Sociology: Chapter 12

Mommy Track

-A career path for women who opt to sacrifice promotions and pay raises in order to devote more time to raising their children.

Ideal femininity? Who exhibited this?

-Beauty, poise, whiteness, educated, slender -Stewardesses

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 disproportionally likely to be of the same sex (and also the same class, race, and sexual orientation, etc.)

Causes of gendered job segregation

-Socialization hypothesis, network hypothesis, employer selection hypothesis, desertion hypothesis

Androcentric pay scale

-Strong correlation between wages and gender composition of a job -As women enter an occupation, the status goes down -Largest contributor to wage gap 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 these factors, "women's work" pays 5-20% less than "men's work" -More recently, pharmacy (54% female) and veterinary science (51% female) have become feminized -wages have stagnated compared to similar occupations like medicine (34% female) and law (31% female), which have seen less feminization

Socialization Hypothesis

-Suggests that we respond to gender stereotypes when planning, training, and applying for jobs In one study, psychologists invited students into a classroom and asked them to fill out a questionnaire about their interest and perceived ability in computer science -one room was filled with "computer geeky" stuff - a Star Trek poster, comic books ,video game boxes, empty soda cans, junk food -men were unfazed by the items, but women in the geeked up room were significantly less likely to say they were considering a computer science major --- the hypothesis says that we self-select into jobs socially constructed for our sex

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"

Gendered job segregation

-The practice of filling occupations with mostly male or mostly female workers -It is a social construct

Emotion Work

-The process of evoking, suppressing, or otherwise managing feelings to create a publicly observable display of emotion -Flight attendants and the feminine ideal

Glass cliff

-When women do break through the glass ceiling, they can encounter this - heightened risk of falling compared to men

Why is the gender pay gap steadily decreasing?

-Women's rise in wages -Declining Wages for working class men -Women increasing their education -Labor unions and manufacturing jobs that used to protect men are on the decline

Benevolent Sexism

A chivalrous attitude toward women that feels favorable but is actually sexist because it casts women as weak creatures in need of men's protection

Who is more likely to encounter the concrete cliff?

Black and latina women.

Once a job is dominated by men or women, employers assume that it is for good reason and select mew employees accordingly. What hypothesis matches this phenomena?

Employer selection hypothesis

To what extent does gendered job segregation happen in the US

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 Job example Insurance salesperson "Killer instinct" and competitive edge or great interpersonal skills and trustworthiness?

Glass Escalator

How men in feminized occupations are at an advantage compared to their female co-workers Invisible ride to the top (coined by Christine Williams) - they are more likely to be promoted, and receive higher pay and better support from colleagues and supervisors (if they are white)

Glass Ceiling

Invisible barrier between women and top positions in masculine corporations. Caused by hostile and benevolent sexism

Civil Rights Act of 1964 affect men and women's employment and wages

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 hundred of cases for this to happen

What do governments do to be able to display lower wage gaps?

Keep most women out of the work force

How does the gender pay gap vary on the basis of demographics?

Lower pay seen for minorities, minus most Asians

Glass Cellar

Men are greatly affected by the glass cellar; they are stuck in the most hazardous and dangerous occupations

Concrete Cliff

Penalizing women of color for their lack of white femininity

Employer selection hypothesis

Proposes that employers tend to prefer men for masculine jobs and women for feminine jobs, and therefore slot applicants accordingly

Sticky Floor

Social forces that keep the majority of the world's women stuck in low-paid jobs. It may not make sense to be ambitious then...

Masculinization of wealth

The concentration of men in high-earning occupations, and their resulting ability to accumulate savings, investments, and assets. Starts from childhood.

Hostile Sexism

The condemnation of women with negative instead of positive stereotypes and the use of threats and violence to enforce women's subservience to men

Care Work

The devaluation of feminized occupations is especially acute for this type of work. The work involves face-to-face care-taking of the physical, emotional, and educational needs of others: children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled.

Gender Wage Gap

The difference between the earnings of women who work full-time year-round as a group and those of men who work full-time year-round as a group.

How is gender pay gap measured?

The gender pay gap is calculated by divings women's median earning by men's median earnings

After WWII, more women became stewards, a job previously populated by males. What is this occupation sex change an example of?

The gendered social construction of jobs and how prestige and pay tend to follow sex.

Sexual objectification

The tendency to think about women in a narrow way as objects rather than full humans, as if their physical appearance is all that matters

What is the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium?

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 mothers of the same age earn 73 cents In contrast, dads receive a fatherhood premium, earning 4-7% more than married men without children

Desertion hypothesis/Select Exit Hypothesis

states that individuals enter a job dominated by the other sex, they are more likely than other workers to leave that occupation in favor of a new one in one study 61% of women in male dominated occupations had left their job less than 30% of their male colleagues had done so half of the women switched to a female-dominated occupation