Women, work, and metropolitan environments

Susan Hanson

Géraldine Pratt

Doreen Mattingly

Melissa Gilbert

pp. 227-253

in: Irwin Altman, Arza Churchman (eds), Women and the environment, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

Women work. They work at home without pay and, increasingly, they also work outside of home for wages. In the United States in 1990, women comprised 45.5% of the labor force, and fully 57.5% of working-aged women worked for pay (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Combining paid work with the unpaid work of domestic labor now describes the daily life of the majority of women in the United States and elsewhere, and the nature of the local environment certainly affects the ease with which women are able to carry out their diverse activities (Dyck, 1990; Pratt, 1990). Because of the different settings within which women link domestic work and paid employment (as well as the other activities of daily life), it is important to look at women's lives in the context of their local environment.