The Labor Of Care: Rethinking Gender, Work, and Rights in the American Welfare State

Women’s History Month Lecture

Once considered economically marginal, jobs in nursing, home health care, and childcare have moved to the center of the economy. Jennifer Klein will reconsider the history of the American welfare state from the perspective of care work. What will define work, rights, security, and dignity amid the new care-work economy? Organizing for workers’ rights, dignity, and autonomy has required new kinds of strategies and alliances that reflect the interdependence of social needs and an emphasis on the value of care labor itself. Jennifer Klein is professor of history at Yale University and author of the award-winning book For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public-Private Welfare State.

Sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women