Many professions are gendered, typically by how they are
viewed and by educational pressures to follow a path to a profession of your
gender rather than by law (at least in the United States of America in 2013.)
In the hospital, people still call to men as doctors and women as nurses, even
in hospitals where doctors and nurses have different uniforms and people can
visibly tell that the woman is, in fact, a doctor if only they look. Engineers are assumed to be men.
Primary and secondary school teachers are assumed to be women. College
professors are often presumed to be men, especially in the sciences. Domestic
workers almost always women (Lee and Shaw 393,) perhaps because such work is
considered “women’s work” (Lee and Shaw 391,) is lower paid, and is often not
really seen as work. Many of the jobs
worked primarily by women, such as maids (a gendered term!) childcare workers,
and home care aids (US. Dept of Labor qtd. In Lee and Shaw) are considered pink
collar, whereas manual and production jobs done primarily by men are considered
blue collar (Lee and Shaw 403.) When women move into predominantly male, they
have historically received lower wages (Hesse-Biber and Carter 418) and
continue to do so, including at executive levels (Burk 437.) The divisions that
we see, such as a lack of women, people of color, and disabled people at higher
levels and a preponderance of marginalized people at lower levels are
reinforced continuously, with it well known that managers hire others who are
like them (Burk 436.) While it is possible
for such biases to be changed over time and hopefully overcome, it takes an
impressive amount of work, with disincentives for marginalized members of elite
groups who attempt to bring fellow marginalized people up to their level (Burk
437.) The issue of loyalty to the source of power overcoming loyalty to other
identities also contributes to the difficulty of overcoming such barriers (Burk
438,) with one recently prominent example being Goodwill paying disabled
workers less than minimum wage (as low as 22 cents per hour in at least one
case) despite their CEO being blind himself (Lewis.)
Burk, Martha.
"Six Ways the Male Corporate Elite Keeps Women Out." 2005. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary
Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill
Higher Education, 2011. 436-438. Print.
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene and Gregg Lee. "A Brief History of Working Women." 1999. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 417-429. Print.
Lewis, Anil. "The Sin of Omission: A Rebuttal of Goodwill's Policy Statement on Subminimum Wage Payments to Workers with Disabilities." NFB.org. National Federation of the Blind, 21 June 2013. Web. 05 July 2013. [This article on the National Federation of the Blind website details some of the issues with paying disabled workers subminimum wage, explains how we know the “but they can’t afford to pay disabled workers minimum wage” and “it’s training!” arguments for subminimum wage are baloney, and mentions the fact that the CEO of Goodwill, one of the major offenders, is himself blind. It’s also on the first page of Google results about Goodwill, subminimum wage, and the CEO being blind, which is how I found it- I knew about the issue and needed a citation.]
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. "Women’s Work Inside and Outside the Home" Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 392-413. Print.
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene and Gregg Lee. "A Brief History of Working Women." 1999. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. By Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 417-429. Print.
Lewis, Anil. "The Sin of Omission: A Rebuttal of Goodwill's Policy Statement on Subminimum Wage Payments to Workers with Disabilities." NFB.org. National Federation of the Blind, 21 June 2013. Web. 05 July 2013. [This article on the National Federation of the Blind website details some of the issues with paying disabled workers subminimum wage, explains how we know the “but they can’t afford to pay disabled workers minimum wage” and “it’s training!” arguments for subminimum wage are baloney, and mentions the fact that the CEO of Goodwill, one of the major offenders, is himself blind. It’s also on the first page of Google results about Goodwill, subminimum wage, and the CEO being blind, which is how I found it- I knew about the issue and needed a citation.]
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. "Women’s Work Inside and Outside the Home" Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 392-413. Print.
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