EDP 362T Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Sex Segregation, Glass Ceiling, Job Satisfaction
Chapter 10 Review:
If she isn’t paid, is it still work?
▪ Housework: The Double Day
o Fewer women today make housework their single full-time job. Still big part of
life for most.
o Developed countries’ technology make housework less dirty and arduous than it
used to be.
▪ Is Housework shared?
o Men are more involved, but child care remains mostly women’s responsibility.
o Chores assigned by gender: men outside work, women inside work.
o Women’s chores more numerous and demanding because on tighter schedule –
work by day and second shift at home.
o Egalitarian marriages have more split b/w housework but mostly women bearing
the majority of housework.
▪ Is housework trivial?
o “Working woman/mother” = woman not a worker unless she’s in paid workforce.
o Woman’s homemaking responsibilities involve skills and personal involvement.
▪ Calculate value of wages the homemaker loses by working at home
instead of at a paid job.
o Women enjoy rewards that come from taking care of children and husbands, but
dislike boring/repetitiveness/unchallenging nature of work.
▪ Relational work: Keeping everybody happy
o Women responsible for caring for others’ emotional needs – keeping harmony in
the family.
▪ More likely to be in charge of keeping in contact with distant family
members and organize reunions. Relational work fosters marital
satisfaction and happiness, but most women don’t want to do at all.
o Couples that balance emotional work (each partner doing same amount) are more
satisfied.
▪ Status work:
o Status-enhancing work and two-person career: wives serve as unofficial and
unacknowledged contributors to their husbands’ work. Rewarding but restrict
freedom.
▪ The woman behind the man.
▪ Costs and Benefits of Invisible work?
o Vicarious achievement: woman supposed to identify with husband, feel gratified
by his successes. Many do, others feel exploited.
▪ Women are vulnerable. Anything happen to husbands = they won’t have
anything to be employable.
o There is no corporate husband position to match that of corporate wife.
o Career success of men is given an invisible boost by their at-home support staff =
seen as bringing two people to their jobs vs. women bringing less than one.
o Gay/lesbians share feelings of many career-oriented women.
Working hard for a living: women in the paid workforce
▪ Sex segregation: still in workplace, extends everywhere irrespective of level of economic
development, political system, religious/social/cultural environment.
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▪ Horizontal segregation: tendency for women and men to hold different jobs.
o Some jobs have equal ratio of women and men but segregated at the individual
level. Women = low in pay and status, little job security and few opportunities for
career advancement – most are service-oriented, associated with stereotypical
feminine characteristics.
o Has declined since 1970s.
▪ Vertical segregation: when men tend to hold positions that have higher status and better
pay than jobs women hold within an org or job.
o Women often stuck in dead-end jobs.
o Closer to top hierarchy, fewer women.
o Glass ceiling: women being blocked from advancement. Woman sees goal, but
bumps into barrier that is invisible and impenetrable. Men in power do not agree.
▪ More like a labyrinth: hard to navigate but eventually will succeed and
traverse the labyrinth, finds a way out.
▪ Women’s work as extension of family roles: “It’s only natural”
o Administrative assistants = to-do lists, health care aids; nurses = tender care to
patients; housekeepers, teachers, etc.
o When women and men in equivalent jobs, women expected to be more caring and
supportive.
▪ Caring fits into feminine stereotype, so seen as natural byproduct of being
female than aspect of job competence = devaluation of women’s work.
▪ The Wage gap:
o Women earn less than men. Financial payoff of education is much greater for
men. Women are now earning more because men are earning less. Wage gap
greater in other parts of the world – traditionally explained that women invest less
in work roles than men, less likely to get extra training and edu and more likely to
be absent or quit a job.
▪ In reality, women more likely to invest in higher edu than men.
▪ Men are paid more for whatever they do because they’re men.
Doing gender in the workplace
▪ Evaluating women’s performance
o High competent performance by woman is evaluated more + than performance by
man as though female competence has more value because it’s unexpected.
o Women can bias against women more than against men.
o Pro-male biases show up when raters were all male and rating dimensions were
masculine (leadership ability). Pro-female bias when feminine dimensions
(concern for others).
o Women of color: sexism compounded by racism.
▪ Discrimination in hiring and promotion:
o Managers less likely to promote women because believe women weren’t good fit
to jobs and likely to have work-family conflicts.
o Qualified women are less likely than men to be hired, or are offered lower-paying
and less desirable jobs.
o Hard to see patterns of discrimination: only apparent when many cases are
averaged, and discrimination usually examined one case at a time.
▪ Can keep records so patterns are evident.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
If she isn"t paid, is it still work: housework: the double day, fewer women today make housework their single full-time job. Still big part of life for most: developed countries" technology make housework less dirty and arduous than it used to be. Rewarding but restrict freedom: the woman behind the man, costs and benefits of invisible work, vicarious achievement: woman supposed to identify with husband, feel gratified by his successes. Many do, others feel exploited: women are vulnerable. Woman sees goal, but bumps into barrier that is invisible and impenetrable. Financial payoff of education is much greater for men. Women are now earning more because men are earning less. Wage gap greater in other parts of the world traditionally explained that women invest less in work roles than men, less likely to get extra training and edu and more likely to be absent or quit a job.
