CityReads│10 Must-Read Books on Gender in the Workplace

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10 Must-Read Books on Gender in the Workplace

LSE Review of Books recommends 10 other must-read books on gender and the workplace.

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Picture source: https://www.statista.com/chart/8403/many-still-think-of-women-as-less-capable/

1.Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination. Tito Boeri, Eleonora Patacchini and Giovanni Peri (eds). Oxford University Press. 2015.

What mechanisms serve to maintain the gender pay gap and other forms of discrimination in the labor market? This book provides a comprehensive, empirically-driven interrogation of various facets of discrimination through data obtained from the USA, Spain and Italy. This book is a collection of academic research by a number of experts addressing two specific questions on the topic of discrimination. Firstly, it focuses on the mechanisms of gender discrimination in the labor market. Secondly, the book examines unexplored outcomes of discrimination, such as physical appearance, sexual orientation, weight and religion.

2.Recoding Gender: Women’s Changing Participation in Computing. Janet Abbate. MIT Press. 2012.

This book explores the untold history of women in computer science and programming from World War Two to the late twentieth century. Demonstrating how gender has shaped the culture of computing, it provides insight into women’s early and current participation in the field of computer science. One chapter focuses on two case studies of successful women software entrepreneurs in the 1960s, Elsie Shutt of Computations, Inc. and Stephanie Shirley of F International. After launching successful software careers in industry, both women moved into self-employment and then entrepreneurship when their corporate careers conflicted with raising children. The case studies emphasize the highly innovative nature of these early women-led firms in such areas as distributed work, flexible staffing, project management, quality control, and contracting. It is recommended to readers interested in an account of women’s participation in, and contributions to, computer science, and to those seeking answers to the challenges in setting policy for the scientific and technical workforce 

3.Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making. Nadia E. Brown. Oxford University Press. 2014.

In 2013, out of 7,776 female state legislators serving across the USA, 364 were women of color; of these, 239 were African American women. Linking personal narratives to political behavior, this book elicits the life histories of African American women legislators to understand how their experiences of racism and sexism have influenced their legislative decision-making and policy preferences.

4.Father and Daughter: Patriarchy, Gender and Social Science. Ann Oakley. Policy Press. 2014.

For many aspiring young female sociologists, Ann Oakley’s writing has been inspirational and reassuring. Father and Daughter, is, a combination of biography, autobiography, social history, and social science. This book explores her own life and that of her father, Richard Titmuss, a well-known policy analyst and defender of the welfare state, to offer an absorbing view of the connections between private lives and public work.

5.The Impact of Gender Quotas. Franceschet Susan, Mona Lena Krook and Jennifer M. Piscopo (eds). Oxford University Press. 2012.

As debates about gender quotas become increasingly prominent, it is imperative that we understand their potential as a tool to correct gender discrimination. This book stands as an important contribution to this discussion. It is full of empirical insights into the efficacy of gender quotas. One of the arguments is that women’s quotas do not work in the way that they are intended—to increase legislation on women’s issues and to work as role-models for other women with the purpose of increasing women’s participation and interest in politics—as long as a strong cultural support for quotas is absent. But the rather pessimistic immediate picture painted by the studies detailed in the book should be counter-balanced by acknowledging the unknown long-term effects of gender quotas.

6.Waging Gendered Wars: U.S. Military Women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Paige Whaley Eager. Ashgate. 2014.

This book examines how US military women have impacted upon, and been affected by, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using the analytical lens of feminist IR theory. It assesses how the global world of international politics and warfare has been localized in the life-and-death narratives of female service personnel by their experiences of combat, homelessness and PTSD. Overall it offers fresh insight into the impact of war on women and amplifies personal stories to illustrate the gendered nature of war.

7.Women and ICT in Africa and the Middle East: Changing Selves, Changing Societies. Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb. Zed Books. 2014.

Based on analyses from 21 research teams in 14 countries, this book explores experiences women typically encounter on their journey towards empowerment with Information Communications Technology (ICT), through ICT and in ICT. Overall Women and ICT in Africa and the Middle East makes a valuable contribution to the field of ICT for development and gender.

8.Women and Journalism. Suzanne Franks. I.B. Tauris. 2013.

In many countries, the majority of high-profile journalists and editors remain male. Although there have been considerable changes in the prospects for women working in the media in the past few decades, women are still noticeably in the minority in the top journalistic roles, despite making up the majority of journalism students. This book provides an overview of the ongoing imbalances faced by women in the media and looks at the key issues hindering gender equality in journalism.

9.Shattered, Cracked or Firmly Intact? Women and the Executive Glass Ceiling Worldwide. Farida Jalalzai. Oxford University Press. 2013.

In 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka made history when she was appointed the world’s first woman prime minister. In the half-century following her achievement, fewer than 80 women worldwide have attained the office of prime minister or president. This book aims to explain the mechanisms that push politically active women into relatively weak posts, and why women who successfully attain executive office almost always hail from political families within unstable systems. This book calls for a re-evaluation of our political systems and of female stereotypes as well as our understanding of the characteristics and personalities of leaders.

10.Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women. Amy Sue Bix. MIT Press. March 2014.

In an era when technology is still associated with masculinity, this book is an important and timely investigation of the gendered history of engineering education in the United States. It examines the rhetorical traps, social and political obstacles and widespread hypocrisy surrounding the debates over coeducation in the course of the last century. It offers a chronological analysis of women’s struggle to enter a male-dominated territory. The core focus lies on the mid-twentieth century, as key engineering departments started to allow institutional access for women during World War II and throughout the 1960s. It examines how the manpower shortages during wartime transformed not only labor demographics but also the perception of women’s status in engineering. This book looks likely to provide the historical background for the current efforts to tackle female underrepresentation in engineering. It is necessary to reflect on the gendered dimension of technology and its surrounding “manhood” myth.

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