当前位置: X-MOL 学术Environmental History › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Equal Risks: Workplace Discrimination, Toxic Exposure, and the Environmental Politics of Reproduction, 1976–91
Environmental History ( IF 1.255 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-29 , DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emab025
April Merleaux

This article describes a period when environmental organizations actively worked to achieve equal rights for women in the 1970s and 1980s. Using archival records from the Environmental Defense Fund and from women’s occupational health activists, I argue that a significant, if under-recognized, catalyst for environmentalists’ engagement with feminist politics was the emergence of workplace exclusion policies. Pushed to hire women by newly enforced sex discrimination statutes in the 1970s, industrial employers categorically excluded women from jobs with hazardous toxic substances. Environmentalists joined a coalition of labor and women’s rights advocates that together challenged exclusion policies in the courts and regulatory agencies. The coalition devised a litigation strategy that they hoped would raise environmental standards and end sex discrimination, issues that they saw as intrinsically related. They forwarded an equal protection approach to environmental hazards as part of a broader campaign to expand how regulators assessed toxic risks. They sought gender-neutral protection, and they challenged the gender biases in scientific research priorities and regulatory standards. Their litigation culminated in the US Supreme Court’s decision in United Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls (1991), which prohibited sex-based exclusion policies. In the realms of women’s employment law and abortion rights, the case was a success. It was not, however, a milestone for environmental protection. It failed to achieve key coalition objectives since it did not raise environmental standards or require companies to remediate toxic workplaces. Ultimately, the ruling preserved equal risks in toxic jobs rather than asserting equal rights to environmental protection.

中文翻译:

平等风险:工作场所歧视、有毒物质暴露和生殖的环境政治,1976-91

本文描述了环保组织在 1970 年代和 1980 年代积极致力于实现女性平等权利的时期。使用来自环境保护基金和女性职业健康活动家的档案记录,我认为环保主义者参与女权主义政治的一个重要的催化剂是工作场所排斥政策的出现。在 1970 年代新实施的性别歧视法规的推动下,工业雇主明确将女性排除在有危险有毒物质的工作之外。环保主义者加入了劳工和妇女权利倡导者联盟,共同挑战法院和监管机构的排斥政策。该联盟制定了一项诉讼策略,他们希望能够提高环境标准并结束性别歧视,他们认为这些问题有着内在的联系。他们提出了对环境危害的平等保护方法,作为扩大监管机构评估毒性风险方式的更广泛运动的一部分。他们寻求性别中立的保护,并挑战科学研究优先事项和监管标准中的性别偏见。他们的诉讼最终导致美国最高法院在美国汽车工人联合会诉江森自控(1991),其中禁止基于性别的排斥政策。在妇女就业法和堕胎权领域,此案是成功的。然而,这并不是环境保护的里程碑。它未能实现关键的联盟目标,因为它没有提高环境标准或要求公司修复有毒工作场所。最终,该裁决保留了有毒工作中的同等风险,而不是主张平等的环境保护权利。
更新日期:2021-07-19
down
wechat
bug