Men who do "women's work" have consistently been the butt of jokes, derided for their lack of drive and masculinity. In this eye-opening study, Christine Williams provides a wholly new look at men ...who work in predominantly female jobs. Having conducted extensive interviews in four cities, Williams uncovers how men in four occupations—nursing, elementary school teaching, librarianship, and social work—think about themselves and experience their work.
Contrary to popular imagery, men in traditionally female occupations do not define themselves differently from men in more traditional occupations. Williams finds that most embrace conventional, masculine values. Her findings about how these men fare in their jobs are also counterintuitive. Rather than being surpassed by the larger number of women around them, these men experience the "glass escalator effect," rising in disproportionate numbers to administrative jobs at the top of their professions. Williams finds that a complex interplay between gendered expectations embedded in organizations, and the socially determined ideas workers bring to their jobs, contribute to mens' advantages in these occupations.
Using a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, Williams calls for more men not only to cross over to women's occupations, but also to develop alternative masculinities that find common ground with traditionally female norms of cooperation and caring. Until the workplace is sexually integrated and masculine and feminine norms equally valued, it will unfortunately remain "still a man's world."
When women work in male-dominated professions, they encounter a "glass ceiling" that prevents their ascension into the top jobs. Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of the "glass escalator," ...my term for the advantages that men receive in the so-called women's professions (nursing, teaching, librarianship, and social work), including the 'assumption that they are better suited than women for leadership positions. In this article, I revisit my original analysis and identify two major limitations of the concept: (1) it fails to adequately address intersectionality; in particular, it fails to theorize race, sexuality, and class; and (2) it was based on the assumptions of traditional work organizations, which are undergoing rapid transformation in our neoliberal era. The glass escalator assumes stable employment, career ladders, and widespread support for public institutions (e.g., schools and libraries)—which no longer characterize the job market today. Drawing on my studies of the oil and gas industry and the retail industry, I argue that new concepts are needed to understand workplace gender inequality in the 21st century.
For most Americans, paid work is their primary means of support. A small percentage of Americans are wealthy enough that they do not need a job, but most people rely on their paychecks for survival. ...The coronavirus pandemic starkly reveals the limitations of this dependence. In this address, I draw attention to three “problems of working for a living”: lack of access to jobs, poor job quality, and inequality in the workplace. I will argue that addressing these problems is urgently needed to ensure the well-being of all workers. Going even further, I encourage consideration of alternative forms of life support, including expanding the private and the public safety nets, arguing that our existence should not depend exclusively on working for a living.
GENDERED ORGANIZATIONS IN THE NEW ECONOMY WILLIAMS, CHRISTINE L.; MULLER, CHANDRA; KILANSKI, KRISTINE
Gender & society,
08/2012, Letnik:
26, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Gender scholars draw on the "theory of gendered organizations" to explain persistent gender inequality in the workplace. This theory argues that gender inequality is built into work organizations in ...which jobs are characterized by long-term security, standardized career ladders and job descriptions, and management controlled evaluations. Over the past few decades, this basic organizational logic has been transformed. In the so-called new economy, work is increasingly characterized by job insecurity, teamwork, career maps, and networking. Using a case study of geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, we apply a gender lens to this evolving organization of work. This article extends Acker's theory of gendered organizations by identifying the mechanisms that reproduce gender inequality in the twenty-flrst-century workplace, and by suggesting appropriate policy approaches to remedy these disparities.
The regulation of health claims for foods by the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation is intended, primarily, to protect consumers from unscrupulous claims by ensuring claims are accurate and ...substantiated with high quality scientific evidence. In this position paper, the Academy of Nutrition Sciences uniquely recognises the strengths of the transparent, rigorous scientific assessment by independent scientists of the evidence underpinning claims in Europe, an approach now independently adopted in UK. Further strengths are the separation of risk assessment from risk management, and the extensive guidance for those submitting claims. Nevertheless, four main challenges in assessing the scientific evidence and context remain: (i) defining a healthy population, (ii) undertaking efficacy trials for foods, (iii) developing clearly defined biomarkers for some trial outcomes and (iv) ensuring the composition of a food bearing a health claim is consistent with generally accepted nutrition principles. Although the Regulation aims to protect the consumer from harm, we identify some challenges from consumer research: (i) making the wording of some health claims more easily understood and (ii) understanding the implications of the misperceptions around products bearing nutrition or health claims. Recommendations are made to overcome these challenges. Further, the Academy recommends that a dialogue is developed with the relevant national bodies about Article 12(c) in the Regulation. This should further clarify the GB Guidance to avoid the current non-level playing field between health professionals and untrained ‘influencers’ who are not covered by this Article about the communication of authorised claims within commercial communications.
This Position Paper from the Academy of Nutrition Sciences is the first in a series which describe the nature of the scientific evidence and frameworks that underpin nutrition recommendations for ...health. This first paper focuses on evidence which underpins dietary recommendations for prevention of non-communicable diseases. It considers methodological advances made in nutritional epidemiology and frameworks used by expert groups to support objective, rigorous and transparent translation of the evidence into dietary recommendations. The flexibility of these processes allows updating of recommendations as new evidence becomes available. For CVD and some cancers, the paper has highlighted the long-term consistency of a number of recommendations. The innate challenges in this complex area of science include those relating to dietary assessment, misreporting and the confounding of dietary associations due to changes in exposures over time. A large body of experimental data is available that has the potential to support epidemiological findings, but many of the studies have not been designed to allow their extrapolation to dietary recommendations for humans. Systematic criteria that would allow objective selection of these data based on rigour and relevance to human nutrition would significantly add to the translational value of this area of nutrition science. The Academy makes three recommendations: (i) the development of methodologies and criteria for selection of relevant experimental data, (ii) further development of innovative approaches for measuring human dietary intake and reducing confounding in long-term cohort studies and (iii) retention of national nutrition surveillance programmes needed for extrapolating global research findings to UK populations.
The importance of chronic low-grade inflammation in the pathology of numerous age-related chronic conditions is now clear. An unresolved inflammatory response is likely to be involved from the early ...stages of disease development. The present position paper is the most recent in a series produced by the International Life Sciences Institute's European Branch (ILSI Europe). It is co-authored by the speakers from a 2013 workshop led by the Obesity and Diabetes Task Force entitled ‘Low-grade inflammation, a high-grade challenge: biomarkers and modulation by dietary strategies’. The latest research in the areas of acute and chronic inflammation and cardiometabolic, gut and cognitive health is presented along with the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying inflammation–health/disease associations. The evidence relating diet composition and early-life nutrition to inflammatory status is reviewed. Human epidemiological and intervention data are thus far heavily reliant on the measurement of inflammatory markers in the circulation, and in particular cytokines in the fasting state, which are recognised as an insensitive and highly variable index of tissue inflammation. Potential novel kinetic and integrated approaches to capture inflammatory status in humans are discussed. Such approaches are likely to provide a more discriminating means of quantifying inflammation–health/disease associations, and the ability of diet to positively modulate inflammation and provide the much needed evidence to develop research portfolios that will inform new product development and associated health claims.
"Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few ...benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu's theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor practices we identify contribute to the re-entrenchment of job segregation, race and gender discrimination, and fetishism of consumption. The conclusion argues against rewarding aesthetic labor and suggests other rationales for upgrading low-wage retail employment." Forschungsmethode: empirisch; Befragung; Theorieanwendung. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
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