Women And Politics

Instructions: Answer the following four questions; each of your answers should be about one page, double-spaced. You don’t need references. Your goal is to show that you have read and thought about the course material. I want you to make your own arguments in response to the questions by drawing on the course material and the conversations we have had in class.

1. Anne-Marie Slaughter argues for greater flexibility in the workplace, while Kathi Weeks argues for less work and “more time for what you will.” Who has the better idea and why? Please note, I am not asking you who has the more realistic idea.

2. Compare Handler and Hasenfeld’s strategy for reforming low-wage work in Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality with the Social Feminist strategy that we read about in Feminism Unfinished. What do the two strategies have in common?

3. How has this course changed your thinking about the relationship between paid work and unpaid work in the home? Select one reading and explain how it has affected your thinking.

4. Weeks argues that the Protestant Work Ethic makes work an end-in-itself. What does that mean? Has her book convinced you to think differently about the importance of paid work?