Women's Work, Part 2: That's Women's Work (A History)

Episode Topic: That's Women's Work (A History)

How did some kinds of labor in the U.S. – care work, teaching, and domestic chores, for example – come to be seen as properly the concern of women, while other kinds of work, like business careers and scholarly pursuits, became coded masculine? In this episode, listen in to a conversation with Dr. Dan Graff, Director of the Higgins Labor Program at Notre Dame, Professor of History, and teacher of the popular course, “Gender at Work in U.S. History,” to consider where Americans’ idea of gendered “separate spheres” came from and its lasting power.

Women’s Work is sponsored on ThinkND by the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise & Society at the University of Notre Dame and Notre Dame Women Connect.

Featured Speakers:
Chris Hedlin, University of Notre Dame
Daniel Graff, Ph.D., Director of the Higgins Labor Program, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/ecc899

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Women's Work. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Women's Work Series
• 1:40 Guest Introduction: Dr. Dan Graff
• 2:51 Understanding Labor History
• 7:51 Challenges in Studying Labor History
• 16:51 The Story of Lana Sawyer
• 21:09 Class and Gender in Early America
• 21:26 Women’s Influence Beyond the Household
• 32:55 The Evolution of Women's Work in the 19th Century
• 34:31 Republican Motherhood and Its Impact
• 38:21 Catherine Beecher and Women's Activism
• 42:18 The Industrial Revolution and Women's Labor
• 45:08 Challenges and Progress in Women's Wage Labor
• 48:38 The New Deal and Women's Rights
• 54:38 Modern Reflections on Women's Work
• 1:01:34 The Role of Literature in Understanding Women's Work
• 1:04:42 `Concluding Thoughts on Gender and History