Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

HIGHLIGHT / PUBLICATION/ 2020 – 3

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Introduction: What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present
Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini

PART I: SETTING THE SCENE: THE FEMINIST CHALLENGES TO THE “DELABORIZATION” OF HOUSEHOLD WORK

Chapter 1. Family Work: A Policy-Relevant Intellectual History
Nancy Folbre

Chapter 2. Productive and Reproductive Work: Uses and Abuses of an Old Dichotomy
Alessandra Pescarolo

Chapter 3. The Home as a Factory: Rethinking the Debate on Housewives’ Wages in Italy, 1929-1980
Alessandra Gissi

PART II: THE CUNNING HISTORIAN: UNVEILING AND OVERCOMING THE GENDER BIAS OF SOURCES

Chapter 4. The Statistical Construction of Women’s Work and the Male Breadwinner Economy in Spain (1856-1930)
Cristina Borderías

Chapter 5. Toiling Women, Non-Working Housewives and Rightful Citizens: Statistical and Legal Constructions of Female Work and Citizenship in Italy
Raffaella Sarti

Chapter 6. The Complexities of Work: Analyzing Men’s and Women’s Work in the Early Modern World with the Verb-Oriented Method
Maria Ågren

Chapter 7. The Visibility of Women’s Work: Logics and Contexts of Documents’ Production
Margareth Lanzinger

PART III: THE VALUE OF CARE AND UNPAID HOME-BASED WORK: THE ROLE OF THE LAW

Chapter 8. Regulating Home Labours: The ILO and the Feminization of Work
Eileen Boris

Chapter 9. Family-Relations Law between “Stratification” and “Resistance”. Housework and Family Law Exceptionalism
Maria Rosaria Marella

Chapter 10. Could Family (Care) Work Be Paid? From French Agricultural Inheritance Law (1939) to Legal Recognition of Excessive Filial Duty (1994)
Florence Weber

PART IV: CONCLUSION

Conclusion: Can We Construct a Holistic Approach to Women’s Labor History over the Longue Durée?
Laura Lee Downs


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Céline Mutos Xicola (December 17, 2020). HIGHLIGHT / PUBLICATION/ 2020 – 3. LABOUR AND FAMILY ECONOMY. Retrieved May 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/qvf3


You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.