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What difference does a written constitution make to public policy? How have women workers fared in a nation bound by constitutional principles, compared with those not covered by formal, written guarantees of fair procedure or equitable outcome? To investigate these questions, Vivien Hart traces the evolution of minimum wage policies in the United States and Britain from their common origins in women's politics around 1900 to their divergent outcomes in our day. She argues, contrary to common wisdom, that the advantage has been with the American constitutional system rather than the British. Basing her analysis on primary research, Hart reconstructs legal strategies and policy decisions that revolved around the recognition of women as workers and the public definition of gender roles. Contrasting seismic shifts and expansion in American minimum wage policy with indifference and eventual abolition in Britain, she challenges preconceptions about the constraints of American constitutionalism versus British flexibility. Though constitutional requirements did block and frustrate women's attempts to gain fair wages, they also, as Hart demonstrates, created a terrain in the United States for principled debate about women, work, and the state--and a momentum for public policy--unparalleled in Britain. Hart's book should be of interest to policy, labor, women's, and legal historians, to political scientists, and to students of gender issues, law, and social policy.

In 1964, as part of its landmark Civil Rights Act, Congress outlawed workplace discrimination on the basis of such personal attributes as sex, race, and religion. This provision, known as Title VII, laid a new legal foundation for women's rights at work. Though President Kennedy and other lawmakers expressed high hopes for Title VII, early attempts to enforce it were inconsistent. In the absence of a consensus definition of sex equality in the law or society, Title VII's practical meaning was far from certain.The first history to foreground Title VII's sex provision, Equality on Trial examines how the law's initial promise inspired a generation of Americans to dispatch expansive notions of sex equality. Imagining new solidarities and building a broad class politics, these workers and activists engaged Title VII to generate a pivotal battle over the terms of democracy and the role of the state in all labor relationships. But the law's ambiguity also allowed for narrow conceptions of sex equality to take hold. Conservatives found ways to bend Title VII's possible meanings to their benefit, discovering that a narrow definition of sex equality allowed businesses to comply with the law without transforming basic workplace structures or ceding power to workers. These contests to fix the meaning of sex equality ultimately laid the legal and cultural foundation for the neoliberal work regimes that enabled some women to break the glass ceiling as employers lowered the floor for everyone else.Synthesizing the histories of work, social movements, and civil rights in the postwar United States, Equality on Trial recovers the range of protagonists whose struggles forged the contemporary meanings of feminism, fairness, and labor rights.

In Nursing Civil Rights, Charissa J. Threat investigates the parallel battles against occupational segregation by African American women and white men in the U.S. Army. As Threat reveals, both groups viewed their circumstances with the Army Nurse Corps as a civil rights matter. Each conducted separate integration campaigns to end the discrimination they suffered. Yet their stories defy the narrative that civil rights struggles inevitably arced toward social justice. Threat tells how progressive elements in the campaigns did indeed break down barriers in both military and civilian nursing. At the same time, she follows conservative threads to portray how some of the women who succeeded as agents of change became defenders of exclusionary practices when men sought military nursing careers. The ironic result was a struggle that simultaneously confronted and reaffirmed the social hierarchies that nurtured discrimination.

American feminism has always been about more than the struggle for individual rights and equal treatment with men. There's also a vital and continuing tradition of women's reform that sought social as well as individual rights and argued for the dismantling of the masculine standard. In this much anticipated book, Dorothy Sue Cobble retrieves the forgotten feminism of the previous generations of working women, illuminating the ideas that inspired them and the reforms they secured from employers and the state.

In exploring an array of intimacies between global migrants Nayan Shah illuminates a stunning, transient world of heterogeneous social relations—dignified, collaborative, and illicit. At the same time he demonstrates how the United States and Canada, in collusion with each other, actively sought to exclude and dispossess nonwhite races. Stranger Intimacy reveals the intersections between capitalism, the state's treatment of immigrants, sexual citizenship, and racism in the first half of the twentieth century.

Bigotry distractions are strategic invocations of racism, transphobia, or negative stigma toward other marginalized groups to shape political discourse. Although the vast majority of Americans agree on large policy issues ranging from reducing air pollution to prosecuting corporate crime, bigotry distractions divert attention from areas of agreement toward divisive identity issues. This article explores how the nefarious targeting of identity groups through bigotry distractions may be the tallest barrier to health reform, and social change more broadly. The discussion extends the literature on dog whistles, strategic racism, and scapegoating.

This year, the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. Hopkins reaffirmed what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), lower courts, and the Supreme Court itself had long observed about Title VII's prohibition on discrimination in employment on the grounds of sex.

Introduction It was over thirty years ago that Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA” or “the Act”).1 The ADA is an ambitious and comprehensive legislative mandate, designed to guarantee protections for, and prohibit discrimination against, people living with disabilities, thus ensuring them the same opportunities as everyone else to participate in everyday life.2 The ADA was “[m]odeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin – and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973,” which forbids organizations and employers from excluding or denying individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to receive program benefits and services.3 Since the ADA’s implementation, the nation has evolved in terms of technological advancements and their increasingly critical function in the life of an average American. Whether this is for online shopping, schooling, banking, social networking, or beyond, such online access has empowered many visually impaired Americans to reap the benefits of internet use.4 However, accessibility barriers remain a major stumbling block to the visually impaired enjoying all the internet has to offer, even though nearly all American adults use the internet in their daily lives.5 With divergent case law and a lack of legislative guidance, many complications regarding the applicability of the ADA to the internet remain unresolved. [...]this Note will examine why the internet ought to be understood as a place of public accommodation under the ADA and will encourage the development of guidelines instructing the federal judiciary to consider the internet as a place of public accommodation for the benefit of visually impaired users. [...]this Note will consider the future of internet accessibility and what guidelines may be implemented to further ensure equal access for Americans with disabilities. The only consequence of a Section 504 violation was that Congress would deny federal funding to any discriminating entity.34 It was even shown that state laws attempting to prevent discrimination could be rendered ineffective.35 In Pennhurst v. Halderman, the Supreme Court ruled that a federal district court could not enforce a Pennsylvania state law offering protections for the mentally disabled, saying the Eleventh Amendment prohibited federal courts from ordering states to comply with their own state law.36 Despite activism pushing Congress to draft the ADA, opponents to its passage remained, such that thousands of Americans felt compelled to participate in the “Capitol Crawl” three months prior to its passage, abandoning wheelchairs and crawling up the steps of the Capitol to pressure Congress to pass the ADA.37 Congress responded to the pressure in July 1990, passing the broadest disability protection and anti-discrimination law yet seen, the ADA.38 The statute begins by detailing congressional findings regarding the discrimination people with disabilities experience every day, and so

Equal rights for women in the workplace is a critical aspect of the twentieth century civil rights movement, as well as an issue of academic and public interest. Bringing together legal rulings and commentary, this three-volume collection documents the development of legal protections for women in the workplace. The comprehensive coverage encompasses the major legal and constitutional issues, including the legal arguments that lead to the reduction of working hours for women and the argumentation that framed the debates over minimum wage legislation. The set also presents more contemporary issues of gender equality versus gender difference, in matters such as maternity leave and health hazards in the workplace for pregnant women. As the interest in the intersection of law and women's studies surges, this important new collection will become an essential guide to students and scholars, as well as lay readers. This volume is available on its own or as part of the three-volume set, Women, the Law, and the Workplace.. For a complete list of the volume titles in this set, see the listing for Women, the Law, and the Workplace

Working as a nanny was the perfect option for me at the time, as I was seeking temporary work in between my undergraduate education and law school. [...]the positivity of this experience can largely be attributed to my status as a friend of the family, as well as my privileged identities as a white woman, United States citizen, and native English speaker.2 While my individual employment situation was free of conflict, I became involved with different play groups and nanny collectives through my work, exposing me to the darker side of the industry. Other times, it was an employer asking for nude massages or sexual favors.3 The experiences of my colleagues are by no means atypical.4 Nannies fall within the broader labor category of domestic work, which for the purposes of this Comment is defined as services of a household nature performed by an individual in a private home.5 This workforce has historically been isolated and informal.6 It is work that transcends professional and personal lines, with some domestic workers having access to the most intimate aspects of their employers' lives.7 The informal nature, as well as the deeply racial and gendered history behind domestic work, has resulted in nannies, housecleaners, and home health aides lacking necessary labor protections in the United States.8 Domestic workers also face a unique risk because of their intimate access to the private lives of their employers, making protections from abuse and harassment very necessary.9 Domestic workers are especially susceptible to sexual harassment in the workplace when compared with other forms of labor.10 The lack of protection from sexual harassment in this workforce is not a recent development.11 Domestic work is inextricably tied to the United States' history of slavery, mistreatment of immigrants, and gender inequality.12 Coinciding with this history, domestic workers have always mobilized for greater employment rights despite continuous exclusion from other groups' policy and labor movements.13 Domestic workers have been fighting for increased rights for the past century, but the rest of the world has only recently started to pay attention because of emerging labor and social activist movements.14 Today's ongoing momentum from #MeToo has shed light on the seriousness of sexual harassment.15 The #MeToo movement was created in 2006 to raise awareness around women who have been abused, and the #MeToo hashtag gained significant media attention in 2017.16 The movement has seen repercussions for many powerful men with histories of committing sexual harassment in the workplace.17 However, experiences of sexual harassment are not unique to celebrities, and #MeToo has brought public attention to the threat of sexual harassment faced by all workers and especially isolated workers.18 The gig economy has also spurred conversation around protections for informal labor, while a growing elderly population has demanded an increase in home health aides and other home care assistance.19 Most recently, the devastating impact of the novel coronavirus has revealed how many gaps exist when it comes to protections for certain workforces.20 Domestic workers fall squarely at the intersection of these major cultural and economic shifts.21 Though the momentum around sexual harassment protections, and labor protections in general, is growing, domestic workers lag behind other sectors in employment protections.22 Particularly in regard to sex discrimination, in most states domestic workers have neither protections from sexual harassment nor remedies for workplace discrimination, despite being a heavily female-gendered workforce.23 A vast majority of domestic workers continue to be excluded from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the leading federal legislation addressing workplace discrimination.24 The loophole excluding certain workers from Title VII is often overlooked, but it is the reason that workplace discrimination of nannies, housecleaners, and home healthcare aides persists without any repercussions.25 This Comment will argue that, even as federal labor law has evolved to incorporate domestic workers, and some states have enacted specific protections for this workforce, domestic workers continually lack crucial protections against sexual harassment and abuse.26 Part II will explore the history of domestic workers' exclusion from employment law and will review the law as it stands today.27 Part III will analyze how, even with certain developments in protections for domestic workers, this population continues to lack necessary rights and remedies.28 Part IV will consider policy changes to strengthen protections for domestic workers, including the proposed Federal Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights.29 Part V will conclude that domestic workers continue to lack protection from sexual harassment in the workplace and passage of a Federal Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights is the best means for expanding protections and filling this gap.30 II. BACKGROUND The position of domestic workers in the United States today is inextricably tied to a long history of slavery, immigration, and the discriminatory gendering of labor.31 Prior to the Civil War, enslaved Black women and men performed work in the homes of plantation owners, in addition to other types of labor that served the benefit of the plantation economy.32 After Emancipation, these domestic positions transitioned into wage work for Black workers who had been formerly enslaved, meaning there was now a socioeconomic relationship between employer and employee.33 In the North, the Industrial Revolution also saw the emergence of domestic work as wage labor, which was almost always performed by immigrant women.34 As formal industry expanded, a more distinct line was drawn between private family life and work life.35 Through this evolution, domestic work was socially classified as a \"labor of love\" because services in the home were considered to be performed for the benefit of the family rather than to advance industry.36 This classification persisted despite many domestic workers taking strides to establish home lives separate from their work.37 Especially after Emancipation, many formerly enslaved people intentionally distanced themselves from the plantations and worked to establish distinct communities.38 The history of sexual harassment in the workplace is directly tied to the historical roots of domestic workers in Early American history.39 Sexual coercion and assault were entrenched in slavery with no legal ramifications.40 Black women especially were labeled as sexually promiscuous.41 After Emancipation, the stereotype persisted, and Black women continue to face elevated threats of sexual assault correlated to racist and sexist ideas.42 Irish immigrant women in the North were also subject to xenophobic stereotypes.