Haar Werk: Vrouwenarbeid En Arbeidssociologie in Historisch En Emancipatorisch Perspectief

• Main Author: de Bruijn, Jeanne
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: Dutch
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1989
• Subjects: Men; Womens studies
• ISBN: 9798708796929

Her workWomen's work and the sociology of work in historical and emancipative perspectiveThis book describes the developments in research on women's work in the Netherlands from the end of the nineteenth century until 1988.In this historical review spanning more than a century, three main questions are considered: The first question concerns the historical incentives for the first studies on women's work. Which political and societal movements took the initiative for this research outside the academic sphere and what were their aims? The second question concerns the development in themes, research questions and assumptions during the identifiable period in which women's work has been a subject of study, related to societal developments and ideology about working women. In the third place the book analyses the attention paid to women's work questions in sociology in general before World War Two and in the sociology of work in particular since 1945. An explanation is sought for the fact that there has been a significant and long-standing gap in this area of study within the discipline of sociology. Why is it only now, in the nineteen-eighties, that this gap is finally starting to be closed?The historical roots of women's work researchThree currents can be distinguished in Dutch society, which generated interest in the 'women's question' in general and which more or less led to the first research on women's work in particular, during the second half of the nineteenth century.The first current was the protestant-christian movement of Réveil which stressed the importance of practical social work instead of giving alms to the poor. At this point in time, when there was a total lack of decently paid work for women, charity work allowed middle and higher status women to be socially active, without undermining the ideology that women did not have to work. It also awoke their social responsibility in a certain sense. The absence of decently paid work harmed unmarried women in particular, many of whom lived out their days in genteel but very real poverty. They were completely dependent on their families or they had to earn their money in secret. During the last decades of the previous century, a growing number of these unmarried women were no longer willing to accept these conditions. They wanted to perform their work in the open and to get rid of the shame surrounding it. They strived for access to education, and with it, the professions. Stemming from this movement, a group of women took the initiative to organize a national exhibition on women's work in 1889. The aims of the exhibition were to inform the broader public on all the hidden work of middle and higher status women, to instill women with pride in their work, and to inform more women and girls about education and job possibilities.The second current which focused attention on the women's work question in particular, was the nascent labour movement. The aim of this movement was to improve the conditions of the working class, beginning with work protection, first for women and children, with the ultimate objective being its realization eventually for all workers. From the point of view of the socialist movement, women's work was an extraordinary form of exploitation of the working class, which could only be terminated by an overthrow of the capitalistic society. In this sense, working class women and men were equal and therefore had the same interests. From the beginning, the struggle for the cultural and material improvement of the working class led to contradictory views of the women's work question in the socialist movement (the labour movement and socialist parties). On the one hand the socialist leaders nearly always pleaded for equal rights for women in cases of paid work, education and political rights. On the other hand, with respect to the cultural improvement of the working class, the goal was seen as being a reasonable family lifestyle, resembling the model of the bourgeois family, in which the housewife has the time to run the household and to raise the children. This last aim could be realized by achieving breadwinners wages for men, thereby making it unnecessary for women to perform paid work and concurrently eliminating low-paid women's work. This contradiction between supporting equal rights for women in paid work and the struggle to free women from performing paid work created a gap between the theory and practice of the work movement until far into the twentieth centuryNevertheless, the labour movement (and some enlightened doctors) were during this period the first to begin gathering data concerning the working class and their living and working conditions. They also persuaded the government to commence similar studies. Children's and women's working conditions were one of the objects of this data gathering exercise.The male-dominated unions contributed very little to the National Exhibition of Women's Work (1898). The 'bourgeois' character of the exhibition made it incapable of contributing to the aims of working class women. Only the female seamstress union participated; the seamstresses did, however, add an important additional dimension to the exhibition. Not only the work of bourgeois women, but also that of the working class women was made visible, enhancing the scope of the exhibition and the amount of information provided, and introducing a new focus for future study. Although there was a large gap between women of different status levels and with different aims, the period in which the exhibition took place was characterized by an open mindedness and spirit of co-operation which terminated in the decade which followed. The diversification of the women's movement led to sharp contradictions, due to the growing differences of opinion on the questions of women's work protection and voting rights.The third current which made a major contribution to the rise of the 'women's question' at the turn of the century was that of the 'radical' feminists. This group of liberal and socialist women, ideologically based on the ideas of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution, posed fundamental questions relating to autonomy and rights for women, including in their analysis the broadest possible approach to the problem (considering marriage, private property, work participation, civil rights and so forth). They had their own organization and periodical. The fundamental analyses of the 'women's question' evoked the opposition of a number of social groups to the ideas of the 'radical' feminists, including forces in the academic world.The first efforts at gathering data relating to women's work took place in a climate which was remarkably open, despite the diversification described above of women from divergent social status backgrounds, and with differing opinions about the 'women's question'. This open climate was due largely to the influence of the National Exhibition of Women's Work. The task of gathering data was continued by the National Bureau of Women's Work, which performed a great deal of small-scale research ( ' 1900-1920). Research on women's work stopped during the Interbellum, although the women's work question remained on the political agenda. The increasing power of the confessional political parties repeatedly resulted in new laws on the prohibition of paid work for married women.From the turn of the century, the ideas of the 'radical' feminists were more and more the object of criticism. The central theme of the proposed new regulation of the relations between the sexes at this time became the accentuation of the differences between the sexes. Man and woman are different, femaleness and maleness had to be severed from one another. Scientifically, legally, and practically this idea was worked out in social institutions such as the family, the labour market and the legal structure regulating working rights, for instance by creating different spheres of life (between home and work), unequal rights (labour protection laws especially for women, no equal pay, no legal capability for married women and so forth) and by cultivating the psychological differences between the sexes (skills based on femininity and motherhood). When women were taking part in the labour process, they had to be separated from men - spatially, in types of work (male and female work) and in access to skills. The unions, as mentioned already, had in theory accepted the principle of equal rights, but in practice they struggled for breadwinner wages and against female work because of the wage- cutting effect of low female wages on the pay of their male counterparts.Apart from these developments, opposition also came from within the women's movement itself. This was partly caused by the struggle for voting rights which increased the division between the women from socialist parties and the feminists. The socialist parties were fighting more for general voting rights for all men than for men and women. The feminists reacted by placing the emphasis on voting rights for women rather than on voting rights for all social status groups. The second issue which divided the women's movement concerned the special protection of women's work. The feminists were radically opposed to such protection, because it introduced new inequalities between the sexes. The socialists saw it as being necessary within the context of the circumstances prevailing at the time, and considered it as a stepping stone to general work protection for both sexes. The confessionalists saw it as a step toward general prohibition of work for married women.However, the women's movement was divided by more than these divergent political aims alone. After the turn of the century there was a growing movement of women which departed from the 'radical' feminists and reintroduced the issue of equal rights into the discussion. Instead of equality between the sexes, they wanted to stress the femininity of women to h