This article is about sexual harassment and how it affects and is affected by men and women. Rhode talks about how the victims are generally the ones that are trying to defend themselves in court not the alleged perpetrators. She says that a lot of Americans believe that sexual harassment is over exaggerated and that it really doesn’t happen that much when it actually happens quite frequently. She said that 90% of women under 50 in the military have been sexually harassed even though they claim to have a zero tolerance policy. She also talks about how many people feel that a woman would be much better off to just not even mention the things that happen.
I completely agree with this, which is unfortunate. There are a lot of setting at work where someone will “jokingly” say something inappropriate to a woman and really what other choice does she have than to just laugh it off. If you go and make a formal complaint then you were have many more repercussions to face which might just end your job. Its horrible.
Rhode talks about several very vulgar and humiliating instance that women have been put in by men and when it was taken to court the judge said that they really didn’t have a case. In some ways this shocked me and in other ways it didn’t.
She says that not only do we need to respond to the people that are engaging in these actions but in the institutions that are perpetuating them. I agree with this statement. Unless workplaces are really going to get behind their policies than I wouldn’t expect any significant changes.
She also talks about violence against women. It has been found that judges devalue aggression and domestic violence when it is brought to the courtroom. They say that women “exaggerate.” She says that 90% of domestic assaults and a majority of domestic violence arrests never result in prosecution and less than 10% of those that do result in any jail time.
People feel that if there was really a problem the women would leave the relationship but seriously?? How do they expect these women to leave when someone, bigger and stronger and very threatening, is telling them everyday that if she leaves him he will kill her? The legal system is not taking the time to look at the thought process and the mental state of battered and abused women. Many times they feel that they just cannot get out and I find this information really frustrating.
The topic of rape is covered as well. There is of course the stereotype that good guys don’t rape women and only sluts get raped. Clearly this is false. There is the misconception that rape is about sexual gratification when really it is about power and domination. There are just so many things that people do not understand that leads to the way society views these problems. Most women are raped by men they know, not strangers. Up until not that long ago, isn’t wasn’t even a crime for a wife to be raped by her husband, she was his property and he could do what he pleased with her.
All of this is just crazy I think and I also think it’s a huge problem in our society. I’m sure a good portion of the women in this class have experienced inappropriate comments that can be uncomfortable and even threatening. I think that some men just aren’t able to see this from a woman’s point of view. Most men would love that kind of attention from a women as Rhode mentions in this article but how much of a threat do they see women as? I just don’t think it’s the same when it’s the other way around.
I like the points that were raised in this article. I feel that this is stuff that probably most of us, especially in this field, know by now but its stuff that a lot of people don’t realize.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sex and Violence
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Second Shift
Alright, I guess I'd like to know that we were not always dealing with the most extreme cases in these readings. In Sociology of the Family there was always a discussion about the "second shift" for women, and I just feel like all we hear as young sociologists is how extreme cases work where women get the shaft and men do nothing.
Now, I'm not one to say that women aren't getting the shaft in most cases with the second shift, I am just saying I'd love to see a "normal" case presented. Some may think that the case was normal, but I am not so sure that it is. In the study done in this section, the fathers ended up getting more sleep than the wives/mothers did. They also watched more television. But here is my question, what if the wife didn't like television? I'm just saying. Trying to be the devil's advocate. I thought one of the interesting quotes from this section came from page 572 when they say "One reason women take a deeper interest than men in the problems of juggling work with family life is that even when husbands happily shared the hours of work, their wives felt more responsible for home and children". This is finally something relevant! Simply because it is real. The real deal is that there is a sense of responsibility that women have for home and children that men do not.
I also saw some interesting information on the same page about why it is that men seem to have more control over when they make their contributions. Men are usually able to tell the secretary to hold his calls, but a working mother would probably be the secretary. Meaning that the working mother would not have much control on what she is able to do as far as holding calls goes.
I know this post is really late, but hey, I got it up here. This is my opinion on the matter. We have got to get out of this idea of thinking for other situations and get into this idea of thinking for our situation. Fella's, help your lady out with things at home. I ask the question here, now, we always talk about situations that the wife has to deal with (laundry, dishes...), but we never talk about the outside house work that has to be done. I know that there are tests telling about much more relaxed the guys position is, and I am not really denying that, but we never look at the full spectrum I feel.
Article was sweet, another talk about the second shift. Perspective was different, but I think that the friction between couples starts far before the "second shift" hits. Maybe if people stopped marrying because of sex and started taking the time to get to know the individual we wouldn't have so many people unhappy with their relationships and wanting out or dreading their position. I'm just saying.
Alright, I'm off my soap box. Sorry this was SUPER late, but better late than never.
Goldin, From the Valley to the Summit - for J. Barone
I think that one of the biggest reasons women and men have such hard types working in each others gender based work fields is the stereo type as Kirlin mentions above. Men need to be masculine, strong, and provide while women need to be pretty, quiet and on the sidelines this is the American trend. A more important question that we should be asking is why did this trend start? In some Native American cultures basket weaving and clothes making were considered men’s work while women’s work consisted of keeping house and by keeping house I mean building it and maintaining it. It is strange that in these two very different cultures the gender roles would also vary so much.
If men are supposedly stronger why wouldn’t they be responsible for building houses? It seems although women have been graduating from college at higher rates than men and still earning less than men that it is just a part of our culture. If our culture calls for women to help others and be less superior then males perhaps they are doomed to stay their since graduating at higher rates hasn’t helped. Could this trend be irreversible will women always just be left striving to be equivalent to males. Even if we look way back to cavemen times perhaps this is where the trend started; women aren’t strong enough to hunt so they will stay at home while men go and provide. If gender inequality has existed for thousands of years is it able to be broken down?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
"A Speed Up In The Family" by Hochschild
Hochschild paints vivid examples of gender inequality within the household in The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Hochschild outlines inequalities between the amount of work mothers do at home compared to that of fathers, and states that with more women moving into the economy, families have been hit by a “speed up” in work and family life; the speed up being that there “is no more time in the day than there was when wives stayed home, but there is twice as much to get done” (pg 572). Women are the ones who then typically absorb and deal with this speed up by working a “second shift”, which happens when women who have a salaried job outside the home (shift one) return home only to be confronted with their second shift of work (cooking food, doing laundry, caring for children, cleaning, etc.) all within their household.
Hochschild also found that working women averaged three hours a day of housework compared to their working male counterpart, who only spend "17 minutes on housework" (pg. 569). Working women also spent more time with their children, watched less television, and slept less then their working husbands. One of the major statistics Hochschild stresses as a summary of the inequality is that over a typical year, “women worked an extra month of twenty-four hour days a year” when compared to their husbands (pg 570).
When Hochschild tried to explain why women were the ones to feel the brunt of this “speed up”in the family, it seemed that gender role expectations and stereotypes were the base of her reasoning. Women felt more responsible for the homestead and children, women were in charge of gender specific tasks like cooking and childcare which took up more time then the male specific tasks like oil changes and general repairs, men overruled their wives in deciding who did what in terms of childcare (men doing more leisure and fun things with children, while women did more “maintenance” and routine tasks with the children) and so on. All of these tasks seemed to have specific rules attached to them as to which sex is allowed to do each aspect of home life. These rules are gender roles and gender stereotypes that seem embedded in both men and women, husbands and wives, which create the traditional gender ideology typically supported by an unequal, patriarchal society.
This Hochschild article reminded me of something I read about in my HEV 411 class (Family Relations) called “The Mommy Wars”, which is the “war” between the stay at home mothers who get treated as outsiders and sometimes deemed “lazy” and the paid working mothers who are looked at as not being 100% involved in their children’s lives. I remember the article mentioned how there is no “win – win” situation for mothers in today’s society, as both sides are stigmatized.
I believe that Hochschild presents good arguments for gender inequality in the household. I would have liked to see a more solid and clear conclusion when it came to the impact of this on children and the couple themselves, as this part remained a little vague, but was touched on. I would also like to see statistics on relationships with homosexual partners to see if there is a difference in gender roles/second shifts, etc between these groups when competing genders are eliminated from the equation.
Detours on the Road to Equality: Women, Work, and Higher Education
Jerry A. Jacobs states in his article that the incline of women entering male dominated work has been slowing, and seems to have come to a halt in 1990’s. Although this is happening, women are not giving up. They are instead attending secondary higher education institutes; in addition, the author states that women may be attending these institutes at an astronomical number because of the roadblocks they are encountering when attempting to enter male dominated professions. According to the article, in 1998 56% of bachelor’s degrees that were earned were by women. It is also believed that in the near future, the ratio of college degrees earned by women to men will be 60:40. If this is the case why are women experiencing this and what may be contributing to it?
There is a major trend in segregation between male dominated work fields and women dominated work fields. To show, women dominate the fields of secretaries, administrative assistants, child care workers, or registered nurses. Males tend to dominate in construction trades such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, mechanics and repair, and engineers. This is interesting because I feel that these trades have been taught to males and females from an early age in life through gender stereotypes. Even more interesting, among high-status professions there seems to be an increase in the rate of women. The areas of medicine, law, and management are considered to be among the high-status professions. Although these professions are occupied by both men and women, women are still working in areas of these fields that are associated with the family. Moreover, women are being paid less even when they have the same work time, qualifications, and experience as men.
Why could a trend such as this career segregation occurring? The article discusses items such as a trend of growing up with gender stereotypes, burnout, and limits to parenting. These items seem obvious, but why is it then that women are entering male dominated fields and men are not interested in entering female dominate fields? The answer is masculinity. I believe that women are not necessarily afraid to be viewed as having masculine characteristics because it comes with power, but men do not want to demote their masculinity. I think this is bogus because men and women bring different traits and should want to contribute those to different areas of work.
Near the end of Jacob’s article, he goes in to great detail regarding the decline of integration in the work field. When examining the “index of dissimilarity,” there is a drastic decline between the years of 1970 and 2000. These can be explained by booms and depressions of the economy, the feminist movement, affirmative action, and other elements and changes in the functioning of society. Unfortunately with the way that the economy and society are going nowadays, the article predicted that by the year 2020 there will not be much change; furthermore, the conditions will resemble the current patterns. This is truly a shame because women should have just as much opportunity in life as men do; especially in a “free” America.
The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home
The information retrieved for this reading was done by interviewing women with different job backgrounds, from lawyers and corporate executives to day care workers and seamstresses. These women, and surprisingly their husbands both felt differently in regards to some issues. For example: how right is it for a mom with young kids to work fulltime, or how many responsibilities a husband should have at home. However, both agreed that it is hard for them to work fulltime jobs and raise their young kids.
Today in the labor force, 2/3 of women are now working. With that statistic Szalais asks how much more time are Dads contributing at home? The study shows that men only spend 17 minutes a day to help with housework, versus women who spend an average of 3 hours. Sadly, when it comes to spending time with their kids, women spend 50 minutes a day, versus men who spend only 12 minutes (P. 569-70). I think this statistic is very sad. I question how much this affects kids growing up.
Szalais’ study portrayed a deeper set of emotional issues behind gender strategy coping with home, work, marriage, and life. The wage gap between men and women leads to a gap between work, home, and leisure time as well. We are all aware that “second shift” is a real thing that occurs with women in our society- Working fulltime and coming home to keep up with cleaning, laundry, cooking, and tending to the kids schedule. I feel that because of our history and society’s idea that juggling everything is apart of being a woman in a family, the second shift will continue to exist. Women in the study said that they feel as if they are always on duty- on duty at work and then arriving at home and on duty there too. The article leads me to the idea that women in our society are just plane overwhelmed. Also, many of the women believed that the speed up with more responsibility and the speedup lead to strain because they often have to do two things at once. Because of this, problems arise between husbands and wives in the marital and individual realm. The author believes that this an effect from their childhoods and how they were raised, and goes on to state that when couples struggle, it is not really because of who does what, but more so over who is giving and receiving gratitude (p. 578).During the authors interviews of husbands and wives in their home, began to see that these couples develop family myths. What are these family myths? Hochschild describes it as “versions of reality that obscure core truth in order to manage a family tension” (P. 579). Hochschild found by the end of the interviews that more people spoke about ending relationships for other reasons than the husband not contributing to household work and commitment to time with kids. I think that was a surprise because the entire reading seemed to be more about the gender differences in roles and the stresses of women and their role in society between labor and family. To me it seemed that the author threw in that statement at the end as if to say “oh by the way.” which makes no sense to me because of everything else she focused on. I do question some of her findings because she never described the setting whether it was rural or in the suburbs, or what the age of these women were. I wish she would have gotten some statistic on the reasons why wives divorce.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Jobless Poverty: A new Form of Social Dislocation in the Inner-City Ghetto- Wilson
In this article, Wilson is discussing jobless poverty and how it is effecting different racial groups. When Wilson is talking about "joblessness" he includes both official unemployment and non-labor-force participation. With these statistics he provides for us, it shows that people who live in the high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. Wilson feels that this is because all of the problems in the inner-city ghetto neighborhoods such as crime, welfare, and low levels of social organizations. The example he presented in this article was a child who grows up in a family with a steady breadwinner and in a neighborhoods in which most adults are employed the child will tend to develop some of the disciplined habits that are reflected in the behavior of those around him. This could be true to some point, however, I do not feel that this is always the case. Some people grow up in poverty and they use this experience to guide them into becoming successful. Many times they learn from this and try to succeed.
Another thing Wilson talks about the "statistical discrimination" employers make when they are hiring individuals. Statistic shows that employers make assumptions about the inner-city black workers in general and make a decision before they even have a chance to interview. It is sad that this still happens in society. Just because someone is from a certain area or they are a certain race it should not matter. What should matter is their skills, work experience, and if they fit the job criteria. Also, employers judge people on where they are from due to the lack of skills that the one area may have. This makes me suspicious because just because you may be raised in a lower-class area, does not mean that you are like everyone else. Several times this may be the class, but you should not judge someone before you get to meet them. Wilson shows good statistics that show all the "joblessness" out there and why this may be a major problem in our society today.