Articles by Joanna Scutts

Source: In These Times

An interview with historian Alice Kessler-Harris on how the past 30 years have changed women’s workplace demands.

In 1981, Alice Kessler-Harris’ Women Have Always Worked delivered a short, sharp and lasting rebuke to standard U.S. histories that confined women to the domestic sphere. In five tightly argued but wide-ranging chapters, the book laid out the full scope of women’s work since the nation’s founding, from political activism to social reform, wage labor to household management, demonstrating that women have always been central to families, communities and the nation. Kessler-Harris, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and an expert in both women’s and labor history, has now updated the book to address the vast changes in women’s professional and public lives over the past 35 years. read more