IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v8y1976i1p71-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Women's Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression

Author

Listed:
  • Ruth Milkman
  • Ruth Milkman

    (Department of Sociology University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California 94720)

Abstract

An investigation of the impact of the Great Depression on women's paid and unpaid work roles, and the implications of this for their situation in the current economic crisis. The widely accepted notion that women form a "reserve army" which is integrated into the labor market during periods of expansion and expelled with contractions is criticized. While economic expansion draws women into the labor force, it is argued, the sexual segregation of occupations creates an inflexibility in the labor market which prevents their expulsion during a crisis of contraction. Women's unpaid house hold work, however, is an arena where they can be forced to "take up the slack" in the economy during crises.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruth Milkman & Ruth Milkman, 1976. "Women's Work and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons of the Great Depression," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 8(1), pages 71-97, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:8:y:1976:i:1:p:71-97
    DOI: 10.1177/048661347600800107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/048661347600800107
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/048661347600800107?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amartya Sen, 1987. "Gender and Cooperative Conflicts," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-1987-018, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Stephan HUMPERT, 2015. "Gender-based Segregation before and after the Great Recession," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(4(605), W), pages 53-62, Winter.
    3. repec:agr:journl:v:4(605):y:2015:i:4(605):p:53-62 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Valeria Cirillo & Marcella Corsi & Carlo D'Ippoliti, 2015. "Gender, class and the crisis," Working Papers CEB 15-026, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Burca Kizilirmak & Emel Memis, 2019. "The Unequal Burden of Income Poverty on Time Use in South Africa," World Journal of Applied Economics, WERI-World Economic Research Institute, vol. 5(2), pages 31-51, December.
    6. Ladislao Martínez López, 2013. "Demanda de electricidad y déficit tarifario," Revista de Economía Crítica, Asociación de Economía Crítica, vol. 15, pages 112-127.
    7. Ellen Mutari, 2001. ""...As broad as our life experience": visions of feminist political economy, 1972-1991," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 379-399, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:8:y:1976:i:1:p:71-97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.