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Because of Sex
- One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women's Lives at Work
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Categories: History, Women
Non-member price: $29.24
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White Girls
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White Girls, Hilton Als' first book since The Women 14 years ago, finds one of The New Yorker's boldest cultural critics deftly weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls", as Als dubs the main expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.
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The Affirmative Action Puzzle
- A Living History from Reconstruction to Today
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- Narrated by: Dan Woren
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From acclaimed legal historian, author of a biography of Louis Brandeis and Dissent and the Supreme Court a history of affirmative action from its beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to the first use of the term in 1935 with the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) to 1961 and John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, mandating that federal contractors take "affirmative action" to ensure that there be no discrimination by "race, creed, color, or national origin" down to today’s American society.
Publisher's Summary
Best known as a monumental achievement of the civil rights movement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act also revolutionized the lives of America's working women. Title VII of the law made it illegal to discriminate "because of sex". But that simple phrase didn't mean much until ordinary women began using the law to get justice on the job - and some took their fights all the way to the Supreme Court. Among them were Ida Phillips, denied an assembly line job because she had a preschool-age child; Kim Rawlinson, who fought to become a prison guard - a "man's job"; Mechelle Vinson, who brought a lawsuit for sexual abuse before "sexual harassment" even had a name; and most recently, Peggy Young, UPS truck driver, forced to take an unpaid leave while pregnant because she asked for a temporary reprieve from heavy lifting.
These unsung heroines' victories, and those of the other women profiled in Gillian Thomas' Because of Sex, dismantled a Mad Men world where women could only hope to play supporting roles; where sexual harassment was "just the way things are"; and where pregnancy meant getting a pink slip.
Through first-person accounts and vivid narrative, Because of Sex tells the story of how one law, our highest court, and a few tenacious women changed the American workplace forever.
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What listeners say about Because of Sex
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kristen
- 10-10-2020
To be fair, I didn't get very far...
I know these laws and this history well, and this seemed like a kind of shallow analysis. It felt like feel-good feminism. It's fine if you want a broad overview of women's rights-- it's not inaccurate, it's just non-critical.
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