Sociological Images

Katrin sent in an interesting example of an effort to (re)masculinize an occupation. Often when we see these efforts, they’re aimed at attracting men to traditionally-female jobs such as nursing by asserting that only “real men” would be able to handle the demands of the job, or emphasizing compatibility with masculinity.

In this case, the occupation that is being framed as highly masculine isn’t one dominated by women; it is, in fact, open only to men: the Catholic priesthood. The image, originally posted at NYPriest, is taken from Fishers of Men, a video released as part of the Archdiocese of New York’s Office of Vocations “The World Needs Heroes” campaign, meant to attract men to the priesthood:

Usually, a male-dominated occupation wouldn’t be in need of having its masculinized character stressed so openly. However, the child sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the U.S. and elsewhere have damaged the image of the priesthood. Not only did many priests sexually abuse children, but many of the abused children where boys. Had the abuse involved primarily girls girls in late childhood or their teens, the public may very well have expressed revulsion and disgust, but we also have cultural narratives available, such as the idea of the sexually precocious Lolita who entices men against their better judgement, that are often used to at least partially justify or explain adult men’s sexual attraction to or abuse of even young girls (such as the judge who, in 1982, called a 5-year-old rape victim “unusually sexually promiscuous” and gave the adult man who assaulted her only 90 days in a work-release program).

But the fact that so many victims were boys meant those cultural narratives, which implicitly reinforce assumptions about adult masculine sexuality (men can’t quite control themselves; they’re easily led astray by female temptresses, even inappropriately young ones) didn’t apply. Abusing boys undermines the assumption of heterosexuality that is essential to hegemonic masculinity.

Given this social context, it’s not surprising that the NY Archdiocese felt the need to reassert the priesthood as masculine as one element of their image rehabilitation campaign.

Sara P. sent in a video from The Economist that highlight women’s economic opportunities worldwide. It is based on the results of an economic index ranking of 113 nations, focusing on issues such as workplace policies (for instance, access to paid maternity leave), education, access to the financial system, and the legal and social status of women  in the economy (such as the right to work and social attitudes about women working for pay). The index also attempts to differentiate between official policy and actual practice to provide a better idea of the actual economic environment facing women in each country. The analysis is necessarily limited by the inclusion of only 113 countries (especially for Oceania, where only Australia and New Zealand were included), but it’s a worthwhile watch for a general overview:

You can read the full report here.

Kathy H. sent in a link to a story about a start-up in Los Angeles, Scopely, that’s trying to use humor to compete with the budgets of bigger companies.  Their aim is to hire engineers who are willing to trade a higher salary to get in on the ground floor of a promising, but nascent endeavor.  How are they doing it?  By promising silly signing-prizes, like $11,000 wrapped in bacon.  Cute, right?  But in their creative planning, they forgot that women exist. Here’s their list of bonuses:

Cigars and beer are masculinized items, but tuxedos, cologne, and beard grooming oil are actually for men.  Maybe the spear gun is for women?   They do, to be fair, show a pair of breasts operating it.

Maybe if Scopely recognized the other half of the population, they wouldn’t have to try so hard to find employees.

UPDATE: A reader, who also happens to be a female engineer, noticed that Scopely throws in another sexist (and this time heterocentrist) LOL on its job application form, where it prompts applicants to put in their girlfriend’s phone number if they’re confident (and, yes, this could include lesbians, but I don’t think that’s what they were going for):

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a report on employment and parental leave for first-time mothers. The mean age at first birth is now 25 years. And while a few decades ago the norm was for women to quit work upon getting pregnant, from 2006 to 2008, 56.1% of women worked full time during their pregnancy, leaving work only as the due date approaches. However, this varies widely by educational level, largely because women with the lowest levels of education are less likely to be working regardless:

The graph on the left below shows how many months before the birth working women left their work; the graph on the left shows how many months after the birth they returned. As we see, over time women have stayed at their paid jobs longer and returned more quickly:

During the 2006-2008 reporting period, for the first time a majority — but a bare one, at 50.8% — of first-time mothers in the labor force used paid leave (maternity leave, sick days, etc.). Not surprisingly, access to paid leave also varied greatly by educational level, and that gap has widened significantly over time:

So nearly half of first-time mothers in the U.S. still do not have paid leave from their jobs.

PBS created an interactive program based on the data that allows you to see the patterns more clearly. You select a race/ethnicity and educational level and get a detailed breakdown of the data. For instance, here’s the info for White non-Hispanic women with a 4-year college degree or higher:

TLC’s new reality program, Big Sexy, features five self-identified plus-size women who work in the fashion industry as models, stylists, and makeup artists. Their mission is to challenge contemporary bodily aesthetics that privilege the thin body and demonstrate that fat can be sexy.

In an interview for the Huffington Post, one of the featured women, Heather, explains, “You can be whatever size you want to be and work in the fashion industry.” However, as we see in this clip of Tiffany’s meeting with her modeling agent, that is not entirely the case. In the exchange, the agent informs Tiffany that a client wants her to lose weight and that “it’s a waste of time and money if the numbers are not right.” At her present size, Tiffany was dangerously close to exceeding the boundaries of plus-size required of models.

In modeling, an inch here or there does matter. In my research of plus-size modeling, I have witnessed other plus-size models, like Tiffany, face pressures from their agents to alter their bodies. These women, in order to work in fashion, must utilize their bodies as capital and embark on a variety of body projects. If their measurements are not in perfect proportion, some stick padding onto their hips, “chicken cutlets” onto their breasts, and squeeze themselves into a pair of Spanx. If a model loses weight, clients tell her to do whatever it takes to gain the weight back, even if that means binging on fat-laden foods that can wreak havoc on any individual’s body. Failure to do so would mean the end of her career.

Beauty is a social construction, but these women are not the ones in charge of its construction. Plus-size models must conform to an image created by fashion’s tastemakers, i.e., agents and designers. Ultimately, they must mold their bodies to fit an image, instead of being empowered in a way that allows them mold the image to fit their bodies. In this sense, they face the same pressures as thin models to be within a fraction of an inch of a shape predetermined by others to be acceptable.

Amanda M. Czerniawski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She specializes in bodies and culture, gender and sexuality, and medical sociology.  Her past research projects involved the development of height and weight tables and the role of plus-size models in constructions of beauty.  Her current research focuses on the contested role of the body in contemporary feminist discourse.

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“Just another example of how children are placed into gender roles,” writes Belinda, who sent in this page from an Australian Kmart catalog:

The girls are, of course, dressed in “pretty” costumes, such as a fairy, a ballerina, or a ladybug. Or they placed in a “domestic” role, such as the cook. The boys however get to be a pirate, a police officer, a doctor or a firefighter. Unsurprisingly, the boys are mainly dressed in costumes that are actually plausible career options, the girls however are placed in the domestic sphere or the realm of fantasy.

The start of the Fall semester has inspired me to re-post this fascinating phenomenon we covered last year.

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Rigby B. sent a link to the Just4Camp website to show us how care package products were gendered for “only” girls and boys. And, indeed, they were (screen shots below). But what is even more fascinating to me about this is the commodification of care.

The term “commodification” refers to the process by which something done for free becomes something done for money. Ever since the institutionalization of the wage, more and more things have become commodified. One particularly interesting category is care or what sociologists like to call “care work.”

Care work includes all of those tasks that involve nurturing and maintaining others: nursing, parenting, teaching, tending a home, etc. At one time in history, none of these things were paid jobs, but we have increasingly commodified them so that now paid nurses staff hospitals, home care workers take care of ailing elders, children spend the day in day care, professional teachers educate them, and housecleaners and gardeners can be paid to tend our homes and yards.

The care package is an example of care work.  I still remember getting care packages in college with my favorite home made cookies and other things my parents thought I would like or needed.  They take a lot of effort: thoughtfulness, shopping, baking, packaging, and mailing.  And, here, we have an example of the commodification of that effort.  The “care” in “care package” has been, well, outsourced.

Gendered care package ingredients:

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For more on commodification, peruse our tag by that name.