Gender and Jobloss in Rural North Carolina: The Cost of Carework

Abstract

United States manufacturing has undergone intensive economic restructuring over the last thirty years. This has had a profound effect on rural areas, especially in the Southeast where textile, apparel, and furniture manufacturing have been based. North Carolina, in particular, has been dependent on traditional manufacturing supplying most of rural counties’ employment. Textile workers in rural North Carolina are predominantly female and older. This paper relies on focus group data from female displaced textile workers who live in a rural high-poverty county, and examines how gender structures women’s attempts at reemployment by pulling them into unpaid carework for family members, making reemployment more difficult. Though their family support networks provided women with needed assistance, women’s increased carework also came at a cost.

Keywords

• unemployment
• displaced women workers
• carework
• social networking
• manufacturing decline