|
|
|
Book Review
| Cleaning Up: The Transformation of Domestic Service in Twentieth Century New York City. By Alana Erickson Coble. (New York: Rout- ledge, 2006. xviii, 258 pp. $85.00, ISBN 0-415-97809-2.)
|
| In recent years, works by Faye Dudden (Serving Women, 1983) and David M. Katzman (Seven Days a Week, 1981) have expanded our understanding of the intersection of domestic service, gender, class, and status. Alana Erickson Coble contributes to the discourse in her study of New York City and the transformation of domestic service from a relationship in which employers had almost all the control to one where employees had greater bargaining power at the turn of the twenty-first century. |
1
|
|
According to Coble, the improved relationship between employers and domestic workers was a result of changes in racial, ethnic, and gender relations, as well as expanded opportunities in the nature of women's work. As the labor market created more jobs and the number of working women increased during and after World War I, the number of domestic workers decreased. Yet the demand for their labor in the household remained nearly constant. |
. . . |
There are about 365 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|