2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Socio-legal approaches to work-related injury in the U.S. have been bound up with notions of the gendered body since the advent of the modern administrative state. Policies governing workplace injury have functioned to stabilize gendered familial relations and re-inscribe norms of feminine vulnerability. In so doing, such policies make precarious workers of all genders who find themselves unable to fit their demands for safe work places into available categories of protection. This interdisciplinary panel explores the construction of gender and injury in the U.S. workplace through the lenses of workmen’s compensation policy in the early 20^th century, anti-discrimination law from the 1960s to the 1980s, and adult film work in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries.

Together our papers consider how state policy shapes identity and how, in turn, identity-based movements shape policy. Our panel interrogates how notions of vulnerability shaped what it means to perform gender at work. How, in turn, have constructions of masculinity shaped policies governing workplace injury? How have movements for workplace protection differently impacted workers according to gender, and who is left behind when appeals for safe workplaces rely (explicitly or implicitly) on gendered ideas of which bodies need protection? These questions are, we argue, key to understanding the gendered operations of capitalism both in law and on the shop floor.