Gender and Work

Gender and work was an interesting topic for us to discuss this week, as I recently received a job offer in Chicago for after I graduate. It got me thinking about how many things I will need to plan about a move to Chicago- obviously where to live, who to live with, etc.,  but even other things in the more distant future. I realized that if I plan to stay at the same company for a while, I will also need to look at factors like how long they allow for maternity leave, how flexible hours are to allow for family-work balance, and the quality of school districts in the city. I then realized many of these things are factors that men don't usually have to worry about, especially this early in the future. 

As Joan Acker says in our recent reading, "Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations," the typical 9-5 workday is structured around the needs of a white, middle class man who does not need flexibility for childcare and has no other worries during the day except making a living. It wasn't until I read this that I realized how true- and how outdated- this was.

With all the technology available to us, and the ability to communicate halfway across the world with just a touch of a button, a work-life balance should be easy to maintain. The typical rigid, 8-hour, Monday to Friday workday is not necessary or conducive to the normal family now- nor does it allow for a balance of power in families who have dual incomes. 

Gender Relationships and Roles in Marriage

This week in lecture we talked a lot about gender differences in the family and how mothers and fathers often have different roles. In one of our assigned readings, "Thinking About Gender and Power in Marriage," Veronica Tichenor discusses the idea of gendered power in marriages and how this can affect the family dynamic. She talks about how since men are seen as the breadwinners and the ones that must provide for the family through working, this takes power away from the woman and puts her in a more submissive position.

We discussed this same idea in class when we watched the video about the struggle that one family had while trying be fair and balanced in the amount of housework they did and the time they spent with their children. They took days off work and split household chores 50/50 for the amount they did. This family was held up as the standard to which we should all model our families and didn't present any other ways that a marriage could be evenly split in power.

I was raised in a very traditionally-structured home where my father was the breadwinner and my mother was the stay at home mom who cleaned and cooked. I know from first hand experience that they had a very fair and balanced marriage and that this kind of family structure can work. I always had enough time to spend with both parents, and both of them made important decisions together- they just had a different kind of "work."

I think that several of the examples and readings we have had in class have looked at the issue of power balance in marriage in a very universal way and have not presented all the options that are available for families who want to have more balance of power in their lives. The issue must be taken on a case by case basis, accounting for the unique situations of each family and what is best for the members in it.

If it's not on, it's not on: College Edition

Reading "If it's Not On, It's Not On" by Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty reinforced the "Hookup Culture" that we learned about last semester. In college and (in my observation) in the Greek system, both the coital imperative and the scarcity of discourse around female desire coupled with the male sex drive discourse are both exhibited prominently.

A coital imperative is defined as "how much control women (or men) have in determining what sexual activity counts as 'real sex' (Gavey, McPhillips and Doherty 323).  I have often heard my friends, especially girls, talking about their night with a guy or boyfriend. Their friends will ask them if they "hooked up" "made out" or "had sex," and each "category" has a specific meaning. When they ask if the girl "had sex," they almost always mean traditional heterosexual coitus.

This also reinforces what the women interviewed said when they often felt like using condoms meant a relationship was less serious. They said condoms were more of a "one night" thing. In the same way, girls in college often feel like going "all the way" means they may get more serious, while they save other sex acts (not "real sex") for one-night stands.

I also see the male sex drive discourse at work in the college/Greek environment. Girls often talk about going further than they normally would, but say that they "feel bad" because they're giving guys "blue balls," which guys often complain about to get girls to do just that. I've heard several different girls talk about how they feel like a "tease" if all they do is kiss, even if that's all that they personally want to do. They want to have a reputation as a good date or a fun girl, and not as a tease or a prude.

One extreme example of this that I have come across is a man who is in the same fraternity as my friend. He once said that if a girl doesn't go "far enough," he criticizes them or their sorority. Girls feel like they need to "prove themselves" and go further than they really want to so that they can protect their and their sorority's reputation. This is the opposite of what sororities are supposed to stand for: educated, strong and empowered women and sisterhood, and shows how women buy into the male sex drive discourse.

Dude, You're a Fag

Our required reading of "Dude You're a Fag" struck a chord with me at several different points. Though the high school was extremely different from mine, which was a small private high school with only two black students and one Latino, the fag discourse among the males was very much the same.

The fact that "the fag because a hot potato that no boy wanted to be left holding" (Pascoe 61) was very relatable to my high school experience. I remember often feeling that the more the guys in my high school classes lobbed the words "fag" and "faggot" at each other, the more self conscious they seemed and the more they seemed to need to pass on the fag epithet to others to avoid it themselves.

However, in some discussion of the fag discourse and other gendered topics in the book, I feel Pascoe went a little too far in interpreting immature teen behavior as inherently homophobic or gender stereotyped. For example, when the boys are playing the "cock game" in class- which boys in my classes frequently did- I saw it as more of a immature prank of seeing how far they could push the boundaries rather than an attack on another boy.

This was even more applicable with the discussion of the Basketball Girls and Rebecca. Pascoe outlined the way that the Basketball Girls were loud, popular and well liked, especially Rebecca. She describes her as "a darling girl with a vivacious smile and tangible energy, and she made friends easily.... both straight boys and straight girls at River High commented on her attractiveness" (Pascoe 125). She contrasts this with the story of Ricky, who was often mercilessly teased for his gender-bending clothing, called a fag daily, and was the subject of heavy discrimination. She ascribes this difference to the fact that boys who act like girls and adopt typically feminine sex roles are treated a lot differently than girls who adopt typically masculine sex roles. While this is true, and while a man in a dress and heels walking down the street would almost certainly be scrutinized more than a woman wearing baggy pants and a t-shirt, I think Pascoe fails to examine all the other factors and characteristics that go into the different treatments of Ricky and Rebecca.

From my prior experience, both in high school and everyday life, lesbians and women who choose to exhibit some male-type roles do not escape scrutiny and judgement. The fact that Rebecca was "attractive" and had a "vivacious smile," along with being a basketball star and having many friends, certainly influenced her position in the eyes of her classmates. As Pascoe goes on to explain, the GSA girls feel this discrimination much more than Rebecca seems to.

Mickey Mouse Monopoly

The Mickey Mouse Monopoly documentary we watched in class on Thursday was definitely eye opening on the topic of the dark underbelly of the magical world of Disney. Though I didn't necessarily agree with everything the film said, it did have a lot of interesting content, especially concerning the way Disney markets itself and its products to children. As a strategic communication major, any insight on the thinking behind image and brand protection interests me, and I'm taking several different classes right now on the same subject.

One part of the documentary that stood out to me was when when they explored how Disney is constantly changing to keep up with the times, but still has the undertones of sexism and gender stereotypes. For example, in The Little Mermaid, Ariel defies her father, but then gives up her power of speech all for a man. In Beauty and the Beast, she excuses his cruelty and abuse and eventually falls in love with the Beast. As a child, these were the kinds of characters I looked up to and patterned myself after- and the kind of Halloween costumes, dolls, and toys that I wanted. I had never really thought about how influential these characters and stories were on a child until I looked back and my own experiences and realized that I did the exact same things the children profiled in the documentary did. Because Disney toys were so similar to the characters in the movies, when I played with these toys, I was basically re-creating the movie instead of making up my own stories. This caused the same gender and racial stereotypes from the movie to be even further drilled into my head.

Interesting project on strength and male dominance stereotypes in Disney movies.

I also grew up in a mostly white, middle class neighborhood and had little exposure to other races or national origins besides those very like my own. I drew a lot of what I knew about other cultures from the movies and TV that I watched, including Disney. As a child I'm sure I didn't see the overt racism, but looking back, it's plain to see that the Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Latino characters in Disney were not portrayed in a positive way.

Shrek and Gender Socialization

This week's lectures and readings about gender socialization made a lot of sense to me, and got me thinking about how it applied to my own life.

One reading that really spoke to me was "The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales" by Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz. In this reading, the authors discuss the importance of children's literature for assimilating children socially, setting their values, and setting gender power structures in society from an early age. Classic fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White show girls that outer beauty and being "saved" by a man are what girls should value. Laziness, ugliness and blackness are contrasted with whiteness and goodness, setting gender and racial stereotypes in young girls' minds.

These are the same movies that I watched and treasured as a child. I had Disney princess dolls, a bedspread, and dressed as a different Disney princess for every Halloween. Though I don't attribute my girliness exclusively to Disney and fairy tales, I do believe it played a major role, and that "this emphasis on a feminine beauty ideal may operate as a normative social control for girls and women" (Baker Sperry and Grauerholz, 191). As the authors say in the conclusion, movies like Shrek will hopefully change this idea and stop the pattern of teaching young girls hegemonic femininity so early in their lives. However, I was old enough when Shrek came out to remember that I didn't really like the movie and watch it over and over like I did my other favorites, like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella- simply because Shrek doesn't follow the pattern of beautiful princesses falling in love and living happily ever after. How many little girls want to dress like an ogre for Halloween? Definitely not me.

On the other hand, some argue that the Shrek franchise, rather than crossing this masculine/feminine beauty and gender boundary,  "reproduces white heterosexuality as the norm" and is actually "simultaneously reproducing normative ideas in new ways." This is written by Elizabeth Marshall and Ozlem Sensoy in their discourse on "The same old hocus-pocus: pedagogies of gender and sexuality in Shrek 2." They say one ongoing theme of the movie is "girl powerlessness," and that girls are taught to "kick ass to keep their man," among other gendered topics.

Gender at the Auto Body Shop

I saw the importance of gender and the way that people will automatically put a person they meet into a sex category today while at the auto body shop with my boyfriend.

His car had needed a jump start, so we took it to the shop to get the battery tested. After it had been tested, the mechanic confirmed that he had a bad battery and that he would need a new one. We followed him inside and he began asking us questions about what kind of car my boyfriend had so that he could give him the correct type of battery.  I noticed that even when I was answering some of the questions he asked, he always addressed my boyfriend and didn't turn to me for any of the questions he had about the car. After he had located the correct battery, he told us that he couldn't install it for liability reasons, so he may need to call a "buddy" to help him put it in. The mechanic automatically assumed that I wouldn't be able to help him, and that he would need to call a male friend. This was a stereotypical assumption of typical feminine and masculine traits. Since I was a female, the mechanic assumed that I didn't know about cars, since this is an attribute of the male sex category.