chapter_9.pptxMeasuring the World’s Work
Some evidence suggests an important link between economic growth of a county and rates of women’s employment
Formal paid labor: a legal contract where income is reported to the government, usually an hourly wage or salary, or some kind of payment from which taxes can be taken
Informal labor: when there is no legal contract for work performed, not necessarily a set hourly wage or salary, and none of the income is reported to the government by the employer or employee
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Measuring the World’s Work
Own-account worker: person who is self-employed with no employees working for them
Contributing family worker: a kind of own-account worker who works without pay in an establishment operated by a related person living in the same household
Vulnerable employment: lower paid jobs relative to jobs in the formal economy
Figures for GDP, or gross domestic product, does not include the hours of work necessary to care for children and maintain a household, unless that task generates revenue
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Masculinity and Work
Work if often at the very core of a man’ identity, influenced by the idea of separate spheres
Compensatory masculinity: an exaggerated form of masculinity involving drugs, alcohol, and sexual carousing that is used to demonstrate defiance and independence from both the control or their wives and the establishment (higher-status men)
Egalitarian masculinity: allows higher-class men to define themselves in contradiction to the behaviors of working-class men; more civilized, refined, and closer to a situation of gender equity
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Masculinity, Work, and Race
Many African American are prevented from using work as a resource and way to demonstrate masculinity
Oppositional culture – is a coherent set of values, beliefs and practices which mitigates the effects of oppression and reaffirms that which is distinct from the majority culture
Often young black men are stigmatized for academic achievement, as the very orientation for success in the white, middle class world becomes stigmatized and labeled as not masculine
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Sex Segregation
Glass escalator vs. Glass ceiling
Sex segregation: refers to the concentration or women and men into different jobs, occupations, and firms
Rates in the U.S. are still considerably high
Sex segregation can exist at multiple levels within a single institution, i.e. college campus
Occupational sex segregation: refers to the concentration or women and men in different occupations
Job level sex segregation: focuses on the specific positions that workers hold within specific establishments
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Sex Segregation
Putting-out industry: rather than workers traveling to one central building (the factory) to assemble a product, the raw materials needed were distributed to individual households where individuals assembled them on their own schedules and within their own homes
Income received from this was for the whole family
Protective labor legislation: argued that women could not work too many hours in factories or do certain kinds of labor because of the detrimental effects on women’s health and their ability to perform their crucial household duties as wife and mother
This benefited married women who then began to move into the workforce after WWI
This effort also reduced women’s earnings and provided another reason for sex segregation
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Sex Segregation
Hiring more women to do a job, paying less for the job, and reducing the quality of the job are all processes that go hand in hand
Ghettoization: when lower paid “women’s” jobs are separated from the better-paid “men’s” jobs within an occupation, job or firm through the use of informal gender typing
Resegregation: when an entire occupation transitions from one gender to another, usually from a predominantly male to a predominantly female occupation
Maquiladoras: assembly plants largely owned by American and other foreign companies that are located along the Mexico-U.S. border in order to take advantage of the supply of cheap labor across the border
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The Wage Gap
Gender wag gap: women are paid less than their male counterparts; calculated as the ratio of women’s average earnings in an occupation to men’s average earnings in the same occupation
The gender wage gap is connected to sex segregation
In any occupation, job, sector, or segment of the workplace that is composed primarily of dominant men, the wage scale will be higher in those
Tendency for higher paying jobs to also involve more authority or supervision than lower paying jobs
Researchers have established that as much as 90% of the explanation for the wage gap lies in the prevalence of sex segregation
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Socialization as Explanation
Socialization theory: argues that our experiences with gender socialization lead men and women to prefer different types of jobs; individual level
Younger women are more likely than older women to be employed in sex-integrated jobs, but this trend doesn’t hold true for men
Both men and women want qualities such as feeling accomplished, high income, and job security
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Human Capital Theory
Human capital theory: emphasis on an individual’s choice of occupation as resulting from her or his attempt to maximize the benefits and reduce the cost involved in any particular job; individual level approach
Human capital: refers to the skills workers may acquire, through education, job training, and job tenure, that affect their ability to be productive in their job
Three important assumptions about Human Capital Theory
Human beings are rationally motivated
If we are rational actors who seek to maximize rewards and minimize costs, then workers will invest in their human capital whenever possible
Women and men, on average and as groups, make different kinds of human capital investments
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Gendered Organizations
Gendered organizations approach argues that organizations like businesses are gendered in fundamental ways – sex segregation is maintained because of an aggregation of individual choices or because of tendencies toward discrimination in the interactional process
Family wage: the sum necessary to sustain all family members
Maintains a social order in which women are dependent upon men and stay out of the labor force
Internal labor markets: describes the way in which larger firms frequently provide structured opportunities for advancement to those who are currently employed within the firm
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Transmen at Work
Kristin Schilt suggests that looking at female to male transsexuals can provide an “outsider-within” position
Some FTMs reported experiencing some kind of advantage of work after their transition
Four main types: gaining authority and competency, gaining respect and recognition for hard work, gaining “bodily privilege” and gaining economic opportunities
Patriarchal dividend: the advantages men in general gain from the subordination of women
“I went from being an obnoxious black woman to a scary black man”
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Comparable Worth
Comparable worth: seeks to raise the wages of the low-paying jobs occupied predominantly by women by demonstrating the gendered ways in which the jobs are socially constructed
Job evaluation: determines how pay is assigned to jobs and also evaluating those pay rates as fair or unfair
A strength of gendered organizations theory is that it helps to explain the persistence of these practices because they are deeply embedded in organizations
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Job Queues
Queuing theory focuses on the importance of rank ordering on the part of both workers and employees in term of what are desirable jobs and who are desirable workers in ways that take into account race and gender and therefore have implications for sex and racial segregation in the workplace
A labor queue is made up of all the available workers who might potentially fill a job
Job queues are the set of jobs available to workers, and they involve potential workers creating a rank ordering of the most desirable possible jobs
Gender queue is how employers rank groups in the labor queue
Male workers are generally seen as superior to female workers, although this can be mitigated by race or other characteristics
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