Readings Response

Assignment

This response essay must critically examine the assigned readings for the past 4 modules (4 weeks). Do not simply reflect on the readings, but also critically deconstruct and evaluate the authors’ larger arguments. You should interrogate the authors’ theses as well as provide in-depth analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of the authors’ arguments. You can also build on previous knowledge by making connections among the readings and/or connecting what you have learned in the readings to course material from other classes. In addition, you should examine your subjectivities in relation to your thoughts about the readings. For example, how do your race, class, gender, age, etc., impact the way that you evaluate the merits and deficiencies of the authors’ larger arguments (you are a young woman of Arab descent in the middle class). Your response essays should synthesize 4 weeks worth of readings. This does not mean that you must discuss all readings read during the course of 4 weeks. It does mean, however, that you should discuss at 3-4 readings read during the previous 4 weeks. For example, the first response essay asks you to examine week 1 (Sociological Theory), week 2 (Race and Ethnicity), week 3 (Education), and week 4 (Gender). Each response essay must be about 3.5-4 pages in length. Please cite course materials frequently (at least 2-3 citations per page) and include a works cited page. See the attached readings below.

The Glass Escalator

Introduction • Men & women are still confined to

predominantly single-sex occupations. • 40% of men or women would have to

change major occupational categories to achieve equal representation of men and women in all jobs.

• Men are less likely to enter female sex- typed occupations than women are to enter male-dominated jobs.

Introduction

• Author examines men’s underrepresentation in 4 predominantly female occupations: Nursing, librarianship, elementary school teaching, social work

Discrimination

• Women in nontraditional occupations are stigmatized.

• Women in engineering and blue-collar occupations encounter gender-based stereotypes about their competence.

Kanter (1977): Tokenism • When any group represents less than 15% or an

organization, it’s members will be subjected to predictable forms of discrimination.

• Jacobs (1989): Men in female-dominated occupations experience the same difficulties than women in male-dominated occupations face.

• Reskin (1988): Any dominant group in an occupation will use their power to maintain a privileged position.

New Studies

• Men may not face discrimination or prejudice when they integrate into predominantly female occupations.

• Zimmer & Martin (1988): Effects of sexism can outweigh the effects of tokenism when men enter nontraditional occupations

Discrimination in Hiring

• Contrary to experience of women in male- dominated professions, men attempting to enter a female-dominate professions are given a preference in hiring.

• The more female-dominated the specialty, the greater the apparent preference for men.

Tracking

• Some men were “tracked” into practice areas which were considered more legitimate for men.

• Specialties considered more legitimate practice areas for men: Tend to be more prestigious and better paying.

• One teacher felt “pushed” in the direction of administration

Tracking • Women in male-dominated professions

encounter a “glass ceiling.” • Men in female-dominated professions may be

criticized for “not shooting high enough.” • Men are often channeled into the more

“masculine” specialties within female-dominated professions, which means being tracked into better paying and more prestigious specialties.

Supervisors & Colleagues: The Working Environment

• Subtle forms of workplace discrimination push women out of male-dominated occupations.

• Women report feeling excluded from informal leadership and decision-making networks.

• Women in male-dominated professions are likely to be supervised by men.

The Workplace • In female-dominated professions, men are

overrepresented in administrative and managerial capacities.

• Unlike women who enter “male fields,” men in “female fields” often work under the supervision of other men.

• Men develop “male bonds” with their supervisors: closeness, “golfing buddy”

• Gender of men in nontraditional occupations is viewed as positive difference. They have an incentive to bond together & emphasize their distinctiveness from the female majority

Openly Gay Men • May encounter less favorable treatment at the

hands of their supervisors. • Nurse stated that one of the physicians he

worked w/ preferred to staff operating room w/ male nurses – as long as they weren’t gay.

• Stigma associated w/ homosexuality leads some men to enhance or even exaggerate their “masculine” qualities and may be another factor pushing men into more “acceptable” specialties for men

The Working Environment

• Men receive preferential treatment which closes off advancement opportunities for women.

• Men reported that their female colleagues often cast them into leadership roles. This enhanced their authority and control in the workplace.

Discrimination from “Outsiders”

• Discrimination against men working in nontraditional occupations is evident in their dealings with the public.

• Assumed that male nurses are gay • Librarians are wimpy and asexual • Male social workers: “feminine” &

“passive” • Elementary school teachers: pedophiles

Status

• “Unlike women who enter traditionally male professions, men’s movement into these jobs is perceived by the outside world as a step down in status. This particular form of discrimination may be most significant in explaining why men are underrepresented in these professions.”

Discrimination From “Outsiders”

• The negative stereotypes about men who do “women’s work” can push them out of specific jobs.

• In that this channels men into more “legitimate” practice areas, their effects can be positive.

• The prejudices can add to the glass escalator effect.

Media Representation

• Women working in traditionally male professions have achieved acceptance on popular television shows.

• Television rarely portrays men in nontraditional work roles and when it does this is the joke of the program.

Conclusion

• Men take their gender privilege with them when they enter predominantly female occupations: this translates into an advantage in spite of their numerical rarity.

CHILD SOLDIERS…by Therese Quinn, Erica

Meiners, Bill Ayers

January 9, 2008

In 2001 Chicago’s Mayor, Richard M. Daley commented on an article in the

online journal, Education Next, by then-Mayor of Oakland, California, Jerry Brown.

Brown’s essay offered a rationale for the public military academies he was promoting for

Oakland. In his letter to the editor, Daley congratulated Brown’s efforts and explained his

own reasons for creating military schools in Chicago:

We started these academies because of the success of our Junior Reserve Officers

Training Corps (JROTC) program, the nation’s largest. JROTC provides students with

the order and discipline that is too often lacking at home. It teaches them time

management, responsibility, goal setting, and teamwork, and it builds leadership and self-

confidence.

Today, Chicago has the most militarized public school system in the nation, with

Cadet Corps for students in middle-school, over 10,000 students participating in JROTC

programs, over 1,000 students enrolled in one of the five, soon-to-be six autonomous

military high schools, and hundreds more attending one of the nine military high schools

that are called “schools within a school.” Chicago now has a Marine Military Academy, a

Naval Academy, and three army high schools. When an air force high school opens next

year, Chicago will be the only city in the nation to have academies representing all

branches of the military. And Chicago is not the only city moving in this direction: the

public school systems of other urban centers with largely Black and immigrant low

income students , including Philadelphia, Atlanta and Oakland, are being similarly re-

formed—and deformed— through partnerships with the Department of the Defense.

As military recruiters nationwide fall short of their enlistment goals— a trend

spanning a decade— and as the number of African Americans enlistees (once a reliable

and now an increasingly reluctant source of personnel) has dropped by 41% over the last

several years, the Department of the Defense has partnered with the Department of

Education and city governments, to both sell its “brand” to young people and to secure

positions of power over the lives of the most vulnerable youth. The federal No Child Left

Behind Act is particularly aggressive, providing unprecedented military access to

campuses and requiring schools to provide personal student information to the Army. In

many schools JROTC programs replace physical education courses, recruiters assist in

coaching athletic teams, and the military is provided space to offer kids a place to hang

out and have a snack after school. Iin Chicago’s Senn High School, which serves a

working class immigrant population—last year its students hailed from over 60

countries—was forced, against the express wishes of the school and local community, to

cede a wing of its building to a public military school.

Every citizen should oppose the presence of the military in our public schools.

Here are four reasons why:

1. Public education is a civilian, not a military, system.

Public education in a democracy aims to broadly prepare youth for full

participation in civil society so that they can make informed decisions about their lives

and the future of society as a whole. The Department of the Defense has a dramatically

more constrained goal in our schools: influencing students to “choose” a military career.

The military requires submissiveness and lock-step acquiescence to authority, while a

broad education for democratic living emphasizes curiosity, skepticism, diversity of

opinion, investigation, initiative, courage to take an unpopular stand, and more. This

distinction—of a civilian, not a militarized, public education system—is one for which

earlier generations fought.

During WW I, national debates took place over whether or not to include

“military training” in secondary schools. Dr. James Mackenzie, a school director,

argued, in a remarkably resonant piece published in the New York Times in 1916: “If

American boys lack discipline, by all means, let us supply it, but not through a training

whose avowed aim is human slaughter.” In 1917 a report issued by the Department of the

Interior pointed out that “in no country in the world do educators regard military

instruction in the schools as a successful substitute for the well-established systems of

physical training and character building.” And in 1945 high school students in New York

held public discussions about “universal military training” in schools, where some, an

article noted, expressed “fears that universal military training would indicate to the world

that we had a ‘chip on our shoulders.’”

2. Military programs and schools are selectively targeted.

Professor Pauline Lipman of the University of Illinois at Chicago has

documented that Chicago’s public military academies, along with other schools offering

limited educational choices, are located overwhelmingly in low income communities of

color, while schools with rich curriculums including magnet schools, regional gifted

centers, classical schools, IB programs and college prep schools are placed in whiter,

wealthier communities, and in gentrifying areas. In other words, it’s no accident that

Senn High School was forced to house a military school, while a nearby selective

admission high school was not. This is a Defense Department strategy—target schools

where students are squeezed out of the most robust opportunities, given fewer options,

and perceived, then, as more likely to enlist; recruit the most susceptible intensively,

with false promises and tactics that include bribes, gifts, home visits, mailings,

harassment, free video games promoting the glories of war and offering chances to

“kill,” and more. Indeed, the Defense Department spends as much as $2.6 billion each

year on recruiting.

3. Military schools and programs promote obedience and conformity.

Mayor Daley’s claim that “[military programs] provide… students with the order

and discipline that is too often lacking at home” taps into and fuels racialized perceptions

and fears of unruly black and brown families and youth. They must be controlled.,

regulated, and made docile for their own good and for ours. An authentic commitment to

the futures of these kids would involve, for a start, offering exactly what the most

privileged youngsters have: art education, including dance, music instruction, theater and

performance, and the visual arts, sports and physical education, clubs and games, after-

school opportunities, science and math labs, lower teacher-student ratios, smaller schools,

and more. . Instead, to take one important example, a recent study by the Illinois Arts

Council reports that in the city of Chicago, arts programs are distributed in the same way

as the other rich educational offerings —white, wealthy communities have them, while

low income communities of color have few or none.

A 16 year old student attending the naval academy in Chicago said in an

interview in the Chicago Tribune: “When people see that we went to a military school,

they know we’re obedient, we follow directions, we’re disciplined.” She understood and

accurately described the qualities her school aims to develop—unquestioning rule-

following.

4. Military schools and programs promote and practice discrimination.

Although the Chicago Board of Education, City of Chicago, Cook County, and

the State of Illinois all prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, the United

States Military condones discrimination against lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men.

Promoters of these schools and programs are willfully ignoring the fact that queer

students attending these schools can’t access military college benefits or employment

possibilities, and that queer teachers can’t be hired to serve as JROTC instructors in these

schools. This double standard should not be tolerated. Following the courageous

examples of San Francisco and Portland, Chicago should refuse to do business with

organizations that discriminate against its citizens.

Military schools and programs depend on logics of racism, conquest, misogyny

and homophobia. Military schools need unruly youth of color to turn into soldiers, and

they need queers and girls as the shaming contrasts against which those soldiers will be

created. In other words, soldiers aren’t sissies and they aren’t pussies, either. These

disparagements are used as behavior regulators in military settings. Military public

schools are a problem, not simply because “don’t ask don’t tell” policies restrict the

access of queers to full participation in the military, but because these schools require the

active, systematic, and visible disparagement and destruction of queerness and queer

lives. We reject the idea that queers should organize for access to the military that

depends on our revilement for its existence, rather than for the right to privacy, the right

to public life, and the right to life free from militarism.

We live in a city awash in the randomly, tragically spilled blood of our children.

We live, all of us, in a violent nation that is regularly spilling the blood of other children,

elsewhere. It sickens us to think of students marching and growing comfortable with

guns.