Job Discrimination and Women

Harley sums up society's gendered differences toward occupational status in terms of black women: "For most black women, opportunities for social status existed outside the labor market--in their family, neighborhood, and organizational and church lives" (25). This statement was made in the context of black women in the Progressive Era, but it applies to modern minority and white women as well. As long as women are pigeonholed into traditional female occupations such as clerical and service jobs, they will continue to seek confirmation of their status outside the workplace.

Although the notion that a woman's place is in the home appears to be part of a white, middle class value system, the ideal permeates all segments of society, regardless of race or income. Men, especially in working class communities, pride themselves on the fact that their wives do not work: " . . . it has always been a source of st

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an-American women in the Civil Rights movement, "Women took civil rights workers into their homes, of course, giving them a place to eat and sleep, but women also canvassed more than men, showed up more frequently at mass meetings and demonstrations, and more frequently attempted to register to vote" (157). For some people, the black woman's presence in the movement was seen as "overparticipation." Among African-American adults in the 30-50 age group, women participated in the movement at rates of about three or four times that of men (Payne 157). In fact, the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) owed much of its success to the participation of black women. Religion was one of the interests shared by black women in the South that facilitated their political organizing. The black church was, and continues to be, strong in the South, and women are the backbone of the church. According to Giddings, "It was Black women who represented both moral and social authority when controversial decisions had to be made" (284). Although Payne contends that many who joined the Civil Rights movement in the rural South did so in defiance of church leadership, nevertheless, the spiritual kinship that these women felt
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Approximate Word count = 2625
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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