"From Service to Servitude" Response

Glenn’s article entitled “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor” addresses the role that race and gender have played historically in the work field to eventually debunk them by identifying these two as “socially constructed systems” (Glenn, 31). Glenn argues that historically, race and gender have not been mutually exclusive, static facts of life but rather interdependent and dynamic constructions in the work place. Glenn writes of domestic service in particular, “Whatever the specific content of the racial characterizations, it defined the proper place of these groups as in service: they belonged there, just as it was the dominant group’s place to be served” (Glenn, 14). This article on the surface seems to strike similar chords with the “Stratifying by Sex” essay we read for our last session. In this article, author Kessler-Harris addresses historically how women have been restricted to the domestic sphere in order to keep the industrial wheel running. In their historical explorations, “Stratifying by Sex” and “From Servitude to Service Work” are extremely similar. However, Glenn’s article seems to be more of a push forward for change than a simple exploration of the past. In her concluding paragraphs, Glenn writes, “race and gender are socially constructed rather than being ‘real’ referents in the material world, then they can be deconstructed and challenged…An initial step in this process is to expose the structures that support the present division of labor and the construction of race and gender around it” (Glenn, 35). Kessler-Harris’ article, while heavily implying that a change needs to take place, fails to provide any possible solution. In this way, Glenn’s article seems to me as a reader to be a more relevant and convincing article than Kessler-Harris’ simple history exploration.