The United States has the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world. Despite what is often reported, new mothers don’t “opt out” of work. They are pushed out by discriminating and inflexible workplaces. Today’s workplaces continue to idealize the worker who has someone other than parents caring for their children.
Conventional wisdom attributes women’s decision to leave work to their maternal traits and desires. In this thought-provoking book, Joan Williams shows why that view is misguided and how workplace practice disadvantages men―both those who seek to avoid the breadwinner role and those who embrace it―as well as women. Faced with masculine norms that define the workplace, women must play the tomboy or the femme. Both paths result in a gender bias that is exacerbated when the two groups end up pitted against each other. And although work-family issues long have been seen strictly through a gender lens, we ignore class at our peril. The dysfunctional relationship between the professional-managerial class and the white working class must be addressed before real reform can take root.
Contesting the idea that women need to negotiate better within the family, and redefining the notion of success in the workplace, Williams reinvigorates the work-family debate and offers the first steps to making life manageable for all American families.

Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter

Politics & Social Sciences

Williams, Joan C.

Social Sciences

Harvard University Press

Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in American Studies)

Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (Critical America, 52)

What is the price of a limb? A child? Ethnicity? Love? In a world that is often ruled by buyers and sellers, those things that are often considered priceless become objects to be marketed and from which to earn a profit. Ranging from black market babies to exploitative sex trade operations to the marketing of race and culture, Rethinking Commodification presents an interdisciplinary collection of writings, including legal theory, case law, and original essays to reexamine the traditional legal question: ?To commodify or not to commodify?”In this pathbreaking course reader, Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams present the legal cases and theories that laid the groundwork for traditional critiques of commodification, which tend to view the process as dehumanizing because it reduces all human interactions to economic transactions. This “canonical” section is followed by a selection of original essays that present alternative views of commodification based on the concept that commodification can have diverse meanings in a variety of social contexts. When viewed in this way, the commodification debate moves beyond whether or not commodification is good or bad, and is assessed instead on the quality of the social relationships and wider context that is involved in the transaction. Rethinking Commodification contains an excellent array of contemporary issues, including intellectual property, reparations for slavery, organ transplants, and sex work; and an equally stellar array of contributors, including Richard Posner, Margaret Jane Radin, Regina Austin, and many others.

Business & Money

Ertman, Martha

Investing

NYU Press

What is the price of a limb? A child? Ethnicity? Love? In a world that is often ruled by buyers and sellers, those things that are often considered priceless become objects to be marketed and from which to earn a profit. Ranging from black market babies to exploitative sex trade operations to the marketing of race and culture, Rethinking Commodification presents an interdisciplinary collection of writings, including legal theory, case law, and original essays to reexamine the traditional legal question: To commodify or not to commodify? In this pathbreaking course reader, Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams present the legal cases and theories that laid the groundwork for traditional critiques of commodification, which tend to view the process as dehumanizing because it reduces all human interactions to economic transactions. This “canonical” section is followed by a selection of original essays that present alternative views of commodification based on the concept that commodification can have diverse meanings in a variety of social contexts. When viewed in this way, the commodification debate moves beyond whether or not commodification is good or bad, and is assessed instead on the quality of the social relationships and wider context that is involved in the transaction. Rethinking Commodification contains an excellent array of contemporary issues, including intellectual property, reparations for slavery, organ transplants, and sex work; and an equally stellar array of contributors, including Richard Posner, Margaret Jane Radin, Regina Austin, and many others.

An eye-opening, urgent call to mend the broken relationship between college and non-college grads of all races that is driving politics to the far right in the US. Is there a single change that could simultaneously protect democracy, spur progress on climate change, enact sane gun policies, and improve our response to the next pandemic? Yes: changing the class dynamics driving American politics. The far right manipulates class anger to undercut progressive goals and liberals often inadvertently play into their hands. In Outclassed, Joan C. Williams explains how to reverse that process by bridging the "diploma divide", while maintaining core progressive values. She offers college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives and their lives reflect their privilege. With illuminating stories --from the Portuguese admiral who led that country's COVID response to the lawyer who led the ACLU's gay marriage response (and more)-- Williams demonstrates how working-class values reflect working-class lives. Then she explains how the far right connects culturally with the working-class, deftly manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to deflect attention from the ways far-right policies produce the economic conditions disadvantaging the working-class. Whether you are a concerned citizen committed to saving democracy or a politician or social justice warrior in need of messaging advice, Outclassed offers concrete guidance on how liberals can forge a multi-racial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.

Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back

Economics

St.Martin's Press

Up-beat, pragmatic, and chock full of advice, What Works for Women at Work is an indispensable guide for working women.
 An essential resource for any working woman, What Works for Women at Work is a comprehensive and insightful guide for mastering office politics as a woman. Authored by Joan C. Williams, one of the nation’s most-cited experts on women and work, and her daughter, writer Rachel Dempsey, this unique book offers a multi-generational perspective into the realities of today’s workplace. Often women receive messages that they have only themselves to blame for failing to get ahead—Negotiate more! Stop being such a wimp! Stop being such a witch! What Works for Women at Work tells women it’s not their fault. The simple fact is that office politics often benefits men over women. Based on interviews with 127 successful working women, over half of them women of color, What Works for Women at Work presents a toolkit for getting ahead in today’s workplace. Distilling over 35 years of research, Williams and Dempsey offer four crisp patterns that affect working women: Prove-It-Again!, the Tightrope, the Maternal Wall, and the Tug of War. Each represents different challenges and requires different strategies—which is why women need to be savvier than men to survive and thrive in high-powered careers. Williams and Dempsey’s analysis of working women is nuanced and in-depth, going far beyond the traditional cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approaches of most career guides for women. Throughout the book, they weave real-life anecdotes from the women they interviewed, along with quick kernels of advice like a “New Girl Action Plan,” ways to “Take Care of Yourself”, and even “Comeback Lines” for dealing with sexual harassment and other difficult situations.

What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know

Dempsey, Rachel

Business Culture

A workbook for women with practical tips, tricks, and strategies for succeeding in the workplace. A companion to the highly successful What Works for Women at Work, this workbook offers women a hands-on guide filled with interactive exercises, self-diagnostic quizzes, and action-oriented strategies for building successful careers. The Workbook helps women understand their work environments and experiences and move up the professional ladder. Readers will discover the four patterns of gender bias—Prove-It-Again, the Tightrope, the Maternal Wall, and the Tug of War—and they can use the toolkit to learn how to navigate the ways these patterns affect their careers. Williams and her co-authors also introduce the new concept of "Gender Judo," which involves doing a masculine thing in a feminine way, in order to avoid a backlash. This interactive Workbook can help any working woman make better choices and offers specific advice on:· - How to write a winning resume - How to succeed on job interviews - How to negotiate salary - How to create a social media network - How to create work-life balance - How to cut through office politics In addition, the best-selling What Works for Women at Work is now available in paperback. This book has already helped thousands of working women successfully navigate gender bias in the workplace. Praised by numerous publications for offering an innovative, practical, and down-to-earth approach, What Works for Women at Work is still the go-to guide for working women. Chock full of insights, What Works for Women at Work: A Workbook will be an indispensable handbook for working women, providing the tools, the tips, and the tactics to get ahead.

What Works for Women at Work: A Workbook

Williams, Joan

Multhaup, Marina

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite-journalists, managers, and establishment politicians-are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness.Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"-but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities-just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers-and voters.

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

Sociology

Blackstone Audiobooks

"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America
An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017
Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite―journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness.
Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.
White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

Harvard Business Review Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Williams, Joan C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Williams, Joan C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Williams, Joan C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter

Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in American Studies)

Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (Critical America, 52)

Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture (Critical America, 52)

Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back

What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know

What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know

What Works for Women at Work: A Workbook

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America