All I Want Is a Job! by
In All I Want Is a Job!, Mary Gatta puts a human face on workforce development policy. An ethnographic sociologist, Gatta went undercover, posing as a client in a New Jersey One-Stop Career Center. One-Stop Centers, developed as part of the federal Workforce Investment Act, are supposed to be an unemployed worker's go-to resource on the way to re-employment. But, how well do these centers function? With swarms of new clients coming through their doors, are they fit for the task of pairing America's workforce with new jobs? Weaving together her own account with interviews of jobless women and caseworkers, Gatta offers a revealing glimpse of the toll that unemployment takes and the realities of social policy. Women--both educated and unskilled--are particularly vulnerable in the current economy. Since they are routinely paid less than their male counterparts, economic security is even harder for them to grasp. And, women are more easily tracked into available, low-wage work in sectors such as retail or food service. Originally designed to pair job-ready workers with available openings, the current system is ill fitted for diverse clients who are seeking gainful employment. Even if One-Stops were better suited to the needs of these workers, good jobs are scarce in the wake of the Great Recession. In spite of these pitfalls, Gatta saw hope and a sense of empowerment in clients who got intensive career counseling, new jobs, and social support. Drawing together tales from the frontlines, she highlights the promise and weaknesses of One-Stop Career Centers, recommending key shifts in workforce policy. America deserves a system that is less discriminatory, more human, and better able to assist women and their families in particular. The employed and unemployed alike would be better served by such a system--one that would meaningfully contribute to our economic recovery and future prosperity.
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The Economics of Women, Men, and Work by
Intended primarily for courses found in Economics Departments and Departments of Women's Studies, on The Economics of Women, Women and Work, or the Economics of Gender, this text also provides practical content to current and aspiring industry professionals. The most current and comprehensive source available for research, data, and analysis on women, gender, and economics. Blau, Ferber, and Winkler are widely known for their research and contributions on the study of the economics of gender. As active researchers and leading scholars on the subject, the authors are in tune with the most current and relevant research that's included in Economics of Women, Men, and Work.
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Gender, Inequality, and Wages by
In all Western societies women earn lower wages on average than men. The gender wage gap has existed for many years, although there have been some important changes over time. This volume of collected papers contains extensive research on progress made by women in the labor market, and the characteristics and causes of remaining gender inequalities. It also covers other dimensions of inequality and their interplay with gender, such as family formation, wellbeing, race, and immigrant status. The author was awarded the 2010 IZA Prize in Labor Economics for this research. Part I comprises an Introduction by the Editors. Part II probes and quantifies the explanations for the gender wage gap, including differential choices made in the labor market by men and women as well as labor market discrimination and employment segregation. It also delineates how the gender wage gap has decreased over time in the United States and suggests explanations for this narrowing of the gap and themore recent slowdown in wage convergence. Part III considers international differences in the gender wage gap and wage inequality and the relationship between the two. Part IV considers a variety of indicators of gender inequality and how they have changed over time in the United States, painting a picture of significant gains in women's relative status across a number of dimensions. It also considers the trends in female labor supply and what they indicate about changing gender roles in the United States and considers a successful intervention designed to increase the relative success of academic women. Part V focuses on inequality by race and immigrant status. It considers not only race difference in wages and the differential progress made by African-American women and men in reducing the race wage gap, but also race differences in wealth which are considerably larger than differences in wages. It also examines immigrant-native differences in the use of transfer payments,and the impact of gender roles in immigrant source countries on immigrant women's labor market assimilation in the U.S. labor market.
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Gender pay differences : progress made, but women remain overrepresented among low-wage workers : report to congressional requesters. by 
Invest in women, invest in America : a comprehensive review of women in the U.S. economy by 
New evidence on the gender pay gap for women and mothers in management : hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, September 28, 2010 by Equal pay for equal work? : new evidence on the persistence of the gender pay gap : hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, April 28, 2009 by 
A Woman's Place Is in the Marketplace by
If you teach any course concerned with gender equality, this book is an indispensable tool for stimulating a serious analysis of the financial and economic penalties imposed on women who must navigate between the modern Scylla and Charybdis of work and family life. This book poses substantive questions about the family, the market, the state, and the gender order, and provides a variety of analytic tools for thinking about them. The American gender order has changed in dramatic ways since the turn of the twentieth century, and to a great extent, it was the marketplace that gave rise to these changes. The "family wage" associated with union jobs in the industrial has largely disappeared. In the new economy, high-paying careers demand steep investments of education and training, while jobs accessible to those without college and post-graduate training increasingly tend to be "McJobs" that offer flexibility, but little in the way of high wages, good benefits, stability, or access to a progressive career ladder. In order to pursue the good life, women as well as men now expect to be in the marketplace for much of their adult lives. How should the family, and the state, respond to these changes? Has the imperative pushing all adults into the marketplace created a crisis in the family? Who should take care of the children while Mom and Dad work full-time? A government subsidized day care? An immigrant woman without citizenship papers? If the reciprocal relationship between the family and the market has broken down, what about the relationship between male and female? Is heterosexuality itself - or, at least, the binary gender order - becoming a nineteenth century anachronism? As well as posing these substantive questions about the family, the market, the state, and the gender order, this book provides a variety of analytic tools for thinking about them. We are used to talking about gender in legal and moral terms, with words like "fairness," "difference," and "equality." We are used to thinking about the family in emotional and psychological terms with words like "love" and "care." What might the language of economics bring to the analysis of family and gender? The Chicago economist Gary Becker caused a stir when he began to analyze the family as a site of bargaining and negotiation. Was he right that the family is a place of economic power struggle, not just a place where one goes to recover from the harsh world of the market? If the family is an economic institution, how does that change our picture of its relationship to the "market" as traditionally conceived?
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