Sociology of Gender Exam 3

What is the androcentric pay scale?

- a strong correlation between wages and the gender composition of a job - The gender composition of a job is the single largest contributor to the gender wage gap - It is more important than the level of unionization, worker education and experience, supply and demand, safety and comfort of the work, etc. - After controlling for these factors, "women's work" pays 5-20% less than "men's work"

Approximately what proportion of men and women are egalitarians in their beliefs? What proportion are traditionalists or neo-traditionalists?

- About 1 of 3 men and 1 of 7 women are traditionalists or neo-traditionalists - The majority of men and women hold egalitarian beliefs, but on average, they are not able to live out this ideal

What is the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium?

- Because of the ideal worker norm, women who have children face a motherhood penalty, or loss in wages associated with becoming a mother - The pay gap between mothers and non-mothers is larger than the one between men and women - One study found that 30 year old women without children earn 90 cents for every dollar men earn, while others of the same age earn 73 cents - In contrast, dads receive a fatherhood premium, earning 4-7% more than married men without children

Sociologist Kristin Natalier has studied how all-male households divide household labor. What did she find?

- Doing masculinity meant not caring, or pretending not to care, about the state of the house - "It's whatever. It doesn't really matter. I mean, it's not like something I consider. It's not like I'm caring about if it happens or not." (Rick, living with all male roommates) - Some men were comfortable with this situation and others found it frustrating (those who preferred not to live in filth) - If those who were uncomfortable complained, they faced gender policing from their roommates

Explain equal access, equal value, and equal sharing models for promoting gender equality.

- Equal access aims to end sexism by dismantling legal barriers and reducing sex discrimination - examples include laws that make it illegal to discriminate in the workplace, that guarantee equal access to education, and allow women to enlist in the military - These policies reduce sexism, but can exists comfortably alongside androcentrism and subordination - It works well for women who want to enter male-dominated arenas, whether it's front-line infantry or corporate boardrooms - it does not do much to help women who prefer the spheres that are considered feminine domains - Equal value models are designed to tackle androcentrism by raising the value of the feminine to match the value of the masculine - This model is compatible with gendered divisions of labor, but simply wants all types of labor to be valued and compensated equally - An equal value society would reward reproductive labor (pregnancy, breastfeeding, child care) in a way that doesn't put parents who engage in these tasks at serious economic risk - it would destigmatize the feminine side of the binary and allow more men to embrace it - Equal sharing models tackles subordination by attempting to ensure that men and women participate equally in masculine and feminine spheres - Unlike the equal access approach, it presses for dramatic shifts in how men spend their time - It provides incentives for men and women to take proportionate responsibility for each part of life (earning money and taking care of children) - This allows the costs and advantages of each realm to be spread more evenly

How has the percentage of young people identifying as feminists changed in recent decades? Why?

- Gender equality has come a long way, but there is much to accomplish in future generations - One of the obstacles to progress are backlash against feminism, the corporate co-optation of feminist language, and the rise of individualism - The backlash against feminism that was present in the day's of the fight for women's suffrage is alive and well today - As a result, fewer young people today than in the past describe themselves as feminist - About 16% of men and 23% of women identify as feminist •Most people aren't anti-feminists, but rather fence-sitters

How does the amount of time mothers and fathers spend with their children today compare to previous decades?

- In the 1800s, (male) experts warned that excessive maternal nurturing was harmful - Wealthy, white, Victorian mothers worked to preserve their social standing by arguing in favor of motherhood as a time-consuming and essential enterprise

How do traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and egalitarians feel about the division of labor with respect to earning money, taking care of children, and doing housework?

- Traditionalists: believe that men should be responsible for earning income and women should be responsible for housework and child care - Neo-traditionalists: believe that women should primarily be in charge of the children & home, and employment is acceptable if she can fit it in alongside those responsibilities - Egalitarians: prefer that each partner in the couple does their fair share of breadwinning, housekeeping, and raising children

What is a greedy institution?

- Work and family are both "greedy institutions," meaning that they consume a lot of time and energy and come with high expectation - This makes it difficult for many working parents to feel successful at work, feel good about how much time they spend with their kids, and attend to their personal wellbeing - Couples often come to the conclusion that one or both of them needs to spend less time at work and more time at home

What is the ideology of intensive motherhood?

- In this view of parenting, children are the center of a woman's life - For young kids it involves holding/wearing them, close supervision, constant interaction and stimulation, "educational" toys and activities, engaging in negotiation vs. instruction - For school age kids it involves volunteering at the child's school, meeting with teachers, helping with homework, keeping a close eye on their grades, organizing educational outing, buying learning games and apps, providing opportunities for physical and cultural development (Little League and dance class), driving them to all of these activities, etc. - This ideology is a dominant model of parenting in the US, but it's unusual historically - Individual mothers have been the primary caretakers of children in only 20% of cultures - For most of American history, children were expected to grow up to be contributing, well-adjusted adults as long as they didn't encounter corrupting adult influences or someone else deliberately trying to harm them - In the 1800s, (male) experts warned that excessive maternal nurturing was harmful - Wealthy, white, Victorian mothers worked to preserve their social standing by arguing in favor of motherhood as a time-consuming and essential enterprise - Women today are often held responsible for providing their child with the experiences associated with intensive motherhood - Mothers are usually the ones who go to the PTA meetings, organize field trips, sign up children for tutoring, drive them to soccer, etc. - In response to these demands, many women worry that their time spent doing paid work detracts from their role as a parent - Men generally do not report feeling this way about their roles as fathers

Why do couples with egalitarian beliefs nevertheless end up with a gendered division of labor?

- Institutional pressures toward neo-traditionalism: Couples often come to the conclusion that one or both of them needs to spend less time at work and more time at home - Many families are financially dependent on two full-time incomes - Employer-sponsored health insurance usually requires a full-time job - The tax code incentivizes high income couples to specialize because the earnings of married couples are pooled and the secondary earner is taxed at the highest marginal rate

How did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affect men's and women's employment and wages?

- Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it has been illegal to discriminate based on gender, but discrimination didn't vanish as a result - Enforcing the law meant going to court, providing the existence of discrimination and intent to discriminate, and creating consequences for discrimination - It took decades and hundreds of cases for this to happen - Still, employment discrimination persists - Women are often paid less than men while doing the same job

What is a sexual script?

- Sociologists use the term sexual script to describe the rules that guide sexual interaction - Most people do things in the same order: kissing, close body contact, groping, clothing comes off in a particular order - Her shirt, his shirt, her pants, his pants, etc. The order is a toss-up for same sex couples. - These aren't only guidelines; a person that jumps around too quickly or strays from the rules could be charged with sexual battery (unwanted but nonviolent sexual touching) - We police ourselves and each other around these rule - Part of the sexual script is that men are supposed to initiate every sexual activity and women are supposed to decide whether the couple should go forward with each step

When did women gain the right to vote in the US?

- The 19th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex - It was ratified on August 18, 1920 - Until the 1910s, most states refused to allow women to vote

What is the heterosexual male gaze?

- The content is designed to appeal to a hypothetical heterosexual man - Movies, TV shows, ads, and literature depict the world from a masculine point of view - Women are positioned as objects of heterosexual male desire - Her own thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires are missing or less important - We don't see the world through her eyes, we see her through his eyes - For women, media made with the male gaze means being exposed to constant scrutiny of female bodies

How is the gender pay gap measured?

- The gender pay gap is calculated by dividing women's median earnings by men's median earnings - Women working in full-time, year-round jobs earn 80 cents for every dollar that men working in full-time, year-round jobs earn

What gender imbalances exist in the erotic marketplace?

- The most attractive men receive 10x the average number of message, but the most attractive women receive 25x the average number of messages - Women's value on the erotic marketplace is more tied than men's to how they look - Gendered matching rules suggest that men should be taller, stronger, older, more educated, and have a higher-status job that brings in more income - for men, all of these things carry advantages in the erotic marketplace - For women, they carry both advantages and disadvantages - Too many gains can knock her out of the competition because of the shortage of men who have outpaced her - Age also reduces her erotic capital compared to men's - His achievements count toward attractiveness more than hers do - Her fading looks harm her attractiveness more than his do

What is sexual objectification?

- The reduction of a person to his or her sex appeal is referred to as sexual objectification, in which the person's own thoughts and feelings are reduced to nothing - Both men and women are objectified in popular culture, but women are objectified much more often than men - This leads many women to self-objectify, internalizing the idea that their physical attractiveness determines their worth - Women may also engage in spectating

What are some threats facing the fight for gender equality today?

- The rise of individualism and decline in collectivist thinking - Women should have the same rights and opportunities as men to be winners in the patriarchal system, but what about those women and men who will never make it to the top or who are not interested in that goal? - What benefits individual women, may not benefit women as a group

How has the pay gap changed over time and across generations? How does it change over the course of one generation's working years?

- hourly pay gap between women and men has narrowed to 16 cents today, compared with 36 cents in 1980. - But progress has slowed in recent years and even reversed for many women over the course of their careers. - Today's youngest group of working women are the first in modern history to start their working lives at near parity with men

Explain the governance of gender and give an example.

- how gender shapes the way residents of states are regulated - For example, the federal government taxes secondary earners at the family's highest marginal tax rate - Women are more likely to be the secondary earners, so this affects their employment more - Another decision states make is how enthusiastically to support parenting - The US is on the low end, offering only 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child for qualified workers (about 1/3 of workers are eligible) - In some countries, the lack of support for parents has been cited as a factor in the low birth rate - Japan's birthrate has fallen to 1.4 children per woman, far below replacement level

What is the push-and-resist dynamic? How does it relate to rape culture?

- men are supposed to initiate every sexual activity and women are supposed to decide whether the couple should go forward with each step - normalizes the idea of men pressing for increasing intimacy (whether he really wants to or not) and for women to slow down the intimacy (whether she really wants to or not) - Nevertheless, the vast majority of men will never commit a violent or coercive sexual crime - the push-and-resist dynamic does NOT turn men into rapists - However, it does provide cover to the small proportion of men who are responsible for the vast majority of sexual assaults - Research shows that most assaults are committed by a small minority of men - In one study, 6% of college men admitted to behavior that fit the description of rape or attempted rape - These men plan their assaults, choose victims carefully, often use alcohol as a rape drug, and use force when necessary - Even though they are the minority, they blend in because the culture justifies, naturalizes, and even glorifies sexual pressure and coercion - This is referred to as rape culture

What does it mean to do sexuality?

- most people are participating in sexuality through an orchestrated set of rules - We learn the rules for whom we should be attracted to, what is attractive, how to be sexual, and what we should and shouldn't do with sexual partners

What is gendered job segregation? To what extent does it exist in the US?

- refers to the practice of filling occupations with mostly male or mostly female workers - Even if we don't agree with the labeling, the culture has informed us that some jobs are considered feminine (nurse, secretary) and others are considered masculine (construction worker, engineer) - Just as with objects, we tend to focus on the characteristics of a job that apply to the gender we have assigned to the job - In the US, 34% of workers would need to switch jobs to remove gender segregation - 40% of women work in jobs that are at least 75% female (and men work in even more gender-segregated environments) - Some of the most female-dominated occupations (95% women or more) are - Dental hygienist, preschool teacher, medical transcriptionist, hairdresser, child care worker - Some of the most male-dominated occupations (95% men or more) are - Crane/tower operator, mechanic, carpenter, firefighter, construction worker, truck driver

What is the erotic marketplace?

- refers to the ways in which people are organized and ordered according to their perceived sexual desirability - Some people have more "erotic capital" than others, not because of any naturally occurring aspects of human nature, but because our value system assigns more worth to some bodies than others - The data show that attractiveness is an important commodity in the erotic marketplace

Some of the causes of gendered job segregation are the socialization hypothesis, the network hypothesis, the employer selection hypothesis, and the desertion hypothesis. Explain each of these.

- socialization hypothesis: suggests that we respond to gender stereotypes when planning, training, and applying for jobs; This hypothesis says that we self-select into jobs socially constructed for our sex - network hypothesis: refers to how people hear about and get jobs - Hiring often occurs through personal networks, which are gendered - When a job opens up, current employees are the first to know - They tell their friends, who are disproportionately likely to be of the same sex (and also the same class, race, and sexual orientation, etc.) - employer selection hypothesis: proposes that employers tend to prefer men for masculine jobs and women for feminine jobs, and therefore slot applicants accordingly - desertion hypothesis: when individuals enter a job dominated by the other sex, they are more likely than others workers to leave that occupation in favor of a new one

What is symbolic representation and what is substantive representation? How does one feed into the other?

- symbolic representation: women's presence in government, translates into substantive representation: enacting policies that are important and helpful to women and gender equality - Gender doesn't change HOW politicians vote as much as WHAT they vote on

What is gender-aware policymaking?

- taking these unintended consequences of policies into account - Feminists have long been concerned with committing to gender equality explicitly, through legislation like the Civil Rights Act, but are also concerned with unintended gendered effects of policies - For example, city planners in Vienna discovered when reorganizing their public transmit system that it was organized around the needs of male commuters, who primarily travel to and from work during rush hour

What is the ideal worker norm?

- the idea that an employee should have the ability to devote themselves to their job without the distraction of family responsibilities - Employers continue to operate "as if workers have domestic wives"

What is the feminization of poverty? What are some contributing factors?

- the poor being increasingly female - Being a stay-at-home parent also comes with a big economic risk - Lost wages, lost retirement/Social Security contributions, loss of career momentum - Divorce compounds the problem (alimony is mostly gone, the courts expect all adult be able to support themselves)

What is the second shift?

- the work facing parents in the labor force when they come home from work - child care, grocery shopping, meal preparation, dishes, laundry, house cleaning, and errands that housewives used to do

What is spectating?

- viewing yourself from an outsider's perspective, even during sex - sexual objectification causes women to do this

Explain the gender of governance and give an example.

- who holds political office and how much it matters - More women hold political office today than ever before, but are still underrepresented - The US is in the middle of the pack internationally - In 2013, Congress was 18% female - Of all of the women who have ever been elected to Congress, about a third hold a seat now - The percent of Americans who say they would be willing to vote for a "qualified woman" for president has increased substantially in recent decades • Only 55% in 1958 • Over 90% in 2015

What is the glass ceiling, glass cliff, and glass escalator?

Invisible obstructions - Women in male-dominated careers face the glass ceiling: invisible barrier between them and the top positions - Women are less likely to get tapped for training, mentorship, or promotions - When women do break through the glass ceiling, they can encounter a glass cliff: heightened risk of falling compared to men - When women are promoted to leadership positions, it's more often when the company is in a state of crisis - However, men in these occupations are advantaged compared to their female co-workers - They face a glass escalator: invisible ride to the top - They are more likely to be promoted, and receive higher pay and better support from colleagues and supervisors (if they are white)