Different Ways of Not Having It All: Fashioning Strategies of Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity

• In Event: 1520 - Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) Distinguished Lecture

Abstract

As jobs become more precarious, intimate relationships more fragile, and work-family boundaries more porous, Americans of all stripes face new conflicts between earning a living and caring for others. How are today’s adults seeking to resolve the dilemmas arising from these conflicts? What are the implications for gender and class inequality? And how do these new realities influence the prospects for creating egalitarian work and family options? Drawing on extensive interviews with a broad cross-section of residents in the Silicon Valley and New York areas, Kathleen Gerson will present a framework for understanding the strategies women and men are pursuing as they endeavor -- with varying degrees of success -- to build work ties, sustain intimate relationships, and care for children and other dependents in increasingly uncertain times.

Author

• Kathleen Gerson, New York University