Word: rosenberg
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...Rosenberg, author of Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism, is more embattled than Friedan. In the twelve-year case against Sears, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged that the retailer discriminated against women in high-paying commission-sales jobs. Sears argued that women showed little interest in these jobs and seemed to find noncommission work more enjoyable. Rosenberg testified that women are underrepresented in many jobs because they have "different interests" and have historically settled for less in the workplace because of competing demands of home and family. "It is naive," she said, "to believe that the natural...
Many feminists were furious that Rosenberg gave aid and comfort to a company accused of sex discrimination. Rosenberg maintains that the case against Sears was weak and that she merely told the truth about the preferences of some women. Says she: "I was responding to the question: Are there factors other than discrimination that can account for statistical disparities in the work force? And I said yes, and those factors include governmental policies, socialization, family responsibilities, and so forth." The EEOC case was built almost entirely on statistics. It produced no women who said they had been denied high-paying...
...months, a cadre of feminist historians has conducted a running attack on Rosenberg, much of it in academic journals. Historian Alice Kessler-Harris of Hofstra University, who testified against Sears, argues that Rosenberg is not a labor historian, that she overgeneralized, misused the work of other scholars, and in effect supported the idea that women are to blame when they fail to get good jobs. Says Kessler-Harris, author of Out to Work: A History of WageEarning Women in the United States: "The historical record demonstrates that women have taken advantage of opportunity when it has been made available...
...feeling among women workers that good jobs conflict with family ! responsibilities, she maintains, is a rationalization many women have used when they knew the jobs would go to men anyway. Was Rosenberg letting women down by testifying for Sears? "Yes, she was," says Kessler-Harris. "Not because she chose to testify but because the argument she made in court suggested that women's differences could account for their unequal position in the labor force. That argument omits the role of employers in structuring the labor market...
...that reads, "We believe that as scholars we may have many differing interpretations of the sources in women's history, and we reject the claims of anyone to be representing a 'true interpretation' of women's history." The president of the American Historical Association, Carl Degler of Stanford, defends Rosenberg: "She had an argument to make, and she ought not to be called into question...