Eliza’s words here, suggesting women are so confined to the home that they often lack the opportunity to enrich their lives, act as Foster’s subtle critique of American society for giving women so few options to truly educate themselves. Although she wishes to free herself from society’s confining restraints, Eliza’s type of education and employment leads to dire consequences due to the forbidden pleasure of sex outside marriage. Had Eliza had a moral model like Mrs. Williams, guiding her to cultivate her mind and employ herself in useful ways, perhaps Eliza’s story would have been different. On the other hand, because so few details of Eliza’s education are actually broached in Coquette, it becomes difficult to parse out how truly uneducated one may deem her. As Shelly Jarenski convincingly argues, “It is clear that…Foster’s heroine, would [not] be seducible…if [she] were not also educated” (62). Jarenski’s reasoning for Eliza’s “seducibility” hinges on the fact that Eliza’s privileged—and thus educated—status creates and allows for the possibility of her seduction. Jarenski goes on to point out that Foster in no way faults female education as the reason for Eliza’s eventual seduction. Indeed, quite the opposite is true, as Foster wants young women to not only be educated but better educated. Furthermore, as Jarenski sees it, Foster allows Eliza agency in the matter of her own seduction; she is given a “choice,” and she makes the wrong decision (65). While Eliza certainly does have some say in whom she marries, in other ways, the “choices” she has are few and appear highly unsatisfying. The very education Eliza has received only limits her

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marriage prospects; more so, her proclivities toward the fashionable are frequently indulged, and family and friends do not encourage Eliza to employ or educate herself through more practical pursuits. Being so steeped in pleasurable amusements leads Eliza to seek out a man who is similarly inclined. Not only does Sanford in many ways act as the male double of Eliza, but he is also as poor as she. Sanford must marry for money, and Eliza’s only currency is her purity, which she chooses to give to Sanford, a man who can never marry her. While Eliza’s eventual actions in Coquette could potentially be deemed “immoral” behavior, Foster uses Boarding School to extend the conversation and provide numerous examples of “moral” behavior on the part of young women. Throughout her second novel, Foster provides readers with both good and bad examples of female behavior, always urging her readers to emulate the good. One frivolous letter writer from Boarding School, Amelia, aligns herself with the pleasure-loving Eliza through her characteristics, especially when she blithely notes to her friend: “How can you employ yourself? Employ, did I say? Pho! I will not use so vulgar a term! I meant amuse! Amusement surely is the prime end of our existence!” (260). This is one of the blatantly frivolous perspectives in Boarding School. Even the short, emphatic sentence structures of Amelia indicate both her lack of seriousness and her short attention span. The fact that Amelia cannot compose a thorough and thoughtful letter acts as a sort of warning sign, informing readers that this writer lacks the ability to engage herself in such a useful task as writing a meaningful letter to a friend. The letter writer also mocks practical employments as “vulgar,” even though Foster indicates that exactly the opposite is true. Foster likely introduces Amelia as an example of someone not to be emulated regarding “employment.” Foster provides a response to Amelia’s frivolous letter through the voice of a former student at the boarding school. Again, such a counterreaction from a model young woman allows Foster to juxtapose the “good” behavior with the “bad.” One could even say that, through this letter, Foster can directly address Eliza’s “bad” behavior in Coquette. In contrast to the previous letter, this female writer, Harriot, responds directly to the flippant correspondent, stating “Which mode of life, yours or mine, do you now think the most rational, and productive of the greatest happiness? The boarding school, which you affect to despise, has, it is true, formed my taste; and I flatter myself that I shall never wish it altered” (262). Not only does Harriot assert that being productive and wellemployed is “rational,” but she suggests that such productivity leads to happiness. At this moment, Foster’s texts seem to be speaking to one

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another: Eliza is the opposite of the rational and productive woman Harriot outlines. Moreover, Eliza’s desperate unhappiness may in part be exacerbated by her very unproductivity, as Harriot stresses here. Just as the very structure of Amelia’s letter points toward her frivolous nature, the structure and phrasing of Harriot’s epistle reveal her more measured and practical nature. Foster provides through these two letters, Harriot’s directly following Amelia’s, a prime example of how a woman who actively employs and continually educates herself vastly differs from a woman who does not. In turn, the very act of letter writing can be seen as a useful form of employment, namely when it is done as thoughtfully and thoroughly as Harriot does. The anonymous author of The American Letter Writer (1793) underlines this importance of letter writing as a skill, noting: “There is nothing more commendable, and at the same time more useful in life, than to be able to write letters on all occasions with elegance and propriety” (325). A beneficial talent for men and women alike, letter writing specifically permits women to converse with one another, and allows them—especially those confined to the home—to seize a voice they would otherwise lack within the public realm. Julia Stern suggests: “Epistolary fiction represents a vision of community within its very form. At the same time, it affords the illusion of enfranchising individual voices” (107-8). All of Foster’s female letter writers are potentially faced with the virtual confinement of impending marriages, yet they still maintain their own individual voices through letters, which are most often addressed to other women. Foster lets the individual voices of early American women shine through as she peppers the texts of Coquette and Boarding School with their epistles. As seen through the letters of Eliza and the light-hearted Amelia above, “employment” for some may simply mean seeking out amusements. Foster uses this play on “employment” to imply that young women must engage in useful forms to better themselves. But this may not always be entirely in their control. In one case, a correspondent in Boarding School references a letter a group of young women wrote to a respected minister, ascribing at least some blame for poor female education to men: It is certainly a most humiliating reflection, that [women] should…be more anxious to become amusing, than useful companions. But…does not such conduct in ladies too often receive the most flattering encouragement from the gentlemen? How seldom is intrinsic merit distinguished; and the serious, prudent female preferred, even by those who style themselves men of sense and penetration, to the airy flaunting coquette! (307)

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The young women who have penned this letter are censorious of empty amusements, indicating that these idle pleasures detract from a woman’s potential usefulness. But because men encourage female frivolity, women have little inclination to improve themselves. Left unsaid here remains the insinuation that female frivolity combined with male encouragement can lead to sexual exploration. Ultimately, Foster and the letter writers here suggest true women of “intrinsic merit” are those with sense who endeavor toward being “useful companions” to men rather than light-hearted playthings. Foster’s mention of the coquette in the above excerpt cannot help but remind readers of Eliza in the aptly-named Coquette. Eliza’s pleasureloving ways are exactly what draws suitors to her in the first place, yet they also make her a fitting target for similarly frivolous rakes. When her eventual lover, Sanford, first meets Eliza, he writes of her, “I had an elegant partner; one exactly calculated to please my fancy; gay, volatile, apparently thoughtless of every thing [sic] but present enjoyment” (19). The traits Sanford uses to describe Eliza all point to pleasure-seeking: “gay, volatile…thoughtless.” The volatility Eliza earlier saw in herself was discussed in a negative light; furthermore, Eliza wrote of her volatile nature as making her unfit for domestic occupations. Eliza’s other suitor, Boyer, similarly admires Eliza’s happy nature, yet he acknowledges that— were Eliza to become his wife—there would be a need to temper and regulate her lighthearted ways. Boyer has an awareness of Eliza’s everchanging and volatile nature, which does not make Eliza unfit for domesticity, but certainly leads her to balk at the thought of confinement to the home. In juxtaposing the traits of Eliza’s suitors, the one serious and the other carefree, Foster perhaps postulates that two people who are more interested in amusement than employment may be ill-suited for one another. While the serious Boyer would help to keep Eliza’s pleasure drive in check, Sanford only encourages Eliza’s frivolity. Eliza is not the only one of Foster’s characters to express concern at the thought of marriage. The headmistress, Mrs. Williams, in Boarding School writes to a former pupil who has voiced uncertainties on the topic of marriage. The words of advice Mrs. Williams writes align themselves with the very fears articulated by Eliza in Coquette: “To a lady of sensibility, the confinement of the body, without the consent and union of according minds, must be a state of inexpressible wretchedness” (296). This instance reinforces the notion that Mrs. Williams, the educator of countless young women, is exactly the sort of moral guide Eliza was so lacking. Moreover, this moment clarifies that Eliza’s fears of marriage as a form of bondage are more than warranted. Though Foster never quite

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answers the question of how a woman may move beyond the confinement of marriage in early America, she creates a dialogue through her two novels to suggest that education and employment are ways in which women may begin to work toward their own independence. Just as she uses the text of Boarding School to extend the conversation of women’s place started in Coquette, Foster suggests that female writers can also use the written word as an artful tool to bridge from the world of the private to the public.

Bibliography The American Letter-Writer: CONTAINING, A VARIETY of LETTERS ON the most common Occasions in Life, viz. Friendship, Amusement, Duty, Love, Advice, Marriage, Business, Courtship, with FORMS of MESSAGE CARDS. 1793. Excerpt from The Coquette. By Hannah Webster Foster. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 325-327. Print. Bennett, John. Strictures on Female Education. Norwich: Ebenezer Bushnell, 1787. Hathi Trust. Web. 12 Sept. 2014. Davidson, Cathy N. “Flirting With Destiny: Ambivalence and Form in the Early American Sentimental Novel.” Studies in American Fiction 10.1 (1982): 17-39. Print. —. Introduction. The Coquette. By Hannah Webster Foster. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Vii-xx. Print. —. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print. Desiderio, Jennifer and Angela Vietto. Introduction. The Coquette and The Boarding School. By Hannah Webster Foster. London: Broadview, 2011. 9-29. Print. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. “The Dialogic Margins of Conduct Fiction: Hannah Webster Foster’s The Boarding School.” Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas 25 (1994): 59-72. Print. Foster, Hannah Webster. The Coquette and The Boarding School. London: Broadview, 2011. Print. —. The Coquette. 1797. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print. Hamilton, Kristie. “An Assault on the Will: Republican Virtue and the City in Hannah Webster Foster’s ‘The Coquette.’” Early American Literature 24.2 (1989): 135-51. JSTOR. Web. 27 Aug. 2014. Jarenski, Shelly. “The Voice of the Preceptress: Female Education in and as the Seduction Novel.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 37.1 (2044): 59-68. JSTOR. Web. 9 Sept. 2014.

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Korobkin, Laura H. “ ‘Can Your Volatile Daughter Ever Acquire Your Wisdom?’: Luxury and False Ideals in ‘The Coquette.’” Early American Literature 41.1 (2006): 79-107. JSTOR. Web. 27 Aug. 2014. Richards, Jeffrey H. “The Politics of Seduction: Theater, Sexuality, and National Virtue in the Novels of Hannah Foster.” Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History. Ed. Della Pollock. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998. 238-56. Print. Rush, Benjamin. Thoughts Upon Female Education. Philadelphia: Prichard and Hall, 1787. Primo ebook. Web. 4 Nov. 2014. Stern, Julia A. The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Print. Weyler, Karen A. “Marriage, Coverture, and the Companionate Ideal in The Coquette and Dorval.” Legacy 26.1 (2009): 1-25. Project Muse. Web. 26 Aug. 2014.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN WEAVING EXPECTATIONS AND BONDS IN WOMEN’S WORK: TEACHING QUEENSHIP IN BRAVE SARAH CHASE CROSBY IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

Scholars like Jane Chance and Shari Horner study how queens in literature, including Hildeburh and Wealhtheow from Beowulf, have used weaving skills to create peace. The epic poem reveals peace-weaving traditions from Anglo-Saxon culture, which continued throughout and after the medieval period, influencing contemporary renditions of female rulers. Known as peace-weaving queens, such leaders work in the public sphere by communicating and reaffirming bonds between families and countries. Weaving peace through verbal skills and relationship-building seems empowering, but textile-weaving, as studied by scholars such as Marta Weigle and Victoria Wodzak, appears to demonstrate confining, passive expectations of womanhood.1 Yet, textile-weaving also highlights a mastery of domestic skills in the private sphere and symbolizes women’s valuable peace-weaving abilities within families. Queen Elinor in Walt Disney/Pixar’s film Brave (2012) is an example of a contemporary rendition of a peace-weaving queen, who works tirelessly to keep her home and country at peace. She struggles to teach her daughter, Merida, gender expectations and queenly duties, connecting her

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Karen Rowe and Marina Warner are other scholars who analyze weaving traditions, although their well-known writings are also older. Due to limited space, I chose to focus on preeminent scholars rather than recent scholarship within these traditional fields. This also pertains to the inclusion of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar over Vera Sonja Maass when researching gender roles and familial relationships and historical analyses of queenship over Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein’s analysis of Disney’s medieval setting trend.

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lessons to historical traditions of textile, verbal, and bond-weaving within private and public spheres. Brave focuses on Elinor’s teachings and her marriage arrangement for Merida; however, Merida perceives such gendered expectations to be confining and shows no interest in becoming like her mother. Elinor initially fails to stop Merida from defying the kingdom’s traditions, but as the plot develops, the two manage to repair not only their mother-daughter relationship but also the bonds between clans. Disney’s choice to feature a mother and queen figure actively teaching peace-weaving as the core element of female public authority provides a rare look into motherhood and women’s work. Additionally, privileging the bond and love between these women—rather than a traditional heterosexual romance or female passivity—represents an empowering trend in recent Disney films, which in Brave strengthens the fate of both women. In an exploration of this trend, the first section of this chapter will examine how Brave displays Elinor’s queenship and peace-weaving responsibilities. This will be followed by an analysis of Merida’s rebelliousness against her mother’s gendered work and identity expectations, leading to conflict and failure. The final section focuses on the ways in which Elinor and Merida use their empowering peace-weaving skills to bond and successfully change patriarchal marriage traditions.

Queen Elinor’s Peace-Weaving Connections Elinor’s traditional Anglo-Saxon and medieval peace-weaving responsibilities originate from literary figures like Wealhtheow from Beowulf. Wealhtheow establishes herself within this tradition through her marriage, involvement in rituals, and active social communication. 2 In doing so, Wealhtheow mirrors the influence historical peace-weaving queens can wield—a tradition continued in the film Brave, portraying a royal family in medieval Scotland. Traditionally, a peace-weaver achieves harmony through an arranged marriage with a member of a rival clan or kingdom, bearing children and using verbal diplomacy in attempts to keep that peace (Horner 68). Elinor’s marriage to King Fergus thereby establishes a truce between their clans, which serves to solidify the kingdom. The clans in Brave are known for fighting one another, but

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A true comparative analysis of Beowulf and Brave would be the subject of a different paper; however, Elinor clearly relies on similar queenship traits and abilities as Wealtheow, and experiences moments of peace-weaving failure like Hildeburh.

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through Elinor’s marriage, as well as Merida’s impending one, peace continues to be woven between and among them. Due to the patrilineal nature of inheritance, Elinor’s successful delivery of male triplets represents the fulfillment of her duty to provide male heirs. By having a daughter, like Merida, Elinor has also created a potential to continue building the bond between clans to subsequent generations through peaceweaving marriages and resulting children. Historically, this creative production through childbearing and diplomatic communication has served as a rewriting of history (Horner 69). Both of these efforts involve women, like Elinor, actively working to bring people together and potentially transform conflict into peace. Thus, childbirth and diplomacy provide Elinor with an opportunity to influence the fate of her kingdom. As a queen, Elinor works with associated power, influencing her husband and children as well as the male clan leaders through her presence and verbal diplomacy. Kings have the direct public or political power, but Theresa Earenfight describes the reality of extensive queenly involvement both privately and publicly: “The official, public, political face of medieval monarchy may have been gendered male, but . . . . many queensconsorts were . . . often their husbands’ equals in a wide range of issues that span the public-private continuum that encompasses governance, religion, art, culture, and family” (129). Therefore, queens could use their knowledge and influence in diplomatic maneuvers while seeming to passively follow their husband’s wishes. For example, Elinor’s speaking ability far surpasses that of her husband, and she often steps in to help the less-mature Fergus express what is expected of him. Elinor uses her verbal diplomacy skills to focus the fighting clan leaders on the impending marriage of her daughter: “In accordance with our laws, ... only the firstborn of each of the great leaders may be presented as champion and thus, compete for the hand of the princess of Dunbroch. To win . . . they must prove their worth by feats of strength or arms in the games.” Seeking to channel the young men’s competitiveness into accepted cultural traditions, she vocally acknowledges the clan leaders’ masculine attributes of strength and war. These statements flatter their male power while also strengthening her own and allowing her to subtly shift their potentially dangerous energies toward a friendly competition. Elinor’s influence thus connects to her peace-weaving responsibility of ensuring order and strengthening social bonds within and between the public spheres of the clans, for current and future generations. Although Elinor never replicates the historical traditions of gift-giving or mead-cup rituals, she conducts the gendered education of Merida and arranges for the clans’ suitor presentations (Nelson 304). When presenting their sons to

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Elinor and Fergus in their castle hall, the leaders of the Dingwall, MacGuffin, and Macintosh clans exhibit exaggerated masculinity, bragging about their heirs’ physical strength and wartime feats in a verbal match that quickly escalates into accusations and a physical brawl. Elinor’s work as a queen requires her to re-establish or mend their bonds, so she calmly stands up and strides among them—leading the men to quickly stop fighting and apologize. Although the scene displays the lighthearted tone of a parent calming misbehaving children, it also showcases the relationship between the clans and their sovereign. Elinor knows the clans have a duty to one another and their King to maintain strength and stability within the kingdom, so she uses the respect they have for the King and herself as Queen to focus their energy on a single task—the marriage of her daughter. Due to her command of respect and diplomatic skills, clan leaders or lords often address their concerns to Elinor rather than Fergus, making them more reliant on her diplomacy than on their King. Consequently, while Elinor’s gender traditionally represents domesticity, often confined to the private sphere, she also utilizes substantial power in the public sphere as a peace-weaver. Elinor also works to build peace for her family and kingdom through her textile-weaving skills. A flashback reveals Elinor working on a tapestry that depicts the individual figures of a mother, father, and daughter together. Later in the film, the tapestry hangs on display as a symbol of the royal family, with the addition of Merida’s young triplet brothers. Rather than being used in a practical sense, like a blanket, the tapestry serves to demonstrate Elinor’s familial peace-weaving success. Victoria Wodzak emphasizes: “The act of weaving draws together useless, disparate threads through the exchanging, from side to side, or a threadladen shuttle, to produce a strong, durable, useful fabric. Thus, we have weavers of tales, of plots, of fate, or peace” (256). Elinor spends countless hours producing a tapestry that represents the weaving together or telling of the story of the family she created, symbolizing the successful establishment of peaceful bonds that can continue for future generations. When Elinor weaves her children into history, she bonds two disparate clans together and stabilizes the peaceful communication within the kingdom. Her textile weaving skills are a traditionally feminine task learned within the domestic space; yet, the artifacts and skills used to create them mirror peace-weaving within the political and economic space. Thus, in Brave, the private sphere of home and family is directly related to the public sphere of politics and diplomacy, empowering queens like Elinor, who are capable of wielding multi-layered influence.

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Conflicts and Failures in Teaching Peace-Weaving Elinor presides over the private, domestic sphere of home and family, including the gendered education of Merida. Preparing royal daughters within this private space until they can begin their work for their family and kingdom in the public sphere is an important part of the serious, yet loving relationship between a daughter like Merida and her family. John C. Parsons suggests: “Daughters are prepared from childhood for their roles as peace-weavers . . . . [and] mutual affection underlies their reciprocal obligations” (69). These obligations are rooted in the lessons of gender identity and gendered work expectations that, in the case of Elinor and Merida, lead to conflict despite their mutual affection. Passionate about her duty to teach Merida to become a queen like her, Elinor focuses on what she finds crucial to a peace-weaving education: oratory skills, geography and history of the kingdom, and etiquette. She knows Merida must use these skills to create peace; for example, to communicate effectively and weave bonds among different factions, “a princess must be knowledgeable about her kingdom.” These are skills that Elinor herself effectively demonstrates throughout the film, and works to pass on to Merida. Other aspects of Merida’s gendered education, such as music lessons, may reflect more of Elinor’s personal interest or unconscious effort to conform to the standards of femininity she most likely learned as a young woman. Ever the disciplinarian, Elinor states a princess does not “doodle,” “chortle,” “stuff her gob,” “place her weapons on the table,” or “raise her voice.” Instead, a princess “rises early,” acts “compassionate,” “patient,” “cautious,” “clean,” and “above all, a princess strives for, well, perfection.” These female gender expectations encourage Merida to listen, show respect, and be feminine in a passive way—skills that are expected but mask the agency possible within the peace-weaving role. Therefore, Elinor fails to persuade Merida to accept the expectation of marriage when she states: “This is what you’ve been preparing for your whole life.” Just like perfection, this position presents itself as a seemingly impossible task that confines one to specific gender ideals and negates individuality—a characteristic Merida clearly embraces. Merida does not naturally embrace Elinor’s style of femininity; by contrast, Elinor seems to not only excel at feminine activities but also to perpetuate patriarchal traditions by continuing to expect them from her daughter. Marta Weigle clarifies: “The highly valued skills of stitchery, spinning and weaving were not necessarily easily mastered by all women. Considerable tensions must have been generated—doubts about one’s womanly competence [and] anger at difficult or dreary tasks” (30).

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Merida, who shows more competence at traditionally masculine skills than feminine ones like textile-weaving, becomes frustrated by Elinor’s support of her confinement to these gendered expectations and marriage. Merida instead enjoys horseback riding, archery, and climbing; she also expresses masculinity in a nonverbal fashion, by being loud and taking up more space like her father, Fergus. By following in her mother’s footsteps, Merida would have to give up her beloved activities, which she resists. In fact, Merida reveals that as a princess, “I’m the example; I’ve got duties, responsibilities, expectations; my whole life is planned out, preparing for the day I become, well, my mother.” She suffers from, as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar reveal, “matrophobia—fear of becoming one’s mother— [which] supplies one more motive to flee the parental house” (125-126). Merida remains unable to see the agency and empowering potential of the peace-weaving role and runs away from home to escape the fate of becoming a woman like her mother. By teaching Merida the same seemingly narrow idea of womanhood that she herself embodies, Elinor imposes the confining aspects of her motherly and queenly roles on her daughter. While a queen’s work duties allow her to preside over the private space of the household and influence the public sphere of the kingdom, these obligations are linked to her husband’s political position and societal values (Huneycutt 34). A queen remains bound to these traditions, restricting her personal individuality and agency. Thus, the empowering qualities of a queen’s work also reside within a restrictive gender role. This cycle of women engendering women like themselves, raised to fulfill the same domestic duties as those before them, can be confining for those who do not wish to perpetuate these gender identity expectations. The respect of Fergus and the clan leaders gives Elinor power, but the peace among the clans relies on her constant presence—whether she wishes to be continuously available or not. Without the ability to make their own choices, peace-weaving women can be passed like commodities from king to king and from clan to clan, representing an ultimately imprisoning tradition. Merida is expected to participate in this exchange, as princesses throughout history often did; however, she actively chooses to resist these prospects—thus breaking the bonds between herself and Elinor and within the kingdom. Historically, peace-weaving queens often became confined by a system that limited their own impact, causing personal strife and, ultimately, failure of peace between feuding groups (Wodzak 256). Despite this possibility, Elinor does not feel able to change the traditions she must pass on to Merida, leading her to focus on her daughter’s preparation as a fellow peaceweaving queen rather than challenge gendered roles.

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Disappointed and frustrated by Merida’s response to her diligence and hard work, Elinor struggles to communicate and appreciate Merida’s passions as different but just as necessary as her own. In a back-and-forth segment juxtaposed alongside Merida’s own private conversation, Elinor states: “But are you willing to pay the price your freedom will cost? If you could just try to see what I do I do out of love, I think you’d see; if you could just listen.” These scenes not only reveal the importance of communication for bonding, but they also highlight the lack of direct interaction between the two women. Elinor seems genuinely excited for Merida, perhaps believing that her daughter can find the happiness she herself found within an arranged marriage. When practicing her verbal diplomacy with Fergus, Elinor states, “I understand this must all seem unfair, even I had reservations when I faced betrothal . . . . but we can’t just run away from who we are,” revealing her worry along with her strong sense of duty. Despite seeming to relish her peace-weaving role and obviously loving her family, Elinor acknowledges the difficulty in adapting to these tasks. Nevertheless, she does not yet acknowledge the possibility of resisting such expectations or see the necessary potential for change that Merida’s actions provide. Before the games, for example, she notices Merida’s discomfort with her dress and the unhappiness her impending marriage has caused her, but she still chooses to remind Merida to smile instead of discussing her concerns. This inability to weave peace between her and her daughter displays a failure in Elinor’s work skills, foreshadowing a broken bond between the clans as well. Failed peace-weaving queens are also present in other literary works, including Hildeburh from Beowulf. Hildeburh, a Danish princess, marries a Frisian King for peace-weaving purposes, but fighting between the nations continues, leading to the death of her brother, son, and husband, and signaling a failure to keep the peace through bonds of marriage, childbearing, and diplomacy. Although Elinor, like Hildeburh, should not be blamed for Merida’s actions, her inability to control her daughter (and thus stop the resulting damage to the bonds between clans) still reflects poorly on her as a mother and a peace-weaving queen. Merida’s courage and ability to shoot with (and for) her own hand seem like a triumph for women; however, by defying traditions, Merida attempts to claim her own agency without the power to actually change these traditions. Elinor reminds Merida of the danger in abandoning her responsibilities: “You embarrassed them. You embarrassed me. You don’t know what you’ve done. There will be fire and sword if it’s not set right.” Merida, still unaware of the true implications of her actions, begs her mother to call everything off and claims that these confining expectations are “unfair” to

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her. She then tears her mother’s tapestry, symbolically separating the figure of Elinor from herself in pride and anger and displaying her own failure as a daughter and peace-weaver. Appalled by the destruction of the symbol of her life’s work, her bonded family, Elinor angrily responds, “you are a princess, I expect you to act like one,” and throws Merida’s bow in the fire. Brave focuses more on this mother-daughter relationship than the realistic and far-reaching consequences of broken bonds as experienced by Hildeburh or historical queens, but the symbolic failure of peace-weaving as their most important work is nevertheless clear through their mutual rejections. Elinor immediately regrets the symbolic denial of her daughter’s true identity, but her place as queen means she must think of her work role within the kingdom as well as her maternal love for Merida. Thus, they must reach a compromise between societal expectations and individual happiness.

Bonding and Change through Peace-Weaving Success Public peace-weaving work, like Elinor’s, also comes in the form of storytelling, which happens to appeal to Merida’s natural affinity for weaving oral tales, leading to the eventual bonding of the mother and daughter as they continue their peace-weaving journeys. Elinor tells the ancient story of their kingdom, teaching Merida that “legends ring with truths” as she utilizes the public, masculine skill of oral storytelling within the private, feminine sphere. Elinor recognizes the value of responsibility and accepting one’s role or fate in society as well as the reality of how intertwined people’s lives are, especially among the clans of the kingdom. Thus, her tale attempts to instill in Merida the importance of weaving peace to bond the clans rather than following an individual path. However, Merida’s quest for individuality leads her to rebel against this idea. She states at the beginning of the film: “Some say our destiny is tied to the land, as much a part of us as we are of it. Others say fate is woven together like a cloth, so one’s destiny intertwines with many others.” Merida desires agency or the opportunity to weave her own path rather than deal with a chosen fate. This interest in creating one’s own story also manifests in her interest in finishing her father’s adventurous stories. Therefore, Elinor must ultimately learn that roles and expectations can change with time, but Merida needs to learn that each person’s choices also affect others, in positive or negative ways. Both Elinor and Merida must learn to better communicate their love for one another as part of their peace-weaving work. When a spell transforms Elinor into a bear, she brushes off her crown and puts it back

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on her head. She also attempts to cover herself with clothes and continues with familiar parts of her identity as a queen and mother. Clinging to rules, such as her disapproval of Merida’s archery, Elinor must now confront her own lessons when Merida provides her with raw fish and asks, “How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t try it?” Elinor is messy, noisy, and out of her element as a bear. The realization may be unconscious, but Elinor now experiences the discomfort and fear of adapting to a challenging change or performing something other than herself, just like her daughter (Elinor as a bear and Merida within the traditional female gender role). Now relying on Merida, Elinor leaves her crown behind. This gesture could symbolically represent a passing of the torch, but Elinor must still learn to listen to her daughter. In Merida’s teenage mind, her mother’s love and earlier memories of fun and laughter have become overshadowed by Elinor’s focus on her gendered education. When Elinor makes Merida laugh and protects her against the bear Mor’du, she shows Merida her love alongside her maternal role (as a literal mother bear). As in diplomacy, listening and experiencing another perspective provides Elinor and Merida with the opportunity to repair their bond with one another. Repairing that bond solidifies Elinor and Merida as successful peaceweaving figures. Although Merida’s prior actions have led to broken bonds, she pushes Elinor to change traditions and ultimately achieve a greater peace and success for themselves and others. Stacy Klein connects this peace-weaving work within the domestic sphere to a central, heroic force within the social order (104). Despite the difficulties they face, Elinor and Merida are both protagonists who must use peace-weaving work to repair their bond and the bonds within the kingdom. As such, Elinor is not the only one who must adjust her perspective. Merida’s interest in individualism remains valuable, but Queen Elinor’s sense of duty is essential as well. Merida learns that she cannot completely turn away from her mother’s identity when she hurries to follow a witch’s instructions to correct an earlier mistake: “Fate be changed, look inside, mend the bond torn by pride.” Merida must mend the tapestry, thereby using the feminine skills her mother taught her to symbolically reconnect them. In doing so, Merida repairs their bond by unifying the fragmented family and versions of femininity—ultimately providing a “rebirth” for both women and the kingdom itself. Symbolizing their acceptance of each other’s differences and subsequent bonding, Merida and Elinor are shown creating a new tapestry together (with Merida and Elinor in her bear form) and racing on horseback at the end of the film. More importantly, Elinor now sees the

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potential for a compromise between expectations (peace between the clans) and Merida’s happiness, thereby guiding her through a peaceweaving change of traditions. Elinor uses hand gestures to help Merida verbalize: “My mother, the queen, feels in her heart that I, that we, be free to write our own story, follow our hearts and find love in our own time. The queen and I put the decision to you, my lords—might our young people decide for themselves who they will love?” The male leaders, those with the direct political power, must support this proposed policy for actual change to occur, but their sons, the suitors, interrupt any objections. Revealing similar thoughts and experiences to Merida, they voice their own opinions for the first time. Through this moment, Merida realizes that Elinor supports her happiness and that being a peace-weaver offers an empowering potential to seize agency for herself and others around her. Along with the bonding and peace-weaving success within the family, Elinor uses her diplomacy skills to help Merida repair the relationships between the clans. Looking into the castle hall at clan members with drawn weapons, Merida realizes they will go to war unless a peaceweaving queen like Elinor can stop them. Merida looks to her mother to address the situation, but in the form of a bear, Elinor cannot calm them with her presence or work through verbal diplomacy. Therefore, Merida must now accept this role and use the skills she learned from her mother. Merida begins her peace-weaving with the same story of the kingdom Elinor taught her and reminds the clan leaders of the events that bound them together: “Lord MacGuffin, my dad saved your life stopping an arrow as you ran to Dingwall’s aid, and Lord Macintosh, you saved my dad when you charged in on a heavy horse and held off the advance. And we all know how Lord Dingwall broke the enemy line . . . . My dad rallied your forces, and you made him your king. It was an alliance forged in bravery and friendship, and it lives to this day.”

Weaving in each clan leader like a thread in a tapestry, Merida acknowledges their individual masculinity and battle skills; she also reminds them how they saved each other as well as their kingdom through their actions. Despite their past as enemies, the MacGuffin, Dingwall, and Macintosh clans were brought together to defend their lands against an invading force—circumstances that led to their current bonds with one another and with their leader, Fergus. Both the male duty of fealty and the female duty of peace-weaving are needed for effective diplomacy within the kingdom. Rather than blaming others or avoiding responsibility, Merida admits that her selfish mistake damaged their pride and ignored

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traditions, impairing their duties to one another. Merida now recognizes her role as the peace-weaving solution to their fighting, and she works to reconnect their friendships and bonds through her actions.

Conclusion Along with the domestic sphere skill of textile weaving, Elinor passes on the gendered task of publically weaving peace among individuals and clans through verbal diplomacy and storytelling skills. This work may initially seem confining, but it ultimately leads to empowering changes to patriarchal marriage traditions; it also repairs the bonds between Elinor and Merida as well as the clans. Without Elinor’s peace-weaving guidance, Merida could never have accomplished such changes, but without Merida’s resistance to gender expectations, Elinor would have never considered a change. Consequently, their mother-daughter conflict and eventual bond emphasize that powerful female figures working together are capable of affecting social changes to benefit themselves and others. In that sense, Disney’s recent trend opens up the possibility for female characters within public spheres to make more active choices without the need for romantic relationships—a pattern of familial bonding that continues in the animated film Frozen (2013) and the live-action film Maleficent (2014). Thus, Brave’s lesson is that bonds between women can ultimately be strengthened through empowering work.

Bibliography Andrews, Mark, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell. Brave. Perf. Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson. Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, 2012. DVD. Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition. Trans. Howell D. Chickering. New York: Anchor, 2006, Print. Buck, Chris and Jennifer Lee. Frozen. Perf. Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana. Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, 2013. DVD. Chance, Jane. Woman as Hero in Old English Literature. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1986. Print. Earenfight, Theresa. Queenship in Medieval Europe. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print. Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Print.

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Horner, Shari. The Discourse of Enclosure: Representing Women in Old English Literature. Albany: State New York UP, 2001. Print. Huneycutt, Lois L. Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003. Print. Klein, Stacy S. Ruling Women: Queenship and Gender in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 2006. Print. Maass, Vera Sonja. The Cinderella Test: Would You Really Want the Shoe to Fit? Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009. Print. Nelson, Janet L. “Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making.” Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe. Ed. Anne J. Duggan. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1997. 301-316. Print. Parsons, John C. “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet Evidence, 1150-1500”. Medieval Queenship. Ed. John C. Parsons. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. 63-78. Print. Pugh, Tison, & Aronstein, Susan, eds. The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairytale and Fantasy Past. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print. Rowe, Karen E. “To Spin a Yarn: The Female Voice in Folklore and Fairy Tale.” Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm. Ed. Ruth B. Bottigheimer. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1986. 53-74. Print. Stromberg, Robert. Maleficent. Perf. Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Sam Riley. Walt Disney Pictures, Roth Films, 2014. DVD. Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994. Print. Weigle, Marta. Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology. Albuquerque: New Mexico UP, 1982. Print. Wodzak, Victoria. “Of Weavers and Warriors: Peace and Destruction in the Epic Tradition.” Midwest Quarterly 39.3 (1998), pp. 253-262. Web. Ebsco. 4 Nov. 2014.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN WOMEN’S PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION IN DOWNTON ABBEY: PARALLELS ACROSS TIME AND SPACE LARA CARLSON UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA

The female body has long been a site of scrutiny and a space to control. In Bodies that Matter, Judith Butler writes: “[I]t has been argued that women ought to perform certain social functions and not others, indeed, that women ought to be fully restricted to the reproductive domain” (33). A body is important because without it, one cannot be or function, as illustrated by what Butler calls the “concept of materiality,” or “‘something without which we cannot do anything’” (29). A body’s construction and appearance directly determine what its role will be or how society will see this role; in the case of a woman’s body, the very definition of womanhood is tied to its reproductive abilities. At the same time, just like men’s bodies, women’s bodies are capable of production of goods and services. This capacity of female bodies for not only production but also reproduction has historically been at the root of women’s oppression and suffering. The PBS show Downton Abbey illustrates this at great length, and it further suggests that the only way a woman can fulfill both her productive and reproductive capacities is by overcoming personal hardships and keeping parts of her life hidden from society. The show’s plot revolves around a family’s middle daughter, Edith, who experiences pressures typically faced by women at the turn of the twentieth century: finding a husband, bearing children, and thus becoming a useful member of society. For American women who are viewers of the show, these pressures are surprisingly relatable because they continue to be at work in their own lives. Though contemporary women have more access to education and Western societies have moved away from the patriarchal

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notion of inheritance, many still struggle with the roles imposed by marriage and motherhood. There have been changes in our ideas of what marriage means and what expectations are placed on parents, but they remain comparable to the traditional norms for forming families. Barbara J. Risman, in her essay, “Families: A Great American Institution,” writes, “Nearly all Americans seem to agree on the importance of a strong family” and that “…a family is not just an individual choice. It is also a social institution” (453). Such an institution is maintained thanks to an oppressive ideology — a framework of beliefs and accepted practices for the creation of families — which is at the root of the pressures faced by most Western women. The theoretical framework for this analysis is cultural materialism, a branch of anthropological theory, which suggests that analyzing “the primacy of modes of production and reproduction” is of utmost importance when learning about society’s cultural beliefs, according to R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms (285). This theory argues for looking at the ways in which culture uses and produces material goods. Applying a cultural materialistic view to the female body allows us to observe and interpret specific ideas about relationships, reproduction, and a woman’s work in the larger context of society. Within that context, this analysis also employs the concept of mystic motherhood, which highlights the expectations women face to excel as mothers, constantly under scrutiny from others. Their utility comes from rearing future citizens, children prepared to enter society and abide by its norms upon reaching adulthood. Judgment is thus bound to emerge over the choices women make between production (in the form of work) and reproduction. Comparisons to what was once deemed the appropriate way to maintain families often prove to be detrimental to contemporary women. By analyzing sociocultural views of women in Edith’s time and American women today through a cultural materialistic lens, one can see the need to transform this notion of mystic motherhood into a more inclusive perspective that reflects a variety of women’s decisions about marriage and work. Outlining the familial and work pressures American women still face, even after a century of social changes, can explain why Edith in Downton Abbey is one to which contemporary audiences still relate, in more ways than one. To understand how Edith’s struggles foreshadow Western women’s hardships a century later, one must first look at the character’s interactions with her family and potential suitors. The television show, which boasts 10 million American viewers, according to James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly, portrays a wealthy family in Edwardian Great Britain, with a

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customary patriarchal focus on male lineage (n.p.). After a cousin has tragically died on the sunken Titanic, the three Crawley daughters — Mary, Edith, and Sybil — learn that their family expects them to secure advantageous matches. In a direct fulfillment of this expectation, one daughter marries the new heir, a Crawleys’ cousin, keeping the estate in the family. Edith’s role as a woman with a cynical personality, without a husband or a suitor, puts her at odds with her social circle. As she watches her sisters find love, Edith becomes increasingly independent, much to the alarm of her family—driving a car and writing for a newspaper, activities practically unheard of for a young, unmarried woman of her time. She embraces independence and work after being jilted at the altar, and her “unmarriageable” character becomes ever more complex as the series progresses.

Analyzing the Role of Marriage An investigation of the social roles of Edith and contemporary American women must begin by discerning the function of marriage. Downton Abbey constantly pushes for the marriages of its female characters. For example, Edith’s older sister, Mary, states in season1 one, episode four: “Women like me don’t have a life….But really, we’re stuck in a waiting room until we marry.” For women of her time, this statement is quite true. Her economic worth depends on what match she makes and the children she bears—in other words, her continuation of the family and participation in family life. Philippa Levine, in “‘So Few Prizes and So Many Blanks’: Marriage and Feminism in Later Nineteenth-Century England,” writes: “Marriage, for the nineteenth-century woman, was perhaps the single most profound and far-reaching institution that would affect the course of her life. For the woman who did not marry, whether by choice or by chance, spinsterhood marked her as one of society’s unfortunates, cast aside from the common lot of the sex” (150). A married woman had security and a place in society; otherwise, she was a burden to her family, unable to fulfill her most important roles of a wife and a mother. It is easy to see that Edith’s family has a pessimistic, almost condescending, view of her because of her lack of marriage prospects. Her mother, Cora, sees her as having “fewer advantages,” while also stating that her daughters have “grown up [and] need their own establishments”

 1

 In Great Britain, a show’s seasons are called “series.” For the purpose of this paper, “season” will be used.

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(1.5). Edith, especially, feels the pressure to get her own “establishment.” She is not the oldest, so she will not inherit as much as Mary, but she is also not the favorite — unlike her younger sister, Sybil. A woman of her own kind, Edith has to stay in the shadows. When preparing for a wedding at Downton, Violet, the grandmother, tells Edith: “Don’t worry. Your turn will come.” Edith responds: “Will it? Or am I just to be the maiden aunt?” (2.7). Violet’s comment reiterates the societal expectation of Edith to marry while also highlighting Edith’s own insecurities about her lack of prospects. Levine writes: “Family expectation and even self-esteem competed with the public assessment of women on the basis of their marital status” (150). This illustrates the tensions Edith experiences in her private, family, and social life. Though Edith successfully secures a proposal from an older gentleman, Sir Antony Strallan, she does so only after continuously badgering him to love her. An older veteran with a combat injury, he feels she would be wasting her life by marrying him. Her family thinks the same thing, especially her father and grandmother. However, Edith makes her father reconsider by reminding him that most of the young men she knew have died in the war (3.2). Whom else is she supposed to marry? Still, Sir Antony feels guilty for potentially taking her youth away, so he leaves her at the altar. Just when she is so close to fulfilling her duty as a woman, her future is taken away from her. She is left in an incredibly embarrassing position, especially since she is of a wealthy family and under the scrutiny of the nearby village. The morning after her failed wedding, she gets up and goes downstairs, much to the surprise of her family. She exclaims: “I’m a useful spinster, good at helping out. That is my role, and spinsters get up for breakfast” (3.3). She has accepted her fate of being single and realizes that she must move forward. Otherwise, her community will only judge her more, and her failure will be more apparent. She must show her worth as a productive member of society. Ironically, Edith does find romance when she is working rather than looking for love. This relationship will be discussed further in the last major section of the essay. The parallel for American women of today is that many, just like Edith, also feel pressure to marry. While embarking on what is commonly seen as a necessary milestone in middle-class adulthood — post-secondary education — many students, male and female, face questions such as, “Are you seeing anyone right now?” or “Are there any love interests in your life?” from family and friends alike. Society holds that women especially must want to marry, even when pursuing an education might be their main goal at a particular time and even though female enrollment in college is at an all-time high. According to Forbes, “The male-female ratio in higher

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education has been steadily moving in women’s favor ever since the 1970s” (“The Male-Female Ratio”). Nowadays, 56.4 percent of students at U.S. public universities are female, illustrating women’s prevalence in post-secondary education (“The Male-Female Ratio”). This move toward more education affects how women respond to the pressure to marry. Many no longer leave high school with the intent to start a family. Their bodies have acquired new types of productive potential, and their careers do not have to be limited to the domestic lifestyle. Little wonder that women (and men) are postponing marriage. According to the U.S. Census, in 2014 women were 27 and men were 29, on average, upon first getting married (fig. MS-2). By comparison, American women of Edith’s time at the turn of the century and into the 1920s married at 20-22 and men at 2426, on average (fig. MS-2). This change in the age of first marriage for women — seven years — demonstrates evolving ideas about relationships and careers. During Edith’s time, the pressure to replenish the population after the war may have had an effect on the younger expected age of marriage. Throughout the show, the Crawley family worries about the fate of Downton; leaving it with a legitimate male heir is seen as optimal (seasons 1-3). Given the lack of a noble class in America and the relative infrequency of large estates being passed down, this specific pressure may not be present in the same shape or form for American viewers, but many other parallels persist. Women in the U.S. are, on average, still getting married at a younger age than men, making it easy for contemporary female audiences to relate to the expectations Edith faces in terms of getting married. The possible explanations for women’s younger age at first marriage offer further similarities across time. In Edith’s era, a man married later in life because he often waited to come into his inheritance, as well as finish school and get established before building a family. By contrast, a woman’s main purpose was to gain a husband and keep the family line through reproduction; thus, her marriageability was higher when she was younger and more fertile. Nowadays, women still face expectations to reproduce and face a biological deadline to do so, which may explain why they still marry at a younger age, on average, than men. When explaining contemporary views of marriage, Steven L. Nock writes, “A once nearuniversal insistence on an adult social script governing marriage has given way to an expanding range of acceptable, though less traditional, life course options, such as cohabitation….And yet the practice is still so novel that it lacks a vernacular name….The old rules have changed, but new standards have yet to emerge” (17). Though a wider range of possibilities

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has emerged, these are still being judged against the traditional values of the past. Not following the path of marriage and motherhood means embarking on uncharted life routes that may elicit social disapproval. Cohabitation is one such uncharted route, affecting marriage rates, as Jeremy E. Uecker and Charles E. Stokes discuss in their article, “Early Marriage in the United States.” They reference information from Schoen, Landale, and Daniels, writing that “Nearly 60% of all women cohabit before reaching age 24, compared to just 33% who marry by age 24” (837). Though cohabitation can mean different things to different people, many see it as a trial marriage, contradicting the family-as-an-institution norm. Uecker and Stokes explain that “Parents appear to have transmitted marriage norms intergenerationally” (842); a family made up of a traditional married couple and offspring is likely to pass down that particular concept of marriage and family, while nontraditional families may pass down more diverse interpretations of the marriage norm. Though contemporary Americans have a broader understanding of what a family should look like and how marriage fits into its creation, they have not lost awareness of the traditional family ideal and the judgments that may arise from any deviation from it. An interesting factor to consider in this context is the role that war has played molding and maintaining values and culture across space and time. The pressures American women face when making life choices about marriage, cohabitation, and motherhood are, in part, relatable to Edith’s because they reflect a contemporary interpretations of postwar stereotype, that of the 1950s housewife. This stereotype was born out of the tradition of the “angel in the house”— the Victorian ideal of a wife and mother— and, as Lynn Peril explains in Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, of the postwar social change that took place to create and maintain the idea of “pink think.” She writes: It was almost as if the men and women…viewed proper feminine behavior as a panacea for the ills of a rapidly changing modern world. For example, myriad articles in the popular press devoted to the joys of housewifery helped coerce Rosie the Riveter back into the kitchen when her hubby came home from the war and expected his factory job back….It was patriotic to be an exemplary housewife. (8)

This turn back to traditional gender roles in ‘50s America is arguably similar to Edith’s experience after the First World War, illustrated by her older family members’ insistence on maintaining traditions in a new social climate. Therefore, American viewers who have witnessed or studied this postwar shift can sympathize with Edith’s experiences when she is

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expected to fit back into a traditionally feminine role, abandoning her agency as a productive member or society.

Analyzing the Role of Women’s Work Just like marriage, women’s work is largely reflective of gender role boundaries and changing social environments. American women have become more active participants in the workforce and gained more advanced degrees in the last few decades, but marriage still factors in most women’s life plans. While Edith, a British upper-class woman, had only one job — to secure a successful match and produce future heirs — this is not the case for contemporary women in the West, who often consider both marriage and supporting a family. Analyzing Edith’s character is helpful in understanding the origin of these more complex expectations. Early on in Downton Abbey, Edith is labeled as the unlucky daughter, the woman who fails to fulfill her one duty of finding a husband. According to Levine, “Women who did not marry—those whom the Victorians, with characteristic linguistic inelegance, dubbed ‘surplus women’—were seen as doomed to an unhappily penniless and lonely existence” (151). Edith appears destined to a hopeless existence, but still she must move forward. Even her traditional grandmother, Countess Violet, tells her: “You’re a woman with a brain and reasonable ability. Stop whining and find something to do” (3.4). Though Edith cannot do her primary job — that of securing a marriage and reproducing — society still expects her to be useful. Luckily, Edith realizes she is passionate about current events and women’s rights, so she writes a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and eventually gets a job as a regular columnist (3.5). Her father is turned off by Edith’s public work and believes the newspaper only wants her title to promote itself, but Edith finally feels a sense of purpose: she has become a productive member of society. If she could only fulfill her reproductive function as well, without being judged, wouldn’t hers be a life well-lived? It is apparent, however, that fulfilling Edith’s productive and reproductive potential is difficult. She is straddling two eras: one of tradition, in which an aristocratic family must maintain its image, and the other of social change, which offers women new ways to seize social agency and also metaphorically references a transition from the supreme rule of the monarchy to one of a more democratic society. In times of war, Edith and her sisters must help care for soldiers and uphold the country’s economy. As Downton becomes a convalescent home for wounded and recovering soldiers, Edith and her younger sister, Sybil, serve as nurses.

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Edith also learns to drive so she can help a farming neighbor maintain his crop. Yet, Edith and her sisters also feel pressure from elder family members to keep up with tradition. Their roles are determined not by their abilities, but by what society and their family need from them, which indirectly references a cultural materialistic view. After the war, when Edith is no longer needed to nurse wounded soldiers, her free time increases and so does the pressure to marry and procreate, perhaps reflecting societal concerns about population loss. Her body’s worth is once again tied to her potential reproductive role. In her analysis of women’s entry into the workforce, Maxine L. Margolis, in Mothers and Such: Views of American Women and Why They Changed, employs a cultural materialistic lens to discern how a society’s production and consumption affects men’s and women’s participation in the workforce. She writes: “Ideas about women’s capabilities and proper place in the scheme of things do not change at random; they are ultimately shaped by a society’s sexual division of labor, which in turn is causally related to its productive and reproductive imperatives” (3). If a society is economically stable and needs population growth, women are likely to be pushed into the domestic sphere and encouraged to reproduce. In times of war, with men in combat, women have traditionally taken over jobs in the civilian sector. But once a war ends, women must turn back to their domestic roles—as illustrated in Downton Abbey. Margolis writes: “Once a woman’s productive skills were no longer needed, what was to occupy her time? The answer was summarized in a single word: motherhood” (15). Parallel expectations were evident in 1950s America, an era with increased rates of mechanization and productivity. Women were expected to spend less time working and instead dedicate more time to a newly emerged “cult of domesticity” (13). Margolis writes: “The ‘cult of domesticity’ gave married women primary responsibility for the care of home and children, a responsibility that could not be met if the woman took paid employment” (198). In other words, a woman who can afford it must not neglect her most important roles: domesticity and maternity. Not only did men’s role as breadwinners make domesticity the premise of women’s economic worth, but an employed woman could also be judged for neglecting her motherly duty: “The message was clear: a weak or negligent mother could create a moral monster to the detriment of all humanity” (37). A mother’s time away from the children was a potential threat to society. Margolis demonstrates the importance of motherhood through a text from that era called Godey’s Ladies Book: “‘A woman is nobody. A wife is everything…and a mother is, next to God, all

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powerful’” (38). In other words, motherhood in 1950s America was seen as next to godliness; women’s work was implicitly presented as a thing to be avoided. The consequences of this “cult of domesticity” are still apparent today. In spite of more access to education and employment, American women still face difficulties earning workplace respect and navigating the everpresent marriage and children questions. An employed woman’s marital status and participation in motherhood are up for scrutiny by her coworkers, and a woman entering a predominately male career field must especially work hard to prove her worth. How does she “balance” work and home life? In “The Discourse of Balance: Balance as Metaphor and Ideology,” Hester Vair analyzes how terms like “juggle” and “balance” illustrate “the tension between work and motherhood because work and motherhood are arranged as opposing structures” (155). It is difficult for a woman to have both children and career. According to traditional views, she will either fail in her role as a mother or falter in her career. But why is this relationship between production and reproduction a source of tension and hardship only for women? Vair argues that terms such as “balancing, weaving, and juggling” often “unwittingly reinforce the structures that penalize women” (160). Women who want to be both mothers and professionals learn they are in charge of “balancing” seemingly incompatible roles. A woman may be a productive member of society by contributing to the betterment of her community through her work. Yet, her body remains a site of scrutiny because of its potential contribution to population growth. Rosanna Hertz examines this idea in Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: “Despite social change, compulsory motherhood — the taken-for-granted belief that all women aspire to having children as part of deep biological programming — remains a critical part of women’s value to society” (4). Because a woman’s body is able to conceive, she must want children; if she chooses to have both career and family, then “balance” must be struck. As Vair explains, “This individualistic orientation toward balance also contains a competitive edge, as success and failure are attributed to personal ability” (162). Traditionally restrictive views of womanhood have metamorphosed into a new form of oppression: a contemporary woman must both produce and reproduce because her social value depends on it. If she fails to use her body’s full potential, she falls short of her economic worth. For Edith, by contrast, the workforce is a place in which she chooses to insert herself. Her work is needed only during the war. Though she serves society by working for a newspaper, unlike contemporary women Edith does not face

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expectations to juggle family and career—nor is she expected to become a full-time, perfect mother if she were to fulfill her reproductive potential.

The Role of Mystic Motherhood The glorious nature of motherhood, with all of its beauty and power, is an assumption deeply ingrained in American society. Mothers are put on pedestals from which they can easily fall. They are either revered for their awesome ability to create life or judged for their failings in raising children. Society is quick to judge mothers’ performances, but these judgments are not as prevalent for men. Though motherhood means different things to different people, mystic motherhood remains the ideal: the mythology of the perfect woman able to put her family first without fault, and able to rear perfectly behaved, healthy, and beautiful children. Her success as a person depends directly on her output: her children. Pratyusha Tumala-Narra writes in the article “Contemporary Impingements on Mothering” that “There is an increasing awareness of parenting research, especially that on mother-child attachment, in public discourse on parenting….In many cases, the repetitive exposure to this information reifies the myth of the perfect mother,” who has to “make choices about employment, meeting traditional role expectations, and providing children with education in multiple areas” (8). By contrast, Edith’s status gives her leisure time that most working women lack. She does not need to spend countless hours a week to support her family because for women of her social status, outside employment is needless. Although she is useful to society in her role as a journalist, her family and community continue to see her as a woman who might still fulfill her reproductive function. And, indeed, she does. Edith finds love with the paper’s editor, Michael Gregson, but he is married and must move to Germany in hopes of procuring a divorce. Edith, pregnant after spending one night with him, wrestles with how to save her reputation. After nearly going through with an abortion, she decides to keep the baby and “go on holiday” to Switzerland with her Aunt Rosamund (4.8). Her daughter Marigold is born in Switzerland and spends time under the care of a local farmer until she is finally taken to live with Edith at Downton. Only Edith’s mother, aunt, grandmother, and eventually her father, know Marigold’s true parentage (5.8). She has fulfilled her womanhood by having a child, but this success must be kept a secret. In season five, Edith finds out that Michael Gregson has died and left the newspaper to her, making her a successful businesswoman. She has

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become a fairly independent woman, who also happens to be, secretly, a single mother. Her life reflects the evolution of expectations women face in regard to family and work. Now her body has acquired the maximum material value, because she can both work and reproduce, like many contemporary women. Still, achieving her body’s full potential is not reflected in her social value because of the problem of reputation. Her sister Mary believes Edith has failed her biological purpose by not having children and is thus less accomplished than Mary. Although this belief is false, Edith perpetuates it, worried about what her sister, other family members, and the larger community might think of her for having an outof-wedlock child. Revealing Marigold’s origins would potentially damage the family’s reputation; it is only by keeping a secret that Edith manages to accomplish what in contemporary terms would be seen as “having it all.” Indeed, Edith emerges as an implicit role model for her contemporary female audiences not only because she has managed to both produce and reproduce, but also because she exemplifies the mystic motherhood ideal. She is portrayed as constantly wanting to play with Marigold and be part of her daily life; by contrast, her sister Mary lets a nurse tend to her son George almost all of the time. Mary even teases Edith for her constant attention to Marigold, saying Edith is not even a “real” mother; yet, she ceaselessly dotes on Marigold (season 5). As a lady of means, Mary assumes a parental role for only an hour, at tea time—an arrangement that represents different expectations of motherhood because the Crawley women can afford to have others care for their children. Edith, by contrast, has willingly chosen to perform a version of mystic motherhood. That was not a choice for postwar American middle-class women, who, Margolis writes, were left “alone at home with their children, who were now living there until adolescence, [and] began to assume almost complete responsibility for child care” (27). The mystic motherhood ideal remains alive and well, and judgments about a mother’s performance have only multiplied. Women who do not want children are seen as inherently out of the norm. Jessica Valenti argues in “Are All Women Born to Be Mothers?” that “American culture can’t seem to accept the fact that some women don’t want to be mothers. Parenting is simply presented as something everyone—a woman especially—is supposed to do” (n.p.). Women who want a career and family face the judgment that they should but cannot be successful in both, according to commonly held stereotypes.2 The normative expectations

 2

 Many newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, feature articles about topics within motherhood, demonstrating the amount of

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ultimately regard women as objects to be scrutinized rather than as humans capable of choices. Modern women’s value comes from both production and reproduction, but neither can be to the detriment of the other. Sadly, women in both Edith’s time and contemporary America have one main thing in common: no matter how hard they try, they cannot live a life free of social judgment and negativity.

What Does This Mean? The cultural materialistic lens employed by this analysis demonstrates that it is difficult for women to avoid social scrutiny of their bodies and their economic value. As long as reproduction and mystic motherhood are held to such a high standard, women will be unable to freely make choices about how to fulfill their potential. To see a woman’s worth as more than her body’s reproductive capacity requires accepting the notion that motherhood, specifically mystic motherhood, is not inherently natural. When women are able and willing to reproduce, society needs to see them as people rather than receptacles for examination. For some, motherhood remains an emotional and personal choice; for others, it is simply a role to play. How a woman mothers her children needs not be up for outside interpretation. Mystic motherhood and the treatment of the female body as a site of production and reproduction are some of the reasons many American women still struggle with dilemmas similar to Edith’s in terms of juggling personal wants, educational interests, employment choices, and motherhood. Edith’s hardships are relatable to American women, explaining the high rate of the show’s viewership in the U.S. Watching Downton Abbey gives American women an opportunity to compare their lives to Edith’s, in spite of their distance in time and space from her character. These female audiences might have realized that, instead of progressing away from the reproductive-value view of the female body, society has only added more expectations for a woman’s worth. The focus must shift from the body to the person. What would Edith want? What does the contemporary American woman want? These are the questions that matter.

 attention spent on analyzing and discussing this role and what it means in our society.

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Bibliography Borzelleca, Daniel. “The Male-Female Ratio in College.” Forbes. 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2015. . Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’.” New York: Routledge, 1993, Print. Downton Abbey. Writ. Julian Fellows. Dir. Ashley Pearce, Andy Goddard, Brian Kelly, and James Strong. Carnival, 2011-2015. DVD. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1997. Print. Hertz, Rosanna. Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. Hibberd, James. “‘Downton Abbey’ Returns to 10 Million Viewers.” Entertainment Weekly. Web. 28 Nov. 2015. http://www.ew.com/article/2015/01/06/downton-abbey-ratings. Levine, Philippa. “‘So Few Prizes and So Many Blanks’: Marriage and Feminism in Later Nineteenth-Century England.” Journal of British Studies 28.2 (1989): 150-74. JSTOR. Web. 3 Feb. 2015. Margolis, Maxine L. Mothers and Such: Views of American Women and Why They Changed. Berkley: U of California P, 1984. Print. McDee, Jon R. and Richard L. Warms. “Neomaterialism: Evolutionary, Functionalist, Ecological, and Marxist.” Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Third Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print. 284-87. Nock, Steven L. “Marriage as a Public Issue.” The Future of Children 15.2 (2005): 13-32. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2015. Peril, Lynn. Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002. Print. Risman, Barbara J. “Families: A Great American Institution.” Families as They Really Are. Ed. Barbara J. Risman. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Print. 452-58. Tummala-Narra, Pratyusha. “Contemporary Impingements on Mothering.” The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 69 (2009): 4-21. ProQuest. Web. 27 Nov. 2015. Uecker, Jeremy. E. and Charles E. Stokes. “Early Marriage in the United States.” Journal of Marriage and Family 70.4 (2008): 835-46. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2015.

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U.S. Census Bureau. “Median age at first marriage: 1890-present.” Figure MS-2. 8 Mar. 2015. http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/graphics/MS-2.pdf. Vair, Hester. “The Discourse of Balance: Balance as Metaphor and Ideology.” CRS/RCS 50.2 (2013): 154-77. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Feb. 2015. Valenti, Jessica. “Are All Women Born to Be Mothers?” The Washington Post. 31 Aug. 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-all-women-born-to-bemothers/2012/08/31/b5df2f0e-f2b1-11e1-adc687dfa8eff430_story.html.



CONTRIBUTORS

Kiera Ball is an instructor at the University of Sioux Falls and the University of South Dakota, where she teaches courses in composition and literature. She earned a M.A. in English Literature from the University of South Dakota and a BA from the University of Sioux Falls in English and Theology/Philosophy. Her research interests focus on gender and theology in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature. Canan Bilen-Green is vice provost for faculty affairs and professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering at North Dakota State University. She served as the primary investigator on NDSU’s NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant and as executive director of the ADVANCE FORWARD Project throughout its implementation. Her research interests include quality control and statistical modeling. Dr. Bilen-Green’s Ph.D. is in statistics from the University of Wyoming. S. Jean Caraway is an associate professor at the University of South Dakota and a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in cognitivebehavioral treatment of anxiety and mood disorders. Her research interests in mental health include women’s health issues, risky sexual behavior, child maltreatment, and reproductive stress. She is also interested in mental health disparities particularly with rural women and Native Americans. She earned her PhD in psychology from the University of North Dakota in 1997. Lara Carlson earned her MA degree from the University of South Dakota in 2013 and teaches composition and literature courses as an instructor for USD. She hopes to enter a Ph.D. program in 2016 with an emphasis in nineteenth-century British literature or British romantics. When she is not teaching, Lara enjoys watching historical dramas and analyzing pop culture. Sarah Chase Crosby earned her undergraduate degree from Wartburg College in Secondary English Education with a Speech/Drama/ Communications Endorsement in 2011. Currently, as a graduate student at Iowa State University, she has taught Speech Communication and Gender

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Justice, and will complete her master’s degree in English literature and Women’s and Gender Studies minor in May 2016. Sarah is passionate about teaching with a gender focus and using popular culture, graphic novels, and film within the classroom. Ilmira Dulyanova earned her master’s degree in Communication Studies from the University of South Dakota in 2011. She currently teaches Russian at USD, and works as a program assistant in the Department of Political Science. Justin Fang is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of South Dakota. His research interests include military culture and suicide, emotion regulation, and trauma. He received his BA in psychology from Texas Tech University in 2015. Karen Froelich is professor of management and director of the MBA program and of the ADVANCE FORWARD project at North Dakota State University. Her research interests include management of nonprofit organizations. Dr. Froelich’s Ph.D. is in strategic management from the University of Minnesota. Thomas James Harlow is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of North Dakota, focusing on the woman’s association movement during the Progressive era and inter-war period. His dissertation examines a case study of the Young Women’s Christian Association to explore the nature of conflict within a women’s organization in shaping group identity. At UND he teaches in the Women & Gender Studies program and the History Department, and has received a number of regional and local awards for his research. Jacqueline H. Harris currently works as a visiting faculty member in English at Brigham Young University-Idaho. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2015. Her studies focused on nineteenth-century British literature, with additional specializations in nineteenth-century studies and women’s and gender studies. She is currently working on a monograph examining evidence of female adolescent maturation within Victorian-era texts. Alice Kessler-Harris is Columbia University’s R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History and a professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of

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American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers (1968). Her published works include: In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001); Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (1982); A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (1990); and Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview(1981). She is co-editor of Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, Australia, and the United States, 1880-1920 (1995) and U.S. History as Women's History (1995). Some of Kessler-Harris' essays in women's labor history are collected in Gendering Labor History (2007). Her most recent book is A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (2012). Caroline Martin earned a BA in English from Cornell College and an MA in English Literature from Iowa State University. Her research interests center on late-Victorian women’s fiction, in particular on the New Woman and portrayals of female identity. Previous paper presentations include “The Value in Female Employment: Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette and The Boarding School” and “Trapped between Worlds: Heredity and Patriarchal Imprisonment in Summer.” Kelly McKay-Semmler (Ph.D. University of Oklahoma, 2010) is associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of South Dakota. She researches and teaches in the areas of cultural and intercultural communication, and her recent work has been published in Communication Monographs, Human Communication Research, and the Atlantic Journal of Communication. McKay-Semmler is the associate editor of the upcoming Wiley-Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, a publication of the International Communication Association. Kayla R. Nalan-Sheffield is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of South Dakota. Her research interests have evolved from her interests in clinical practice, including factors affecting the therapeutic relationship and the role of identity in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. She received her MA in psychology with an emphasis in clinical psychology from the University of South Dakota in 2014.

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Laura Hudson Pollom is a professor of communication and chair of the Department of Communication at Concordia University, Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Missouri Columbia in 2005. Among her research interests are interpersonal and organizational communication, and she teaches a variety of courses, including organizational, team, interpersonal, intercultural, and speech communication courses. She has been a member of Concordia's faculty since 2005. Kristina Popiel earned an MA in literary and cultural studies from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Emerson College. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Poetry Quarterly, Unrorean, and Glass. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches academic writing and is the head of the 20th-21st-Century Research Group. Carolyn Prentice is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of South Dakota, where she has taught since earning her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Missoui – Columbia in 2005. She teaches a variety of courses including qualitative research, gender, theory, and family communication. She has published or presented a number of interpretive studies in family communication and is currently conducting an interview study of latter-day hippies. Chian Jones Ritten received her Ph.D. in economics from Colorado State University. She is currently an assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wyoming. Her research interests involve the economics of gender and race and experimental economics to create incentives for land and habitat conservation. Haley N. Schwenk is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of South Dakota. Her research interests include attitudes towards survivors of sexual assault as well as the effects of trauma and personality on psychopathology. She earned a BA in psychology from the University of Minnesota, Morris, in 2014. Shane M. Semmler (Ph.D. University of Oklahoma, 2010) studies political communication, narrative persuasion, and character involvement in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of South Dakota, where he is associate professor and director of the university’s speech and debate team. His recent research investigates the influence of

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soliloquy in Netflix’s House of Cards (2013-present) on character identification, resistance to narrative persuasion, and political attitudes. Rebecca Steele is an associate professor of German at the University of Wyoming. She earned her Ph.D. in 2009 at Rutgers University. She has published on canonical German-language texts of the 19th century. Her main research interests are literary representations of women and outsiders as well as 19th-century female-authored literature, all of which she combines in her current research project, Monstrous Poetics and the Female Imagination in 19th-Century German-Language Literature, an investigation of 19th-century literary monsters. Renata J. Surette is a graduate student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of South Dakota. Her research interests include military health, specifically transitioning from deployment, sleep disturbances, substance use, and trauma. She received her BA in psychology in 2012 from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Blessing Ugwuanyi earned her master’s degree in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Wyoming. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University. Her thesis focused on understanding the role of the mining industry in explaining the gender wage gap. Charlene Wolf-Hall is vice provost for academic affairs and professor of veterinary and microbiological sciences at North Dakota State University. Her research interests include microorganisms in food, often working at the intersection of microbiology and cereal science. Dr. Wolf-Hall’s Ph.D. is in food science and technology from the University of NebraskaLincoln.