Women's and Gender Studies

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology, Columbia University
• Ph.M., Anthropology, Columbia University
• BA, Barnard College

Interests and Expertise

Research Interests

• Political economy of gender, work and inequality.

Most recent publication, Global Perspectives on Gender and Work: Readings and Interpretations, Rowman and Littlefield (2010), is an interdisciplinary reader that examines the myriad ways in which work-whether it is well-paid, unpaid or underpaid-profoundly influences our global roles in both the public and private sphere.

Earlier publication, The Forgotten Majority: Nurses and Their Frayed White Collar, Greenwood Press (1995), investigated class inequality and collective organizing through an examination of the occupation of nursing, historically made up of working and middle class women. This book investigates the relationship between nurses' class position in the workplace, as defined by E.O. Wright (1979), and their choice of collective organizing strategy: trade unionism, professional unionism, and/or professionalization.

Earlier research was conducted with a Native student from Akwesasne, a reservation that straddles the border of Canada and the U.S. "The development of Underdevelopment at Akwesasne: Cultural and Economic Subversion", published in Am. J. of Economics and Sociology (1994) focused on the ways in which North Country deindustrialization and unemployment affected traditional Native culture, and gave rise to alternative economic developments.

Previous interest focused on the intersection of relations of production with other social relations in Montagnais society through an examination of 17th century diaries of French Jesuits who were attempting to convert the Montagnais to Christianity. "Montagnais Marriage and the Jesuits of the 17th Century" Western Canadian J. of Anthropology, examined the ways in which 17th century French fur traders on the Labrador Peninsula of Canada undermined egalitarian gendered social and production relations amongst Montagnais Naskapi Indians.

Another project I am currently engaged in is under current contract with Praeger press that focuses on the political economy of care. This project grew out of a paper, "Mothers and Children, Caught in the Warzone" (2004) Studies in Law, Politics and Society. It examines Virginia Helds notions on the gendered "ethic of care" and the "ethic of justice." I argue that these two moral approaches are not simply gendered, but rather can be historically correlated with the rise and fall of economic conditions.

Courses

• Women and work
• Work and complex organizations
• Social class
• Contemporary social problems
• Race and the city
• Gender and human rights

Publications and Presentations

• Curriculum Vitae [PDF]