gender

Taller men get the taller stacks. TaxCredits.net.
Taller men get the taller stacks. TaxCredits.net.

According to British researchers, tall men and thin women are most likely to make the big bucks. Meanwhile, they found evidence to suggest overweight workers, especially women, are likely to get paid less. Still, sociologist Amy Blackstone says companies probably aren’t intentionally penalizing employees based on height and weight.  

In an interview with Broadly, Blackstone points to gender biases that extend beyond the workplace. Culturally, Americans associate thinness with beauty and self-discipline in women and tallness with authority for men. “For women, being thin means taking up less space, something that is expected of women both literally and symbolically,” Blackstone says. Thus, it’s no surprise that pay reflects societal views about gender, power, and the body. Nor is it a surprise that other gender inequalities make their way into work spaces, like limitations on contraception coverage in employer provided health care and a lack of paid maternity leave. As contributing editor Diana Tourjee points out, “paying certain men and women less in relation to the way they look is obviously disturbing, but worse is the realization that this data is part of a broader system of oppression that structures the lived experiences of us all.”

Photo by The Great 8, Flickr CC.
Photo by The Great 8, Flickr CC.

Income inequality is a hot topic this election, and the Panama Papers have added fuel to the fire. Indeed, it seems that there’s no end to the data that shows the discrepancy between the 1% and the rest of us. What will it to start seeking solutions to extreme income disparities?

New research by TSP contributor Kevin Leicht of Urbana Champaign (available in an article in The Sociological Quarterly) points us in the right direction. As he explains in an interview with The Atlantic’s Gillian B. White, the way social scientists and others conceptualize inequality is too tied to trying to increase diversity at the top rather than studying the economy as a whole. Furthermore, while we’ve been very interested in inequality by race, we don’t do enough to consider gender inequalities, particularly as they exist within racial groups. The popular narrative is that hard work can jettison anyone to the top, but research like Leicht’s shows how outdated this notion is.

To read more of Leicht’s work, see his TSP papers, “Has Borrowing Replaced Earning?”, “Economic Decline and the American Dream,” and “Old Narratives and New Realities,” or check out our volume on the new sociology of debt, Owned.

pushout coverOver the last year, bystanders have recorded numerous instances of confrontation between police and black students, from one officer pointing his gun at an unarmed black youth during a pool party in Texas to another officer flipping over a black girl still seated in her desk in a South Carolina high school. Media reports often blame black girls for defying authority figures while excusing the behaviors of school officials and law enforcement officers. Recent reports including Kimberlé Crenshaw’s, “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected,” contextualizes the serious effects of harsh punishment as black girls disproportionately enter the school-to-prison pipeline.

Monique Morris sheds additional light on the topic in her new book, “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.” Morris interviewed several young black girls in group homes, foster care, and juvenile detention centers in cities including Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. She discovered that several girls experienced various forms of physical and sexual violence. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, praised the book, calling it “A powerful indictment of the cultural beliefs, policies, and practices that criminalize and dehumanize Black girls in America,” while activist Gloria Steinhem wrote that Morris “tells us exactly how schools are crushing the spirit and talent that this country needs.”

A recent comic and sociological exploration of heterosexual norms in the U.S. today.
A recent comic and sociological exploration of heterosexual norms in the U.S. today.

In one of the most iconic scenes in sitcom television history, Friends’ character Monica bends down on one knee and proposes to her long-time boyfriend, Chandler, in a romantic, candlelit, rose-filled apartment. Over fifteen years later, scholars suggest the reality of heterosexual marriage proposals is far less progressive. A recent article in The New York Times discusses why men remain more likely to propose marriage and why this tradition will likely not change in the near future.

Even as the traditional image of marriage has changed and the number of working and college-educated women continues to rise (studies show that men and women tend to marry spouses from comparable educational backgrounds), according to Amanda Miller, “Though women have more power to move the relationship closer to marriage, they still want the man to ask. That’s considered his job.”

Bradford Wilcox concurs, noting that women may also view their partner’s proposal as reassurance that he truly wants to get married (indeed, men often view their formal proposals as demonstrations of love and commitment to their future wives). A woman who proposes may face social consequences, though: Beth Montemurro adds that such women may be viewed as more masculine (and men who are proposed to may be viewed as more feminine). To avoid stigma, male-female couples generally stick to the script: men propose marriage.

Photo by brandbook.de, cropped. Flickr CC.
Photo by brandbook.de, cropped. Flickr CC.

In many fields—especially those that require more degrees or a longer resume—diversity remains a lofty goal. Claire Jean Miller writes in the New York Times that some unconventional thinking may help make that goal a reality, suggesting the practice of “blind hiring,” wherein those who review employment criteria are unable to see prospects’ race, gender, or similar factors.

Miller looks to research from sociologists Maya A. Beasley (University of Connecticut) and Lauren Rivera (Northwestern University). One of the more common reasons cited for companies’ lack of diversity is that there are not enough minorities and women in the “pipeline” who have sufficient skills or qualifications. Beasley’s research shows, however, a greater amount of people with those qualifications are minorities or women. Rather than overt discrimination in the hiring process, Rivera sees companies stressing “fit” and, in this way, contemporary employment is more like finding a romantic partner. A match between leisure activities and hobbies is a strong predictor of who gets hired where; because those factors are inherently raced and gendered, organizations that are disproportionately white and/or male are likely to stay that way.

“Blind hiring” means shifting early hiring processes to consider skill first. For example, after facing litigation for its historically disproportionately white male ensemble, the Boston Symphony orchestra moved to blind auditions, putting aspiring orchestra members behind a screen while they played. The new procedure led to a demonstrably more diverse orchestra. In tech, blind hiring might mean critiquing applicants’ code or software before examining their resume. Though this idea clearly can’t be applied to all fields with equal ease, blind hiring might let us see workplace diversity.

R/DV/RS via Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/P22Ry
R/DV/RS via Flickr.

“Work-family balance” is a phrase that many of us are all too familiar with, and competition between workplace and family demands are a “given” for many people, but particularly for parents. Flexibility is key—and it’s a luxury that many workers don’t have when office culture and workplace norms prioritize “work” over “family” in self-presentation and conduct.

Research by U of MN sociologist Phyllis Moen and MIT sociologist Erin Kelly, whose work with five coauthors was published in the most recent issue of the American Sociological Review, shows how consciously changing such workplace culture is a win for families and offices, as explored in a New York Times article by Claire Cain Miller.

Miller describes how the team’s innovative experiment simulated a new type of workplace culture for those in the experimental group, while it was business as usual for the control group:

Workers in the experimental group were told they could work wherever, and whenever, they chose so long as projects were completed on time and goals were met; the new emphasis would be on results rather than on the number of hours spent in the office. Managers were trained to be supportive of their employees’ personal issues and were formally encouraged to open up about their own priorities outside work—an ill parent, or a child wanting her mom to watch her soccer games. Managers were given iPods that buzzed twice a day to remind them to think about the various ways they could support their employees as they managed their jobs and home lives.

In the study, both the experimental employees and their children were sleeping better than those in the control group. Employers might also be interested to know that retention rates and desire-to-stay were higher in the experimental group.

Though having management and bosses openly discuss and respect the struggles of work-family balance goes against the grain of office norms, this research shows that these boundaries aren’t doing anyone favors. Shifting toward a conceptualization of this dynamic with vocabularies like “work family fit”—which doesn’t treat work and family as competitors in a zero-sum-game—could help workers and companies alike.

"Proto-Professor," by Liz Lawley, Flickr CC.
“Proto-Professor,” by Liz Lawley, Flickr CC.

Parenting is hard, whether you’re an academic or not. But when you’re a professor, there is one surefire way to help stay in the field, get tenure, and even score a pay bump. Be a man.

The message is clear: women with children in academia are at a disadvantage compared to both men with children and women without them. A recent article in Jezebel compiled findings from several studies to demonstrate this. According to sociologist Michelle Budig, high-income men get the biggest pay bump from having children in any job category, and low-income women lose the most.

A US News article, likewise reports that male professors with young children are more than three times as likely as women with young children to get tenure-track positions. Notably, women without children come in a close second: they are just under three times as likely as women with children to get tenure.

Along the same lines, women who have a baby as a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow are more than twice as likely as men who have children during this time to leave academic research. When it comes to having children in academia, women pay a harsh “baby penalty.”

Research suggests women and girls are more likely than men and boys to self-identify as "multiracial." Photo by Javcon117* via Flickr.
Research suggests women and girls are more likely than men and boys to self-identify as “multiracial.” Photo by Javcon117* via Flickr.

As the number of children born to racially diverse parents in the U.S. increases, the country faces the difficult task of exploring multiracial identities. Biracial children bear the brunt of the challenge, as they are often pressured to select a single racial category to which they identify. In the past, mixed ­raced persons had little say concerning their label due to such formalized policies as the “one­-drop rule,” which assigned the newborn child the racial category of the non­White parent. While such notions continue to exist, a new study reveals that “multiracial” is becoming an increasingly popular identification, especially for mixed ­raced women.

Recently on NPR’s CodeSwitch, Lauren Davenport at Stanford University provided insight from her new American Sociological Review research. Examining the racial self ­identifications of 37,000 incoming freshmen with combinations of Asian­-White, Black-­White, and Latino­-White parents, Davenport reported that in each of the three racial combinations, women self ­identified as multiracial more than their male counterparts. For example, only 64% of men with Black-­White parents self­ identified as multiracial in comparison to 76% of women. Further research indicates that both women and men with Black­-White parents were more likely to self ­identify as multiracial than those with Asian­-White and Latino­-White parents and less likely to self ­identify as White only. Additional factors included the person’s religion and socioeconomic status; as those who were less religious and those from affluent backgrounds were more likely to describe themselves as multiracial.

Davenport suggests that women may be more inclined to employ the multiracial label because they are often perceived as racially ambiguous, while men are generally viewed as minorities. According to Davenport, “It would seem that, for biracial women, looking racially ambiguous is tied to racial stereotypes surrounding femininity and beauty.” Davenport hypothesizes that biracial children from Black­-White parents in particular may describe themselves as multiracial to challenge traditional rules that place them in one category. Thus, the multiracial identity provides them the opportunity to formally recognize multiple racial lineages. Others may opt for multiracial because it allows them to disassociate with Black heritage.

A couple in Tehran. Photo by Kamyar Adl, Flickr CC.
A couple in Tehran. Photo by Kamyar Adl, Flickr CC.

Some Iranian officials are increasingly worried about what they call “white marriage” or sometimes “black coupling.” These terms refer to cohabitation between unmarried men and women. Officials deem the trend “worrisome” and “a serious blow to the family,” and some insinuate that women who cohabitate will become prostitutes when they are no longer viewed as beautiful by their partners. The Iranian news outlet Payvand recently featured a sociologist who spoke anonymously to the International Campaign for Human Rights about why cohabitation, despite the disparagement, seems to be on the rise.

One reason to engage in “white marriage” is that it allows couples to avoid the bureaucracy and gender inequalities that come with legal marriage in Iran. The sociologist notes that marriage contracts overwhelmingly favor men. For instance, men can control their wives’ travel, decide where the couple lives, and have more rights in divorce.

An earlier BBC article noted that cohabitation is also a result of the loosening of some traditional morals in Iranian society:

“Of course cohabitation is not accepted by the more religious parts of society,” says sociologist Mehrdad Darvishpour, who is now based in Sweden. “But just like in the rest of the world, the middle class in Iran is starting to prefer this type of life to traditional marriage. Sex before marriage isn’t taboo anymore.”

While it seems progressive, however, the unnamed sociologist in Payvand also highlighted potential negative consequences for a woman in a “white marriage”:

“If a woman is attacked by her male partner, she would have no legal protection,” the sociologist told the Campaign. “Instead she would be asked by the police and judicial authorities about her marital status and if she is not legally married, she will be in a lot of trouble.”

Since most cohabitation is hidden from the woman’s parents, she may lose the support of her family should she experience and try to escape emotional or physical abuse. Couples also risk accusations of adultery—an offense punishable by death—since Iranian Sharia Law requires all marital unions be registered.

For more on cohabitation in the U.S., check out this post from the Council on Contemporary Families.

Photo by Abhisek Sarda via Flickr.
Photo by Abhisek Sarda via Flickr.

For years, legislators and employers have framed guaranteed parental leave as a “women’s issue.” Women serve as the primary advocates for policies that allow more flexibility between work and family life, while fighting stereotypes that paint them as less committed to their jobs than men. In a recent article for Fast Company, sociologist Michael Kimmel discusses how the U.S. lags behind every other industrialized country in policies that guarantee parental leave and how he believes this contradicts “family first” ideals. “Supporting families is the very definition of family values,” writes Kimmel. “How can we possibly lecture others about loving and supporting families when we value our own so little?”

One key to the gradual change that’s come to cities including New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago may be a shift in male perspectives of household work. Recent surveys suggest many men want to be more involved in household duties. Despite that willingness, however, women still bear much of the burden. Consequently, fathers are often praised for more public acts of parenting, like taking children to soccer practice, while mothers are more likely to take care of unsung housework, struggling to also meet the demands of their careers. Further, researchers note that demanding careers cause increased risks of physical and mental illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and stress for everyone, not just fathers or mothers.

As legislators craft a new wave of parental leave policies, many question how employers can provide a working environment to support parents and families. In a recent study, Phyllis Moen and Erin Kelly studied the Star Initiative program that allowed for increased flexibility for 700 employees at a Fortune 500 company. The aim was to provide employees with more flexibility in attending meetings, working from home, and communicating via instant messenger. After one year, those involved in the initiative reported greater job satisfaction and lower rates of poor mental health. According to Kelly, “One important implication of this research is that workplaces can change to bring some relief to stressed out workers. It’s not up to an individual to figure out how to balance everything. Challenges come up with work, but organizations can change to bring some relief.”