Serving in the shadows: african american women healthcare workers in gary, indiana- 1980-2000
Iverson, M. Thandabantu
2007-05
2000-2009
This dissertation is an investigation of survival and resistance strategies crafted and carried out by African-American working-class women in the health care industry in Gary, Indiana during the two decades from 1980 to 2000. More specifically, this research project examines the workplace and union activities and consciousness of black women service workers in the hospitals and nursing homes where they worked during a dramatic historical period of resurgent race and gender backlash, throttled and ebbing Black Power initiatives, manufacturing demise within the steel industry, and expansion of low-wage service work in the region of Northwest Indiana. Using a black feminist theoretical framework, this case study investigated the workplace experiences of fifteen black women, and found that they had experienced various types of discrimination in (1 ) training, (2) types of work performed, (3) pay. (4) hours of employment, (5) various types of discrimination encountered in the workplace, (6) racial-ethnic and gender compositions of the workforce, (7) union presence or absence, (8) general kinds of workplace conflicts, and (9) individual and collective strategies of survival and resistance. The underestimation of working-class women�s activism has proven a major impediment to the development of thoroughgoing analyses of politico-economic conditions and inclusive strategies for social change. In fact, the value of studying the labors of black working-class women has become more apparent in recent decades because U.S. social scientists need to know not only the varied ways in which different types of social hierarchy affect women�s modes of resistance; but also the perceptions that different women have of their labors and the meanings of those labors to them.
text
application/pdf
dissertation
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Clark Atlanta University
Department of Political Science
Georgia--Atlanta
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/cau.td:2007_iverson_m_th
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
