Women’s Informal Market Work in Massachusetts, 1875–1920
Married women’s entrance into the market economy proceeded at a slow but steady pace between 1890 and 1910. That, at least, is the impression given by conventional census measures of the percentage with “gainful occupations,” which practically doubled in both the United States as a whole and in the heavily industrialized state of Massachusetts (see Table 1). This impression is misleading on at least two counts. Declines in self-reporting and enumerator bias may have overstated the increase in married women with gainful occupations. More important, dwindling opportunities for informal market activities, such as industrial homework, provision of services to boarders, and participation in a family farm or enterprise, may have countervailed increases in formal market participation. In Massachusetts, at least, married women’s specialization in non-market domestic labor probably increased.
What Kind of Woman Would Work in Meatpacking, Anyway? World War II and The Road to Fair Employment
World War II accelerated the movement of rural and small town Iowa women into manufacturing industry. Scholars have debated the significance ofWorld War II for gender relations, but the recent consensus is that only focussed studies ofparticular localities can address the complexity of the changes effected by the War. This study looks at Iowa women in meatpacking plants. Assessing the economic background, their prior efforts to enterpacking plants, and the resistance they met in the plants makes their limited gains understandable. Women ofrural and small town wage earning households had always been workers, usually in the informal sector; and their World War II experience was a continuation ofthis pattern in aformal job setting. While the women did not consistentlypress for gender equality as workers, they achieved more security and higher incomes than they had had previously. World War II reorganized the work of women in rural Iowa, as it did more generally for women throughout the country. With the shift from a severe economic depression to full production, women found new employment opportunities. This paper is about the Iowa women whose wartime search for work took them into meatpacking plants. During World War II government contracts for meat and meat byproducts generated a level ofproduction that brought forth untapped labor potential of women, releasing a flood of energy that helped to shift the course ofworld history. William Chafe (1972: 195,234), in his survey of the history ofAmerican women, found World War II to have been a "watershed event" that drastically modified the balance of power between men and women, as women capably moved into jobs that had formerly been men's. Women were welding and riveting bombers in the cities; in Iowa they were cutting up hogs to provide food for allied soldiers and civilians. While
Complexity, Network-Decisions And Alternative Risk Premia: Some New Theories Of Structural Change And Portfolio Decisions.
Structural Change is the basis for many decisions such as government fiscal and monetary policies, government interventions, corporate-expenditure decisions, corporate strategic decisions, portfolio management decisions in finance; household allocation decisions, etc.. Structural change in industries and national economies is increasingly more difficult to detect partly because of the growth and dominance of Complex Systems and “Networks” in modern industries and economies – such Networks and Complex Systems include GVCs (global value chains), retail store networks; franchising networks; internet networks; services networks; credit-chains in industries; online social networks; etc.. The relationship between Complexity and Structural Change is well established in the physics, applied math and economic dynamics literatures. Traditional definitions and modeling of structural change have erroneously focused on changes in labor, technological progress, market share, and or capital – which are grossly inadequate in the new economy and post- global financial crisis (as confirmed by changes in the global retailing and housing industries and other industries). Also the modeling of structural change seems to be constrained by the availability of data, and often omits the relationship between structural change on one hand, and globalization, financial stability and international financial contagion. This article: i) introduces the Operations Strategy Model of structural change, explains how it differs from the Lewis Model of Structural Change; and explains the often omitted relationship between operations strategy (of companies and government agencies) and structural change; ii) introduces other new Complexity-based models/theories of Structural Change in industries; iii) reviews the relationships among Operations Research, Complexity and Structural Change; iv) explains the symbiotic relationship between structural change on one hand, and economic growth, financial stability, financial contagion and globalization; v) discusses the significant gap between academic research and practice and explains some issues and factors that should be considered in the development and testing of structural change models; vi) explains how alternative risk premia can be generated from new models of Structural Change.