Shelby’s chapter, Work, was very interesting and I found his argument compelling. In the beginning, he describes voluntary joblessness, where some people choose not to work even though they are jobs they could get and retain. There are many theories as to why people choose voluntary joblessness. Shelby suggests that the “basic structure of US society is deeply unfair, and thus, on grounds of justice and self-respect, [people] refuse to accommodate themselves to their low position in the stratified social order.” Ultimately his argument is that many of the black urban poor have sufficient reason to refuse to work, and thus be in voluntary joblessness. 

This led me to think about women in the workplace, and if some women also have sufficient reason to refuse work. I thought about Anderson’s book, because she mentioned that about 90% of women experience sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. This industry is known to have high numbers for sexual harassment, however, it is still useful to highlight the issues in our workplace. With that, I wanted to explore the idea that women face such great injustice in certain industries, that they may have sufficient reason to refuse to work. 

First of all, we will view work from a reciprocity lens, where civic duties (work) are obligations to society, since society provides public goods and services. However, when there is injustice in the system, it is reasonable to not perform “this obligation” since society is unjust and thus lacking in its goods and services. As for women who may fit under this description, it should be women who need to work to provide for themselves and if necessary others. This type of woman could be a single mother, single woman providing for herself and at times a married woman who also needs to work to provide for the family. Ultimately, it is someone that society expects to work as it is more necessary for survival. 

For women in the workplace there have been many instances where females have been discriminated against by males. Since then, laws have been passed to fix many of these issues in the workplaces. However, there are still instances of gender discriminations in the workplace, and especially in more industries than others. Also for this post, I will be focusing on low-wage female workers. Women make up the majority of low-wage workers in the US, and face a gender wage gap. They are facing issues of difficulties in being hired for higher positions, for many reasons, one of which may be because they need to care for their children. Thus, women face discrimination in the workplace as there are less opportunities for them to advance in the workforce and gain a wage which is sufficient for their needs, and this is unjust. 

Further, for low wage workers, especially women, there are high numbers of sexual harassment, and these type of work conditions are exploitative. Women are still facing sexual harassment and many times it can be too costly to speak out against this harassment. Even with some legal laws in place, there is still plenty of coercion and issues within the workplace affecting women. These women are not being respected, and face unjust working conditions to provide for themselves or families. 

These two examples of discrimination and sexual harassment seem to be enough reason for low-wage women to refuse work if these conditions persist. It seems the system is unjust towards many groups of people including women and with that women, as do others, deserve fair working conditions. 

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