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Equality on trial : gender and rights in the modern American workplace

Title
Equality on trial : gender and rights in the modern American workplace / Katherine Turk.
Author
Turk, Katherine
Publication
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]
  • ©2016

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Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.

TextUse in library JBE 17-984Schwarzman Building - General Research Room 315

Details

Description
284 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
"In 1964, as part of its landmark Civil Rights Act, Congress outlawed workplace discrimination on the basis of such personal attributes as sex, race, and religion. This provision, known as Title VII, laid a new legal foundation for women's rights at work. Though President Kennedy and other lawmakers expressed high hopes for Title VII, early attempts to enforce it were inconsistent. In the absence of a consensus definition of sex equality in the law or society, Title VII's practical meaning was far from certain. The first history to foreground Title VII's sex provision, Equality on Trial examines how the law's initial promise inspired a generation of Americans to dispatch expansive notions of sex equality. Imagining new solidarities and building a broad class politics, these workers and activists engaged Title VII to generate a pivotal battle over the terms of democracy and the role of the state in all labor relationships. But the law's ambiguity also allowed for narrow conceptions of sex equality to take hold. Conservatives found ways to bend Title VII's possible meanings to their benefit, discovering that a narrow definition of sex equality allowed businesses to comply with the law without transforming basic workplace structures or ceding power to workers. These contests to fix the meaning of sex equality ultimately laid the legal and cultural foundation for the neoliberal work regimes that enabled some women to break the glass ceiling as employers lowered the floor for everyone else. Synthesizing the histories of work, social movements, and civil rights in the postwar United States, Equality on Trial recovers the range of protagonists whose struggles forged the contemporary meanings of feminism, fairness, and labor rights"--Book jacket.
Series Statement
Politics and culture in modern America
Uniform Title
Politics and culture in modern America.
Subjects
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-272) and index.
Contents
Notions of sex equality -- Defining sex discrimination -- Class and class action -- Feminism and workplace fairness -- Reevaluating women's work -- Sex equality and the service sector -- A man's world, but only for some -- Opting out or buying in -- Illusions of sex equality.
Call Number
JBE 17-984
ISBN
  • 9780812248203
  • 0812248201
OCLC
930010182
Author
Turk, Katherine, author.
Title
Equality on trial : gender and rights in the modern American workplace / Katherine Turk.
Publisher
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2016]
Copyright Date
©2016
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Series
Politics and culture in modern America
Politics and culture in modern America.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-272) and index.
Chronological Term
1900-1999
Research Call Number
JBE 17-984
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