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.