Seminar in Work-Life Dilemmas, Practices, and Policies

Catalog description

The course will provide students with an analytic framework for understanding how social inequalities in race, class, and gender shape experiences in families and the workplace. WMNST (HRER) 523 Seminar in Work-Life Dilemmas, Practices, and Policies (3) This course investigates many of the invisible challenges people face in the 21st century labor market including: what happens when a worker's child is sick; whether mothers are discriminated against in the labor market; what happens to men at work when they have children; whether a person's health is influenced by their work; and if the division of labor at home benefits some people more than others. This course will provide answers to these questions and more through an in-depth investigation of the institutions that structure work-family life in 21st century America. First, the class will consider how work and families have changed in the last 50 years. Second, the students will investigate how inequalities based on gender, race, class, and family structure manifest at work. Third, the course will investigate how work responsibilities impact home life and how this differs according to race, gender, class and family structure. Finally, the course will ask what solutions may fix some of today's most pressing work-life dilemmas.