Women and Work: A Conceptual Framework

This article investigates the structures that lock women into jobs that offer low pay and minimal security. The argument advanced assumes that the marked inequality of women in the work place serves the perceived interests of powerful groups. To endure, that inequality must be organized and institutionalized. The authors suggest a framework of analysis that faces the nature of the relationships among the sources of power, institutions, and processes that keep women in this unequal position in the work force. Many investigators of the contemporary problems of women work-ers have focused their research on discrete issues concerning indi-vidual women, such as sexual harassment (Coles, 1986), comparable worth (Feldberg, 1984), equal pay (Chiplin and Sloane, 1976), and mentoring (Vertz, 1985). Others have explored tradi-tional themes regarding women workers as a group, among them, occupational segregation by gender (Bielby and Baron, 1986), the demographics of labor force participation (Hayghe, 1984), acces