This article interrogates the gendering of labor and welfare history
as part of an examination into the meaning of work, its connection to
social welfare policy, and definitions of what constitutes a "real"
family in the United States. It examines the gendering of labor based
upon the largely male model of waged labor and the exclusion of women
of color from the early phases of women's labor history. By integrating
caregiving and domestic production into analyses of work and welfare,
it analyzes how the troika of class, race, and gender (especially as
complicated by marriage and motherhood) have become central issues in the
history of labor. It explores the racialized and gendered construction of
labor and welfare legislation and the redefinition of women's "rights"
in contemporary America as participation in the waged workforce, not
the right to choose how to combine motherwork and economic survival.
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