Sunday, February 22, 2009
Evelyn Nakano Glenn in her essay "From Servitude to Service Work:" continues the running themes of gender and race. Glenn nicely ties the Kessler-Harris and Ehrenreich essays with her own explaining how the categories of gender and race shape reproduction labor. She elaborates more on race, specifically African American, Mexican American and Japanese American, in different regions of the country and how the division of labor is mostly made up of these minority people. I like hoe Glenn extends Kessler-Harris's idea of the gender roles within the household and how these roles extend to the family economically and functionally. Glenn says that "Marxist feminists place the gendered construction of reproductive labor at the center of women's oppression." (Glenn 2) The idea of women doing the majority of the household work benefits men because they are effected "directly and indirectly." (Glenn 2) Men are able to enjoy and relax at home by the services they traditionally produce and this allows them to focus on issues outside of the house like making a pay check. There is an importance in acknowledgment between the relationship of race and gender because it "recognize conflicting interests among women." (Glenn 36) This conflict is tied to the working women because they need help not being around the house as much as they would if they did not work. Here gender plays its role because Glenn explains it is "women of color" (Glen 36) are willing to work: specifically immigrants. Gender and race can been seen as two separate categories but by looking at Glenn's essay and looking back on Ehrenreich and Kessler-Harris there is enough evidence that both complement each other really well.
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