Women's Work

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, we’ll explore 'women’s work' in three senses. First, we’ll consider the history of gendered "separate spheres" in the United States, the way in which some kinds of labor – care work, teaching, and domestic chores, for example – came to be seen as properly the concern of women, while other kinds of work, like business careers and scholarly pursuits, became coded masculine. Second, we’ll understand ‘work’ in the sense of a work of literature: we’ll read popular novels by and about working women and probe how their fictional representations compare and contrast with women’s lived realities. Finally, we’ll take ‘women’s work’ as the starting place for you to engage in your own purpose-driven career discernment, taking gender as a key, always-present variable. Through partnerships with ND Women Connect and ThinkND, we’ll interview, read fiction alongside, and dialogue with ND alumni, probing how 21st century women (and men, too) are overcoming gendered barriers in the workplace and finding meaning in their work. We’ll approach stories – literary and personal – as a form of data and use that data collaboratively to interrogate the gendered working life.