To explain this unfinished revolution in the status of women, historians have recently begun to emphasize the ( 15) way a prevailing definition of femininity often etermines the kinds of work allocated to women, even when such allocation is inappropriate to new conditions. For instance, early textile-mill entrepreneurs, in justifying women’s employment in wage labor, made much of the assumption (20) that women were by nature skillful at detailed tasks and patient in carrying out repetitive chores; the mill owners thus imported into the new industrial order hoary stereo- types associated with the homemaking activities they presumed to have been the purview of women. Because (25)women accepted the more unattractive new industrial tasks more readily than did men, such jobs came to be regarded as female jobs.And employers, who assumed that women’s “real” aspirations were for marriage and family life. declined to pay women wages commensurate with those of (30) men. Thus many lower-skilled, lower-paid, less secure jobs came to be perceived as “female.” 求翻译bold字体,谢谢 |