Episode #3: Women At Work, Part I

Image credits: Ford Sewing Machinists, TUC Library Collections // Mad Men: season 5, episode 9 // #MeToo // Logo by @3Dperson // Rosie the Riveter (via Time)

WOMEN AT WORK: In which Charlotte and Emma discuss work-as-a-vocation fallacies, lean-in feminism, mindfulness in the workplace and sexual harassment. Plus: Swedish dads, and what we owe Harriet Harman.

LISTEN iTunes // SoundCloud // Stitcher // Acast

SHOWNOTES:

• Charlotte is the review editor of the Journal of Contemporary History;
• Charlotte mentions author Rainbow Rowell, who tweeted:

Follow Rainbow on Twitter @RainbowRowell

• Emma talks about the OECD’s workplace data: the hours worked table is at https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm and GDP per worker is at http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV;

• Zero-hours contracts are exploitative and increasingly common: the UK government outlines employers’ responsibility for such workers here; the Independent writes about Dr Alex Wood’s research into the effects of precarious work here; and read more about The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain's campaign against outsourcing and zero-hours contracts at the University of London here;

• Swedish parental leave leads to stories like this, on dads and their kids;

• Harriet Harman’s latest battle in the fight for equal parental leave is for MPs to be able to take six months off without needing to cast their votes in person during that time;

• Dr Lauren A. Rivera’s article is called ‘When Two Bodies Are (Not) a Problem: Gender and Relationship Status Discrimination in Academic Hiring' and was published by the American Sociological Review in October 2017. The research in the article has been cited by Inside Higher Education:

“Even if women do 'everything right' according to individualistic narratives of choice -- pick the correct major, excel in school, pursue desirable and demanding work, and find a supportive, accommodating partner -- this may not be enough," Rivera writes. "Hiring committees may still treat them as if their careers are secondary and exclude them from top jobs."

• Eve Livingstone wrote a critique of lean-in feminism for The Guardian last year. You should also read Dawn Foster’s book Lean Out (London: Repeater Books, 2016);

• Royal Holloway’s UCU committee wrote an article about the gender pay gap at the university earlier this year;

• We talked about This Girl Can in the first podcast episode – listen to that here;

• #MeToo is still developing as we post this; CNN has written about how the campaign is, in fact, 10 years old;

• Charlotte talked about Marge Piercy’s poem ‘In the Men’s Room(s) – this is the first verse:

When I was young I believed in intellectual conversation:
I thought the patterns we wove on stale smoke
floated off to the heaven of ideas.
To be certified worthy of high masculine discourse
like a potato on a grater I would rub on contempt,
suck snubs, wade proudly through the brown stuff on the floor.
They were talking of integrity and existential ennui
while the women ran out for six-packs and had abortions
in the kitchen and fed the children and were auctioned off.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

• Charlotte recommends Gossip Girl and the Vulture recaps – the show is on Netflix and the recaps are here. Plus, she recommends My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which is also on Netflix.

• Emma recommends Skam, which will teach you how to cry in Norwegian (and laugh, and love people born in the 1990s). Who knows where you can find it though? *cough, cough*

NEXT EPISODE: WOMEN AND WORK, PART II

We’ll be talking about emotional labour, domestic labour and how the two aren’t the same thing. Sign up to our newsletter to get the episode footnotes in your inbox, and subscribe here to make sure that you're the first to know when Ep #4 is available!

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