Flexibility is often considered an advantage to workers, especially
women. This article shows, however, that, in relation to home-based
work by rural women workers, flexibility, when set within the frame
work of the family ethic, is often a trade-off for job security, wages,
and other benefits. The author suggests that work can become flexible
only when tasks are no longer rigidly gendered.
References
1.
Abramovitz, M. (1988). Regulating the lives of women: social welfare policy from colonial times to the presentBoston: South End Press.
2.
Amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to include industrial homework (Hearings before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor, 98th Cong., 2nd Sess.) (1984, February 9). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
3.
Amott, T., & Matthei, J. (1991). Race, gender and work: A multicultural economic history of women in the United StatesBoston: South End Press.
4.
Boris, E. (1987). Homework and women's rights: The case of the Vermont knitters, 1980-1985Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 13, 98-120.
5.
Boris, E., & Daniels, C. (1989). Homework: Historical and contemporary perspectives on paid labor at homeUrbana : University of Illinois Press .
6.
Christensen, K. (1988a). The new era of home-based workBoulder, CO: Westview.
7.
Christensen, K. (1988b). Women and home-based work: The unspoken contractNew York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
8.
Gringeri, C. (1993). Inscribing gender in rural development: Industrial homework in two midwestem communitiesRural Sociology , 58, 30-52.
9.
Gringeri, C. (1994). Getting by: Women homeworkers and rural economic developmentLawrence: University Press of Kansas.
10.
Silver, H. (1993), Homework and domestic workSociological Forum, 8, 181-204.
11.
Smith, J. (1984). The paradox of women's poverty: Wage-earning women and economic transformationSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 10 , 291-310.