Getting By
eBook - ePub

Getting By

Women Homeworkers and Rural Economic Development

  1. 208 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Getting By

Women Homeworkers and Rural Economic Development

About this book

In this book Christina Gringeri investigates the effects of homeworking on workers—mainly women—and their families and explores the role of the state in subsidizing the development of homeworking jobs that depend on gender as an organizing principle. She focuses on two Midwestern communities—Riverton, Wisconsin and Prairie Hills, Iowa—where more than 80 families have supplemented their incomes since 1986 as home-based contractors of small auto parts for The Middle Company, a Fortune 500 manufacturer and subcontractor of General Motors.

Gringeri looks at rural development from the perspective of local and state officials as well as that of the workers. Through the use of extensive personal interviews, she shows how the advantage of homework for women—being able to stay home with their families—is outweighed by the disadvantages—piecework pay far below minimum wage, long hours, unstable contracts, and lack of company benefits.

Instead of providing the hoped-for financial panacea for rural families, Gringeri argues, industrial homework reinforces the unequal position of women as low-wage workers and holds families and communities below or near poverty level.

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

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Yes, you can access Getting By by Christina E. Gringeri in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Gender Studies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Copyright Page
  7. Table of Contents
  8. Preface to the Kansas Open Books Edition
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Introduction
  11. 1 Industrial Homework as Rural Development
  12. 2 Restructured Production: Homework as Rural Development
  13. 3 Homeworkers in the Heartland
  14. 4 Integrating Home and Informal-Sector Work
  15. 5 Understanding Industrial Homework as Subsidized Development
  16. 6 Homework in a Comparative Context
  17. Notes
  18. Selected Bibliography
  19. Index
  20. Back Cover