My name is Amanda Huff, and I am conducting research on employment, care work, justice, and gender through the strides and struggles of working women. I am carrying out this research for my JUS 420: Woman, Work, & Justice Class where I will be analyzing a working mother’s struggle in-between her family life and her work life. For this analysis of juggling work and family I have thought long and hard about who exactly I would want to interview. When thinking about this process I thought of my own mother. I know interviewing one’s own mother might be biased, but on the contrary I think this would be beneficial because I would learn a great deal about women in general and on a personal level learn more about her struggle.

I will be interviewing my mother Chris Menapace. She was not always Christine Menapace, before she was Christine Huff and before that she was Christine Rene Kroft. My mother, a strong and hard working mother, women, and friend all around has a beautiful life story and this is why I will be telling it. She has gone through divorce of her parents, raising two girls, moving away from her family, starting over in the work force, a divorce of her own, going back to college, getting re-married, taking on two more step-daughters, and re-starting in a new working field. This is a life of perseverance, struggle, hardship, strength, love, and fighting to make life what you want and what you deserve out of it. This interview will be based on her past, how she managed and struggled life and work, and how it affected her.

Draft of Interview Questions:
The child care, the child, and the mother.



1. Growing up what were your father and mother’s occupations?
2. What was a typical day in your household like?
3. Did you have child care growing up? What was it like?
4. At what age did you get married?
5. Did your husband work? What hours?
6. How many children did you have?
7. Did you go back to work after they were born? When? Was it the same job and same pay?
8. How long were you at work everyday?
9. What was your children’s childcare situation while you were at work? How many different child care arrangements, facilities did you use and for how long?
10. When did you start using child care?
11. How long were they in child care?
12. How did your family, friends, etc help out with child care?
13. How did you pay for child care? How much was it?
14. Who took care of this child on the weekends? Did you or the husband have to work?


The Child:

1. How many children do you have:
2. Names?
3. Birthdates:
4. Gender:
5. Did the children associate with one parent more than the other?
How so? Which one? Explain.
6. Did the children display A-typical gender roles? Did the fact that you worked change the way that you wanted them to view the working force?
7. How long did the children live with you?
8. What was it like raising your children?
9. Was it hard juggling work and home?
How so? Explain the obstacles
10. What, who could have helped or made this situation easier?
11. Did your work accommodate if you had care giving situations with the children?
How so, explain?
12. What characteristics would you say are needed to have a good family life?
13. What sacrifices did you make in work for your home?
14. Did you have to sacrifice home for work? Work longer than you wanted to?

The Mother:

1.What is your job right now?
2. How much do you make?
3. What field are you in?
4. How many hours do you work?
5. What was your occupation when you had your children at home? Work history from child was born to present.
6. How many hours did you work?
7. How much did you make?
8. Did you have to sacrifice education for family?
9. What scarifies did you make for home?
At times when you were a single parent, was it harder? Physically, financially, etc. explain.
10. Were you happy with your job when your children were living at home?
If not, what did you do about this?
11. What are the key characteristics for juggling home and work?
12. What advice would you give a first time mother who wants to work?

UNIT A: Blog 4: Balancing Work & Family

Blog #4


Males and females who have a job and are responsible for family care are always caught between a balancing act of how they are going to accomplishing everything in so little time. The AFLCIO fact sheet states that 65 million women are now in the work force, more than ¼ of these women spend nights and weekends at there jobs and have different schedules as their spouse. Many adults are struggling to juggle work and family, barely get to spend time with their spouse, just getting by in proving health care, and 54 million of those people are caregivers. The question is how do these people balance their work life responsibilities and their home life responsibilities?

Over the past years family time has gone done by 22 hours a week since 1970 due to parents working. Parents are struggling with balancing a good home life with a productive and idealistic work life. This struggle is difficult considering parenting is a 24 hours/ 7 day a week job and the idealistic full-time worker is supposedly suppose to work around over 50 hours a week. Parents need to create a system, a way of dealing with juggling two lives, the life at home and the life at work. The problem is that there is no concrete system that everyone can follow. We are all different, we all have different issues, problems, different occupations, different pay, different number of people we care for and the list goes on, but caregivers need to take everything they have to accomplish in, analyze what needs to be done, how they are going to do it, what is the most important, and how or who is going to help them.

To be efficient and productive in balancing work and home a caregiver and parent must know what it takes to do this. To balance a home and work life it is very difficult and stressful. One of the best ways to balance them out and be productive is planning. When planning out your work day and family life the caregiver will realize depending on their responsibilities and financial situation that they are going to have to make sacrifices. An example of this is from the “Juggling Work & Family” video which talks about a family in where the father had to make a career change to work nights as a limousine driver in order to help the family. The mother would work days and the father would works nights in order to insure that their two children had 24/7 care. This was a great sacrifice in work, but the father and mother both get to keep jobs, and support and see the family. In order to do this they were very structured and organized because they only got one hour together from the time the mother got home from work and the father had to go to work. Even though they spent time apart this family was financial sound, organized, structured, happy they were working, loving, helpful, very close, nurturing, and cherished the time they spent together. These kinds of characteristics are necessary if a family wants a good family life while juggling work.

This balancing and juggling of work and home has become increasingly more difficult due to gender role changes. This gender role change is due to the fact that women started taking more and more roles in the work force. Before this change balancing work and family was more concrete because males were predominantly the bread winners who go to work and women were the care givers staying at home and taking care of the family. Now, with men and women at work both parents are changing their roles to help with the family. Since both parents are working they both have to make sacrifices. The issues that make the change in gender roles so complex are there is less family time, less time doing community organizational activities, less house work is being done, and many more issues that are dependent on individual situations. One of the biggest issues are the time spend with the children and the individual special care that these children need. Even though children are being putting in educational school it is important that each child be taught and cared for by the parents. Sometimes the situation is different such as single parent families. These parents are faced with working more, having less time for there kids, not being able to afford after-school child care forcing the kids to be home taking care of themselves, and financial difficultly putting great amounts of stress on them.

This brings the discussion into the factors that make the life and work balancing act hard to achieve. Some of the factors that make this balance difficult to accomplish are from the work which would include time dead lines, work hours, calls at all hours of the day, working in a greedy workplace, working over time to pay bills, and not making enough money to support family. Another issue comes from the home which would include feeling guilty from being away from your family, not being there for them, missing out precious family moments, and just not having the time to take care of them. There is a tug of war going on in these parents heads because they want to work to help support their family, but at the same time they feel guilty. It is a balance of power, a balance of work and family, which never stops. In some instances parents, if they can afford to, have to make a decision. In one case in the video “Juggling work & family” a mother was torn in-between her high paying career of being a lawyer and her two kids. After trying to work part-time which didn’t work, she decided to quit, stay at home and take care of her children. This family decided and had the luxury of having one parent stay at home with the kids supporting them and one parents working supporting them financially. Even though she is very happy to be with her children she feels unfulfilled from not working. In life nothing is concrete and everything you love must be taken care of and protected.

Every situation is different when dealing with juggling work and family life and everyone needs a helping hand once in a whole. When care givers are struggling just to fit everything into one day they look to their friends, family, and company in which they are employed for help. One great support system is the caregiver’s family. Family members and even their children can step in and help. When caregivers have help from their family and children it will help them all stay organized and taken care of. Taking care of a family is a group effort and works better when everyone is helping out. For example from the video “Juggling Work and & Family” we look back on the single mother with two kids. Her two children are in charge of making dinner a couple of times a week. This single and small act of helping the mom out helps the family greatly.

Another way in which care givers are looking for help is from their workplace. Although employees are working for the company the company should work and strive to work for its people. If the company can increase productivity while increasing satisfaction, caring, and flexibility to its employees then everyone wins. If employees are happy then work harder so the goal should be to make the employees happy. As notes from our PowerPoint slides “Workplace Flexibility” there are three ways in which employers work with time constraints of employees which are: Traditional Flextime, Daily Flextime, and telecommuting. Traditional Flextime lets the employee pick what time the start and end work. This accommodates the caregiver so work fits into their schedule and the employer still gets their work done. Daily Flextime lets the employee vary hours of work depending on the day. Telecommuting lets the employee work part-time off site. Employers should still be strict as they are running a business, but still need to be sensitive. We are all human and we all have family problems and issues at some point. An employer should be aware of this and be understanding of work and home conflicts. An employer should let the employee use their days off, sick days, work flextime opinions, and also give them “passes” within reason. Everyone deserves help, but should be aware and cautious so people do not over use them. Everyone is different and should be treated as such.

UNIT A: BLOG 3: Home & Work

Blog #3

The House, work, and the divisions of labor have been a distribution of tasks that has been around for centuries. Women are labeled as the caregivers, taking care of the house, the children, family, and doing the “labor of love” work that was unpaid. Men are labeled as the workforce, going out into the world and working, and doing the “real work” that was paid. Even though both types of work are indispensable and require hard work women’s work, the care work, was looked down upon compared to the men’s work.

Care work, is the “work of love” as described in the power points. Care work in the past has predominately been classified as women’s work. Care work would include taking care of the child, all family members, doing the cleaning, the laundry, the cooking, and anything else that had to be done in the house and all the family members living there. As stated before people perceived Care work as been less valued and they would refer to it as “Shadow work.” This would refer to the fact that people saw it as not being real work, but in fact it is very important and without it the family could not function.

These divisions of labor, of care work jobs in the work force are taking a new turn. In “Changing Gender Roles at Home” video it stated that in the 1940s 5 times more families had men as the provider in the work force and women as the caregivers in the home, but now women are shifting the divisions of labor. Women are going into the work force along with their male counterparts. Now, a typical family is 3 times as likely to have the father and mother in the work force. This shift has changed the divisions and women are doing less work in the homes and men are doing a little more to help.

This shift and change in the divisions of labor has changed some, but people still perceive women as responsible for the care work. Now, women are not only working in the work force, but they are coming home and working a “second shift.” A “second shift” refers to the fact the women now have a paying job, but they are still responsible for coming home and doing most of the unpaid work as a second job. In the clip “Changing Gender Roles at home” this added responsibility for women to hold down two jobs is called a “Stalled Revolution” or in other words the divisions have changed, but the responsibility has not. This is not a constant because in some households the men are helping out the care work, but in others they are not.

In my experience of growing up the divisions of labor in my house would land somewhere in-between the “Stalled Revolution” and the new and improved division of labor. Our household consisted of my father and mother, my sister, me, and our cat and dog (which have to be counted because they were family member and treated as one). My father worked over full time, which could be defined as the equivalent as working 50 plus hours a week and mother worked full time as well. My father ran two businesses and held stock in another while my mother co-owned one of the businesses. They both worked a lot which created a shift in our family structuring. The fact that they both worked showed that there was a shift or a change in the divisions of laboring my house, but the care work was divided in a different way. The care work I feel was shared, but it was shared in a different way than what would be expected.

As stated before when women went into the work force they ended up working a “second shift” and this is what happened in my household, but with some changes. Although my father and mother both shared and worked to help the family the traditional roles were held in the house when they were home. When women go into the work force some times they would have to “outsource” which is what happened part-time in my house. The term out sourced is referring to the fact that my sister and I had a nanny. We would be in the care of our nanny from the time we got out of school until dinner time or later, which would be different depending on the day. Our nanny would take on some of the care work by helping us with homework, playing games with us, making us dinner, and some times cleaning the house. When my father and mother got home from work they would take over. My mother would assume her “second shift” responsibilities of the care work and my father would do chores outside, work, and when we could help with doing some care work. I would like to think of this as an Integrated Stalled Revolution. I use these terms because both my father and mother worked, but my mother is still responsible for the care work primarily in conjuncture with some help from my father and help from an outsourced caregiver.

Caregivers are essential and a key component in the family structure. When women are going back to work there is an issue of how they are going to manage their new job in the work force and their job of care work. This issue exact issue of juggling the two jobs was studied in the UK. In the video “Juggling Work and Care” it defines and lays out the problems and issues that women have when entering the work force while being caregivers. It is states that there is a big issue of people not being able to handle being a caregiver and managing a job. In the UK 7 out of 10 caregivers will have to give up there jobs because there care work is too over whelming which is creating a loss in the business force. This UK study stated that 1 out of 3 people will need care at some point in their life whether it be as a child, because of an illness or when they are elderly. These numbers made it apart to businesses that they need to create answers to the care givers issues and needs.

One business called Centrica created focus groups to figure out what exactly caregivers needed to mange care giving and work. From these studies Centrica created a “Care Network” to find out and help people manage their needs in their business. In this network they created a website including surveys and community out reach forums. This network is composed of over 200 care givers that share issues, suggestions and tips to help each other cope. Although with being able to reach out to their co-workers the suggestions help management collect this data and help their employees and being more flexible to their needs. This company and companies like this are helping, working with, and being flexible to individual needs which in turn are making everyone happy and more productive. It is there policy that it is more important to be flexible to hard-working and knowledgeable employees so that they can keep them on and not have to train a new person which helps everyone.

This is a system of community in the work force. The businesses are getting the people a voice, a choice, and a helping hand. They are creating a network, giving them helpful pamphlets on stress management, and resources for juggling work and care which should be implemented everywhere. Another company called Listawood is very support and understanding of their employees and has implemented a system of teams among the employees. These teams work together to finish jobs and tasks and if one team member has a care giver responsibility at home it is up to them to let them go. They work together, are very supportive, and check and balance each other this way management does not even have to get involved at all.

These networks, ideals, and techniques need to be implemented into businesses all over and in turn will make society more efficient, happy and motivated because everyone will get what they want and need. Caregivers will get a flexibility they deserve and businesses will get to keep their employees and still get there work done. History has seen care givers as primarily women, but in fact care givers can be anyone. We need to as a whole change the ideals that care giving is only “women’s work.” Care giving is the back bone of our society. It is the caring of our children, of our future, of our friends, of our elderly, our community, and organizations around us. Care givers in a regards to our human wealth are the most important occupation out there.

The problem is that people do not hold it in a higher regard only because it does not have a monetary value. Society as a whole needs to re-evaluate their idea of care givers by not only giving them the credit they deserve but knowledge the ideal that this is not only woman’s work, but can be anyone. One way in which people are acknowledging care givers work is the Time Dollar program in which care givers are use hour credits of work toward monetary things or may give there time dollars to family member or people that are less fortunate. Before we were not acknowledging a huge portion of our force in the GDP losing trillions of dollars, but with understanding and acknowledging the care givers work force we are improving our society. Society needs to release that anyone can be a care giver and if they are needed they should want to be a care giver because they are an indispensable important aspect of our society.

UNIT A: BLOG 2: Gender Inequality

Blog #2

Sex segregation is the ideal that males and females are segregated in their lives especially seen through sex segregation in occupations. Occupations were seen as gender dominate; males were in the public work force and females were the home makers and the nurturers. Segregation can be categorized by jobs and occupation woman can be integrated into an occupation but may be working in at a different or more sex segregated job. For example from the reading “Analyzing Gender: A Handbook of Social Science Research,” woman can be integration into a pharmacist occupation, but will still be segregated by working in hospitals with all men pharmacist would work in the retail stores where the pay was higher. Men and woman had different kinds of jobs within an occupation that required them to have different sets of skills which produced different pay which produced a sex gap in pay. The war helped to narrow the gap of sex segregation, but only until the war ended when woman were forced out of their new jobs to make room for the men coming back.

Starting around the 1970’s woman were becoming a part of the public work force narrowing the sex segregation gap, but woman were still being treated differently. The injustice of this was those women were getting the short end of the stick in integration. It looks as if women are becoming less segregated on paper, but they still are not getting the same opportunities. They are getting some of the same occupations, but not the same jobs. For example from the reading woman are getting jobs as bus drivers, a male dominate occupation in the past, but they are only getting part-time and not the cite route that guys get that pays more. The jobs woman are getting in occupations have “less authority, autonomy, and less money” (page 4 of reading).

Sex segregation in employment at ASU I do not think is a very big problem because in my four years of going to ASU right away I could not think of anything. If I really analyzed occupations at ASU one that I could think of is security. I am uncertain if any woman would or did even apply, but I have only seen male security at ASU. This might be due to the norms or the socialization that men tend to be our “security” in hard or dangerous times. Another sex segregation I have noticed in general is the fact that woman are the key people in charge in the food areas. Men do work in the dinning areas, but I tend to see more women working and being there. ASU is an equal opportunity establishment, but there is a presence of some sex segregation on campus that may be a product of our socialization.

Socialization is how people learn their culture and it can be learned at home, school, work or anywhere. Children growing up in a home see and observe their Mother and Father “playing out” their gender roles and learn and think that this should be the norm. Also society is to blame for socialization because of how they treat and “reward”, as the reading states, children when they act within their gender roles and thus socializes a child to act a certain way. Socialization in the home can be seen by girls being told to act “lady like”, act proper, to play with dolls and to be nice. Boys are told to be aggressive, be dominate, and that they can “ruff house”. If the child acts out of these roles they are met with discouragement and are told how they “should” act thus socializing them. AS the reading states in the work place people tend to pick jobs that reflect on their psychological traits and preferences. For example, woman pick a job to reflect their personality, but socialization has taught them to act proper and like a lady so they will normally, but not always, pick a job that doesn’t make them seem rough and dirty.

In the work force sex segregation is shown through discrimination of woman being hired for predominately male jobs. Some woman could break free of this norm, but they would have to ask for a lower salary. Companies would have a norm for hiring a certain type of person for a job which was termed “taste discrimination” by Becker in 1957. As stated in the reading this “taste discrimination” is what sociologists would call patriarchal cultural “norms.” These norms are based on employees, customers, and employers’ pasts and preferences of what they are use to and want to deal with in their place of work. Socialization defines patriarchy. Patriarchy is structuring of a family, community, workplace, etc and what structures and defines these situation is what people think are the norms which is defined by their socialization. This can be referenced to the home. For example in the “normal” scenario the male goes to work, the mother stays home, which teaches the child these are the norms, which gives them socialization and structures society and the house and thus defines patriarchy.

Patriarchy is the dominance of males in the household and the work force. Recently the economy has been strained for the worse and has been affected the workforce heavily. The question that is proposed to use is that how is sex segregation and the wage gap still exist even when more men are becoming unemployed? We are propositioned with three explanations as to why woman are still making less in The Wage Gap from CNBC. The first reason is because the United States is at the bottom of the industrialized nations movements. The United States is not moving or making any headway in national policies to help woman. The second is that woman do not have a voice in the government. The government, in each of their branches, only has about 16% woman. The woman of the United States do not have a lobbyist to act in there favor unlike business lobbyists which build up benefits for business while woman are left behind with none. The third is that the women that have the opportunity to voice an opinion do not. The report stated that women have lower self-esteem and do not try to renegotiate for a higher pay.

In 2007 there was a start in job recessions in the United States which caused 5.7 millions of people to lose their jobs, but most of these people were men. The job loss rates during this recession were 9.4 for male and only 7.1 for female. The reason that men were at a higher job rate loss is because the jobs that were being targeted for restructuring and downsizing were predominating male jobs such as construction and manufacturing. During this same time another market was growing: Health care which is predominantly female, but women were still making less. Woman were receiving less money, but more importantly they were not receiving health benefits such as medical care, paid vacations and pensions. This is because health benefits were geared more towards union jobs which were mostly controlled by males. During this recession woman are working harder, getting second jobs, but yet they are living without health insurance. The good thing that is coming out of this, stated by the report, is that it is making the people and the government more aware of what is going on in there system. Then hopefully we can get Obama to renegotiate out health care plans to even the playing field. It is unfair the women work just as hard and sometimes even harder, but yet we are only making 77 cents for every 1 dollar males are making. Sex segregation and the wag gap is an injustice in the working field that needs to be reworked and reformed to make a level playing field.