1985/09/01 by Evelyn Nakano Glenn · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Anthropology #Colonialism #Ethnic group #Gender studies #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Labor Movements and Unions #Law #Marxist philosophy #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy #Oppression #Political science #Politics #Race (biology) #Racial formation theory #Racism #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1177/048661348501700306
openalex publication_date 1985/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
A colonial labor system and other forms of racial oppression shaped the productive and reproductive labor of racial ethnic women in ways that made their experiences fundamentally different from those underlying the construction of feminist analyses of women's oppression. For black, Mexican-American and Chinese-American women, key concepts such as the private-public dichotomy, gender conflict within the family and the division of reproductive labor need to be reformulated. This study examines the historical evidence on black, Mexican-American and Chinese-American women's work from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in light of contemporary Marxist-feminist and colonial labor system theories. Thus, the author begins to reformulate and synthesize key concepts in these contemporary theories to explain the experiences of racial ethnic women.