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Cargando... Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935por Robyn Muncy
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In this book, Muncy explains the continuity of white, middle-class, American female reform activity between the Progressive era and the New Deal. She argues that during the Progressive era, female reformers built an interlocking set of organizations that attempted to control child welfarepolicy. Within this policymaking body, female progressives professionalized their values, bureaucratized their methods, and institutionalized their reforming networks. To refer to the organizational structure embodying these processes, the book develops the original concept of a female dominion inthe otherwise male empire of policymaking. At the head of this dominion stood the Children's Bureau in the federal Department of Labor. Muncy investigates the development of the dominion and its particular characteristics, such as its monopoly over child welfare and its commitment to publicwelfare, and shows how it was dependent on a peculiarly female professionalism. By exploring that process, this book illuminates the relationship between professionalization and reform, the origins and meaning of Progressive reform, and the role of gender in creating the American welfarestate. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Muncy begins with settlement organizations, such as Jane Addams’ Hull House, arguing that they laid the groundwork for later Progressive institutions. Muncy writes of the organizations, which used personal relationships as the basis of their social structure, “In the 1890s, women were thus creating a professional culture different from that of the older, male professions. One reason for the difference was that women entered the professional world most successfully when they carved out wholly new areas of expertise in which they did not compete with men for jobs or training” (pg. 20). Women worked within a system that expected them to focus on selflessness and sacrifice for the community. Muncy writes, “Only by justifying an occupation in terms of service to the dispossessed could professional women solicit such support” (pg. 22). A lack of reliable private patronage led women to focus their attention toward getting government sponsorship, counting them in Muncy’s opinion as “America’s first progressives” (pg. 27).
The creation of the Children’s Bureau in 1912 offered women the opportunity to work on a national level. According to Muncy, “As these women moved their reforming strategies to the national government, their inclination to combine investigation and promotion encouraged them to advocate a more activist government than some of their male counterparts” (pg. 45). Discussing the development of social science, Muncy writes, “The peculiarities of the female search for professional opportunities begin to explain the continuity of progressivism among middle-class women” (pg. 73). Educated women, limited in their career prospects by the gendered dimension of the workforce, followed the paths others tread before them. According to Muncy, “During the implementation of the Maternity and Infancy Act, the Children’s Bureau and its subordinate organizations achieved their greatest power” (pg. 93). Women were able to weave together “the causes of child welfare reform and professional opportunity for women” (pg. 105). They used the auspices of the federal government for social engineering, though with a classist and racist bent. Muncy writes, “The professional arrogance and cultural chauvinism inherent in accusations of superstition [practiced by immigrants] also manifested themselves in campaigns to discipline midwives” (pg. 115). Muncy writes, “The implementation of the Sheppard-Towner Act…revealed some of the class, race, and ethnic identities that divided American women in the 1920s” (pg. 123). Muncy concludes, “Apparently the leadership within the dominion was so intent on keeping alive the values of the founders that it could not hear the new concerns of women that were surfacing in the 1920s and that would have required innovations in their program of child welfare policy” (pg. 162).
Muncy’s work draws upon the techniques of gender history, unpacking the roles of women and men and how societal expectations circumscribed or opened new opportunities for them. She demonstrates, similarly to Michael McGerr in A Fierce Discontent, that the goals of Progressivism were to socially engineer society for what middle-class whites considered best using the power of the government. The techniques developed in Hill House offered a framework for women professionals when they entered government service. ( )