570 WJH, 495-8766
Office hours: Tuesdays 2-4 p.m.

This class will examine three ways in which gender is related to people's experience at work: (1) the jobs they do, (2) their rewards, and (3) workplace cultures. We will evaluate several theoretical explanations for the gendering of work and consider strategies that affect its prevalence.

Readings:

Reskin and Padavic, Women and Men at Work

Pierce, Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in a Contemporary Law Firm

Ogasawara, Office Ladies and Salaried Men

Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work

Coursepack (available at Gnomons and on reserve)

Readings include intensive examinations of gender in three work settings (one comparative study of two U.S. law firms, one study of work-family issues among employees of a U.S. corporation, and one study of men's and women's roles in a Japanese corporation), as well as articles drawn from sociology, history, and psychology that provide analytical and empirical contexts for the case studies.

Requirements: Class participation (and thus class attendance), eight to ten short papers or group projects, and a take-home final examination. Class participation will count up to ten percent of your grade; the short papers (in toto) and your final exam will each count about 45 percent toward the grade.

The objective of the papers is to apply academic concepts to the real world of employment. Assignments should be fun and interesting. They will include a short family work history, an analysis of the sexual division of labor in academic departments at Harvard (using data from the web), a small-group project observing gender and work roles, a group project estimating the cost of the kinds of unpaid work that women and men do, a group projects interviewing workers about class concepts (e.g., work-family conflict, experiences with discrimination), and a group project whose focus is up to the group. Group composition will rotate.

Lab sections will focus on developing interview schedules, observational guidelines, and other group projects.

Sample final examination questions:

1. Discuss the relationship between skill and gendered work.

2. How does ideology affect the amount of sex segregation across jobs, occupations, or firms?

3. In what ways do either male or female workers contribute to a gendered workplace? Why do they do this? How do employers affect the amount of gendering by workers?

4. How do protective labor laws (or other laws that are primarily directed women such as the Family Medical Leave Act) contribute to gendering in the workplace? What is the rationale for such laws?

5. One theory of discrimination emphasizes people's aversion to members of other groups; another emphasizes people's preference for members of their own group. How do the policy implications for reducing discrimination differ under these two view of sex discrimination.

6. Pretend that a medium-size high-tech organization hired you as a consultant on ways to reduce their liability to a sex discrimination suit, how would you decide what their problems were? Assume you found one of the forms of gendered we've discussed in class, what would you recommend to the organization?

7. How successful has affirmative action in employment been in improving women's positions in the workforce? What factors are critical for affirmative action to succeed? Does affirmative action contribute to gendering work?

8. Based on your interviews, what (if any) aspect of gendered work is the most pressing arena for policy intervention. What kinds of interventions would address it. Justify your answer.

9. What can you conclude from the figure showing "Women's Median Annual, Weekly, and Hourly Earnings as a Percentage of Men's Earnings, 1955-1995"?

Sept. 17, 22: INTRODUCTION

Sept. 24, 29: CONCEPTUALIZING WORK AND GENDER

Reskin and Padavic, Preface and Chapter 1, Work and Gender.

Papanek, Hanna. 1979. "Family Status Production: the 'Work' and 'Non-work' of Women." Signs 4:775-781.

Martin, Elizabeth A., Jennifer Hess, and Paul M. Siegel. 1995. "Some Effects of Gender on the Meaning of Work." Sociology of Work 5:29-44.

Oct. 1: HISTORY OF WORK

Reskin and Padavic, Ch. 2, A History of Gendered Work, plus tables in coursepack

Pinchbeck, Ivy. 1930. "The Appearance of Women Day Laborers." Pp. 53-66 in Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution. Virago Press.

Jones, Jacquelyn. 1985. "'To Get out of This Land of Sufring': Black Women Migrants to the North, 1900-1930." Pp. 152-195 in Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow. Vintage.

Oct. 6-8: GENDERED WORK

Fine, Gary Alan. 1987. "One of the Boys: Women in Male Dominated Settings." Pp. 131-47 in Michael S. Kimmel (ed.), Changing Men. Newbury Park: Sage.

Cooper, Patricia. 1991. "The Faces of Gender: Sex Segregation and Work Relations at Philco." Pp. 320-50 in Ava Baron (ed.), Work Engendered. Cornell Univ. Press.

Reskin and Padavic, Chapter 4, Sex Segregation in the Workplace, pp. 45-63.

Bureau of the Census. 1995. "Two Different Worlds: Men and Women from 9 to 5." U.S. Department of Commerce.

Table 1. Top Occupations by Sex and Race.

Figure 1.

Leidner, Robin. 1991. "Serving Hamburgers and Selling Insurance: Gender, Work and Identity in Interactive Service Jobs." Gender & Society 5:154-77.

Oct. 13-15: GENDERED WORK IN THE U.S.

Pierce, Gender Trials

Oct. 20-22: GENDERED WORK IN JAPAN

New York Times. 1997. "Opportunity at a Price." July 9, p. D1.

Ogasawara, Office Ladies and Salaried Men

Oct. 27: GENDERED WORK: UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITIES, UNEQUAL REWARDS

Reskin and Padavic, Chapter 3, pp. 31-32, pp. 81-85, bottom of p. 91 to bottom of p. 95, pp. 101-9.

Figures 2-4.

Williams, Christine. 1992. "The Glass Elevator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions." Social Problems 39:253-67.

Oct. 29: EXPLAINING GENDERED WORK: CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL FACTORS

Reskin and Padavic, Chapter 3, An Overview of Sex Inequality at Work, bottom of p. 32 to 43.

Major, Brenda, Dean McFarlin, and Diana Gagnon. 1984. "Overworked and Underpaid: On the Nature of Gender Differences in Personal Entitlement." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47:1399-1412.

Kim, Marlene. 1989. "Gender Bias in Compensation Structures: A Case Study of Its Historical Basis and Persistence." Journal of Social Issues 45:39-50.

Nov. 3: EXPLAINING GENDERED WORK: GENDER SOCIALIZATION, FAMILY ROLES

Heilman, Madeline. 1995. "Sex Stereotypes and Their Effects in the Workplace." Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 10:3-26.

Bielby, Denise and William Bielby. 1988. "She Works Hard for the Money: Household Responsibilities and Allocation of Work Effort." American Journal of Sociology 93:1031-59.

Nov. 5: EXPLAINING GENDERED WORK: EMPLOYER DISCRIMINATION

England, Paula. 1992. "Neoclassical Economists' Theories of Discrimination." Pp. 59-69 in Paul Burstein (ed.), Equal Employment Opportunity. Aldine de Gruyter.

Blalock, Hubert M. 1962. "Occupational Discrimination: Some Theoretical Propositions." Social Problems 42:240-7.

Neumark, David. 1995. "Sex Discrimination in the Restaurant Industry: An Audit Study." Quarterly Journal of Economics 111(3):915-941.

Nov. 10: EMPLOYER DISCRIMINATION, CONT'D

Kennelly, Ivy. 1996. "'You've Got That Single-Mother Element': Employers' Images of African-American Women." Forthcoming in Gender & Society.

McGinley, Ann C. 1997. "The Emerging Cronyism Defense and Affirmative Action: A Critical Perspective on the Distinction between Colorblind and Race-Conscious Decision Making Under Title VII." Arizona Law Review 39:1004-28.

Nov. 12: EXPLAINING GENDERED WORK: EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES

Kanter, Rosabeth. 1977. Men and Women of the Corporation, pp. 47-68.

Nov. 17: EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES, CONT'D

Reskin, Barbara and Irene Padavic. 1988. "Supervisors as Gatekeepers: Male Supervisors' Response to Women's Integration in Plant Jobs." Social Problems 35:401-415.

Bills, David B. 1988. "Educational Credentials and Hiring Decisions: What Employers Look for in New

Employees." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 7:71-97.

Nov. 19: GENDERED WORK: ACTIONS OF WORKERS

Bergmann, Barbara and William Darity. 1981. "Social Relations, Productivity, and Employer Discrimination." Monthly Labor Review 104:47-9.

Padavic, Irene and Barbara Reskin. 1990. "Men's Behavior and Women's Interest in Blue-Collar Jobs." Social Problems 37:613-28.

Reskin and Padavic, Chapter 7, Construction of the Gendered Workplace.

Nov. 24-26: ACTIONS OF WORKERS, CONTINUED

Swerdlow, Marian. 1989. "Men's Accommodations to Women Entering a Nontraditional Occupation: A Case of Rapid Transit Operatives." Gender & Society 3:373-87.

Cobble, Dorothy Sue. 1991. "Drawing the Line." Pp. 216-42 in Ava Baron (ed.), Work Engendered. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

Sacks, Karen B. 1984. "Computers, Ward Secretaries, and A Walkout in A Southern Hospital." Pp. 173-89 in

Karen Sacks and Dorothy Remy (eds.), My Troubles Are Going to Have Trouble with Me.

Dec. 1-3: GENDERED WORK AND THE FAMILY

Hochschild, The Time Bind

Dec. 8-10: GENDERED WORK AND THE STATE

History of government intervention in the workplace

Edwards, Mark. 1996. "Pregnancy Disability Act: Legal Erosion of Capitalist Ideology under Equal Employment Opportunity Law." Social Forces 75:247-69.

Burstein, Paul. 1989. "Attacking Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market," Social Forces 67:641-65.

Martin, Susan. 1991. "The Effectiveness of Affirmative Action: Policing." Justice Quarterly 8:489-504.

Dec. 15-17: THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK AND GENDERED WORK

Reskin and Padavic, chapter 9, Women, Men and Work in the 21st Century.

Walsh, John P. 1989. "Technological Change and the Division of Labor." Work and Occupations 16:164-183.

Costello, Cynthia. "The Clerical Homework Program at Wisconsin Physicians' Service Insurance." Pp. 198-214 in E. Boris and C. R. Daniels (eds.), Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home.

Fernandez-Kelly, Patricia Maria. 1984. "Maquiladoras: The View from the Inside." Pp. 229-45 in

Karen Sacks and Dorothy Remy (eds.), My Troubles Are Going to Have Trouble with Me.

Jan. 18 (Monday), 4 p.m.: Final examination due in Sociology Dept. office, 6th floor, William James Hall.