Human WorkHuman Work represents the first ground breaking analysis on the equal importance of work in the lives of men and women. Noted feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman maintains the notion that it was "sexuo-economic oppression of women" and not women's biology that kept women from achieving in all areas of work. Accusing men of appropriating certain work as "men's work" and masking the process as a biological locus rather than an exercise in power relations, Gilman asserts that men created an economic dependence that has prevented women from success in the workplace. Introduced by noted scholars Michael Kimmel and Mary Moynihan, Human Work is necessary reading for anyone interested in power and gender structures in the workplace. |
Contents
INTRODUCTORY | 5 |
MAN AS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION | 19 |
CONCEPT AND CONDUCT | 37 |
SOME FALSE CONCEPTS | 59 |
THE NATURE OF SOCIETY I | 79 |
THE NATURE OF SOCIETY II | 99 |
THE SOCIAL SOUL | 125 |
THE SOCIAL BODY | 157 |
THE NATURE OF WORK II | 203 |
SPECIALISATION | 227 |
PRODUCTION | 249 |
DISTRIBUTION | 275 |
CONSUMPTION I | 299 |
CONSUMPTION II | 321 |
OUR POSITION TODAY | 341 |
THE TRUE POSITION | 367 |
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Common terms and phrases
action activities advantage altruism beast better Charlotte Perkins Gilman cial ciety civilisation collective common complex conduct conspicuous constituents consume consumption discharge disease distribution duction duty economic effect effort Ego concept egoism errors evil evolved exertion expression facts false feeling force Gilman grow happy healthy highly specialised human brain ideas improvement increase individual animal industry injury instincts labour leisure class lines live maintain man's ment mind modify morbid natural law nature of society needs nomic normal organisation pain Pay concept physical pleasure primitive progress race recognise result savage sensorium slave labour social body social consciousness social energy social evolution social function social nourishment social organism social processes social relation social service social spirit stimulus supply tendency things tion to-day true velopment vidual wage labour Want theory wealth whole women worker
Popular passages
Page xxvi - The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Page xvi - I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again — work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite — ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper...
Page xv - Have your child with you all the time." (Be it remarked that if I did but dress the baby it left me shaking and crying - certainly far from a healthy companionship for her, to say nothing of the effect on me.) "Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours
Page xxiv - To assume right functional relation to society," says Mrs. Gilman, "is to assume right functional relation to one another. Not charity, not philanthropy, not benevolence, not self-immolation or self-sacrifice or self anything; but simply to find and hold our proper place in the work in which and by which we live. To do one's right work involves all the virtues.
References to this book
Women of Ideas and what Men Have Done to Them: From Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich Dale Spender No preview available - 1983 |