Response to Glenn

In "From Servitude to Service Work", Evelyn Glenn argues that race is a key factor in analyzing the history behind female roles in the workplace. Previously, she says, women's experiences were all lumped together without regard to the stark differences between the treatment of "racial-ethnic" women and "white women". In this respect, Glenn has explored something that was lacking in the Kessler-Harris article, namely regional and racial differences. Glenn agrees with KH when she says, "sexual division of reproductive labor in the home interacts with and reinforces sexual division in the labor market" (2). This is very much in the same vein as most of KH thesis, but Glenn goes on to explore why "racial-ethnic women are disproportionately employed as service workers in institutional settings" (3), and is very much adamant that race and gender are "socially constructed, interlocking systems" (3), that can and should be unraveled for the benefit of all women.
Glenn also appears to respond to Ehrenreich by going into detail about women in domestic service, but again here she deviates by concentrating mostly on the experiences of racial-ethnic women, and what that actually means for white women. The thing I found most interesting was that Glenn claims that white women hired racial-ethnic women to do their domestic services instead of clearing up gender differences with their husbands. That makes me wonder that if that had never happened, and white women had continued to be 'oppressed' by males, without having racial-ethnic women to turn to, would white women have eventually revolted against the separate spheres, bringing racial-ethnic women up with them? This drew my attention. However, do we really expect women to go to their husbands and say that they refuse to hire a maid because it reinforces race and gender ideologies? This all makes me realize how interlocked race and gender situations are, and how difficult it is, indeed, to separate the two.