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This senior thesis discusses women’s role in the 1936-37 Flint sit-down strike, long seen as one of the pivotal events in bringing unionization to the nation’s automotive industry. It argues that women’s experiences during the strike and contributions to its success resulted in fundamental structural change in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in subsequent years.

Employment rates of Mexican women increased 26 percentage points in the last 23 years. The underlying factors driving this trend are the main motivation for this study. My two explanatory hypotheses are the following: there is a lower 'motherhood penalty,' and a higher preschool enrollment encouraged women's employment. In addition, I estimate the gender gap in weekly wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits. To test these two hypotheses, I decompose changes, over the last two decades, in payoffs and endowments of 'motherhood.' Second, I measure the effect of changes in preschool enrollment on mothers' employment. In addition, I also estimate the gender gaps in wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits, incorporating a more precise measure of job experience than previously used, and measures of cognitive ability and non-cognitive traits (formerly unaccounted for in Mexican studies). My goal is to provide an explanation of the mechanisms that encouraged women's employment in Mexico, and to estimate the possible gender differences in earnings that might prevent a potentially larger progress of women in the Mexican labor market.

Guatemala has among the largest numbers of indigenous people living within its borders in Central America. With wealth coming from tourism and exports concentrated mainly around Guatemala City, descendants of the ancient Maya live in small, ethnically distinct villages where locals struggle to preserve their heritage. Isolated in the valleys between the Cuchumatanes Mountains, the Ixil Triangle is home to a unique community of Ixil people who have retained their ancient way of life. Men tend to be farmers, women weave using technologies passed down from generation to generation, and few have a strong grasp of Spanish as a second language. Yet despite the isolation, tensions and instability in modern-day Guatemala have struck this community hard. A startling number of the indigenous citizens of Guatemala, who make up 40% of the population, have no access to education, and many have no voice in the political process, as they lack the financial means to pay to become registered citizens. The Ixil also face economic pressures, as well as the repercussions of a bloody civil war that ended in 1996, taking an entire generation of men as casualties. Faced with the prospect of their disappearing culture, a small group of widows in the village of San Juan Cotzal have welcomed the help of European volunteers, and formed a weaving co-op. They take orders from distributors in more established tourist stops like Guatemala City and Antigua, utilizing age-old technologies to make carpets, bags, shawls, and other products that volunteers then deliver to stores around the country. Building upon the business skills they gain by maintaining the co-op, the widows are both politically and economically active, taking initiative on behalf of their community. Future projects include organizing fundraisers to equip each widow’s home with proper stoves and developing an improved outreach strategy to goods distributors in the larger cities. Defying heavy odds, the empowered women of Ixil are finding local ways to integrate their heritage into the global landscape., Consilience, No 6 (2011): Issue Six: 2011

Fact sheet on work hours around the world produced by the Women’s Occupational Health Resource Center (WOHRC). The WOHRC (1979-1987) was a research and training program devoted to identifying and better understanding hazards faced by women workers. WOHRC was housed in Columbia’s School of Public Health and directed by Professor Jeanne Mager Stellman. WOHRC was a designated OSHA New Directions Training program, and also received support from other federal and private agencies. As a New Directions project, WOHRC trained thousands of workers and professionals in hazard recognition and accident and illness prevention for women workers. In order to carry out its public health programs, WOHRC developed and disseminated original educational materials. The materials were designed to be authoritative while at the same time accessible to non-professional users (e.g. the workers). WOHRC published a monthly newsletter that contained a “fact sheet” focusing on a particular job or a particular hazard. The fact sheets were also made available individually or collected into “fact packs” of related materials.

Fact sheet on women in the workforce produced by the Women’s Occupational Health Resource Center (WOHRC). The WOHRC (1979-1987) was a research and training program devoted to identifying and better understanding hazards faced by women workers. WOHRC was housed in Columbia’s School of Public Health and directed by Professor Jeanne Mager Stellman. WOHRC was a designated OSHA New Directions Training program, and also received support from other federal and private agencies. As a New Directions project, WOHRC trained thousands of workers and professionals in hazard recognition and accident and illness prevention for women workers. In order to carry out its public health programs, WOHRC developed and disseminated original educational materials. The materials were designed to be authoritative while at the same time accessible to non-professional users (e.g. the workers). WOHRC published a monthly newsletter that contained a “fact sheet” focusing on a particular job or a particular hazard. The fact sheets were also made available individually or collected into “fact packs” of related materials.

Read before the Society, 3 March 1972, The importance of the concept of equal pay appears to derive from the notion that unequal pay represents discrimination against women, and hence is unjust. There is however a basic difficulty in defining "equal pay". The Commission felt that "outside the public service such a provision would affect only a small proportion of women workers". We certainly concur in this reasoning, since about 25 per cent of women workers are in occupations that are 90 per cent or more female and no doubt if more detailed data were available on grades etc. it would be clear that very few women are doing work for which there is an exactly comparable male rate of pay.