gender

Best of 2021: When Trauma is Passed Down

Nikoleta Sremac on December 28, 2021
This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is When-Trauma-is-Passed-Down-TROT-Image-600x400.jpg
Image description: Mohammed, a Somali exile, sits in a chair on the right-hand side of the image. his children sit on the floor around him, as they discuss art. Art covers the wall. Creating cultural products is one way that communities process trauma. Image courtesy of UNHCR, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Originally published April 12, 2021

Scientific developments in the field of epigenetics have called attention to intergenerational transfers of trauma. We know now that traumatic experiences can be passed down through the genes— to children, and even grandchildren, of the survivors of horrific experiences like the Holocaust or American slavery. Sociology can help show how past trauma is passed down through social ties, and about its effects on current health and wellbeing. These social consequences of trauma could be even more powerful than the genetic impacts, affecting group dynamics, identity, history, and culture. In addition to what is passed down, sociological research also provides examples of how groups are managing these social effects, in both helpful and harmful ways. 

Cultural Trauma and Group Identity
Cultural sociologists assert that in addition to individual bodily and psychiatric trauma, there is also collective “cultural trauma” when groups experience horrific events. This collective trauma compounds and complicates individual effects. In order for the process of cultural trauma to occur, the group must first recognize that a great evil has been done to them, and construct a cohesive and shared narrative that includes perpetration and victimhood. Then this narrative becomes incorporated into that group’s collective memory as an enduring aspect of their identity, like the Holocaust has been for Jews or collective memory of slavery for Black Americans.
Both perpetrators and victims of violence must contend with the horrific event in some way, as it is now permanently associated with their group. This can occur either through avoidance of the difficult past, or stigma management practices like acknowledgment, denial, and silencing.

Cultural Trauma and Group Conflict: Violence Begets Violence

Sometimes, this cultural trauma process results in further violence. As the group comes to understand the harms they have suffered and assign responsibility, they can seek violent retaliation against the offending perpetrators. Examples include the bombing of Pearl Harbor (and subsequent Japanese internment and Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings), and the 9/11 attacks leading to the U.S. War on Terror. In ex-Yugoslavia, ancient collective memories were stoked and reconstructed by elites to provoke inter-ethnic violence that led to ten years of war, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. In Hawai’i, Irwin and Umemoto trace the emotional and psychological effects of violent colonial subjugation, such as distress, outrage, and depression, to contemporary violence among Pacific Islander youth.

Memory Work: Social Solidarity and Empowerment

Sociological research also provides examples of people “making sense” of difficult pasts by doing “memory work,” which can include art, music, and other cultural production. For example, second-generation Sikhs in the U.S. are using internet spaces to challenge dominant narratives of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in India, contributing to group solidarity, resilience, and identity within their communities here in the U.S. Similarly, the children of Vietnamese refugees are using graphic novels and hip-hop music to articulate how the Vietnam War contributes to current struggles in the Vietnamese community. This shared understanding and validation then empower communities to fight for recognition and social justice. 

When a group experiences a horrific event, the social effects live on to future generations. Understanding these effects is crucial for developing solutions to group suffering moving forward. Going through the cultural trauma process is necessary to overcome difficult pasts, but it is critical that this process occurs in a way that promotes justice and peace rather than further violence.

Visual Soc: Family Meal Conflict

Isabel Arriagada and Mahala Miller on November 15, 2021
Video courtesy of canva, canva free media usage.

Originally posted November 14, 2019

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, many people look forward to sharing a warm meal with their family and friends. Others dread the holiday, gearing up to argue with their relatives or answer nosey questions. TSP has written about the political minefield that holiday meals can be in the past. This year we want to point out that the roots of difficult dinners actually run deep in everyday family mealtime. Thanksgiving, like any family mealtime, has the potential for conflict. 

Scholars have documented how important meal time can be for families in terms of cultivating relationships and family intimacy. However, they also show that despite widespread belief that families should share “happy meals” together, meals can be emotionally painful and difficult for some families and family members.
Disagreements between parents and children arise at mealtime, in part, because of the meal itself. Some caregivers go to battle with “picky eaters.” Migrant parents struggle to pass cultural food traditions to children born in the United States. Low income parents worry that their children will not like or eat the food they can afford.
Family meals also reproduce conflict between heterosexual partners. Buying, preparing, and serving food are important ways that women fulfill gendered expectations. At family meal-times men continue to do less work but hold more power about how and when dinner is served.
Thanksgiving, or any big holiday meal, can involve disagreements. However, that is not altogether surprising considering that everyday family meals are full of conflicts and tension.

Should Caring for Kids Be a Social Responsibility?

Mahala Miller on October 25, 2021

Image: A little white girl sits on an adult’s lap in front of a laptop, her small hands covering the adults as they use the computer. Image courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic CC BY 2.0

Democrats in Congress continue toward passing sweeping infrastructure legislation. Part of the infrastructure packages would provide funding for childcare including universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds, aid for working families to pay for the costs of daycare, and paid family leave. Social science research helps place this current debate in perspective, connecting it to larger conversations about who is responsible for paying the costs of raising kids, the consequences for families of the private responsibility for childcare, and what international comparison can show us about alternatives. 

Part of the question concerns whether we should think of raising children as a social, rather than individual, responsibility. Public investments in childcare, whether through public assistance to cover the cost of childcare or a public system of universal childcare, are one way that countries communicate who is responsible for reproductive labor: the work of having and caring for children. In the United States, this is often thought of as the responsibility of individual families and, historically, mothers. Feminist scholars, in particular, have critiqued the individualization of responsibility for raising children, emphasizing that the work of having and raising children benefits society across the board. Having kids creates the next generation of workers and tax-payers, carrying on both practical and cultural legacies. Scholars argue that because we all benefit from the work of reproducing the population we should all share its costs and responsibilities.

Other wealthy Western nations handle childcare differently. For instance, in Sweden there is subsidized childcare available for all children that is considered high quality and is widely utilized. In Germany, there is greater availability of well-paying part-time jobs that can enable two-parent households to better balance the responsibilities of work with the demands of raising kids. In the United States, there is now virtually no public support for childcare. Parents are left to their own devices to figure out how to cover the time before the start of public school at age five as well as childcare for before or after school, and during school vacations. The U.S. is not alone in expecting families to provide childcare, for instance, Italy has a culture of “familialism” that expects extended family and, in particular, grandparents to provide free childcare for working families. However, as Caitlyn Collins writes, the combination of little support for families, and cultural expectations that workers are fully devoted to their jobs, makes raising a child particularly challenging in America.

There are two important consequences to the lack of public support for childcare in the United States. The first is economic. Mothers experience a “motherhood penalty” in overall lifetime wages when they exit the labor force to provide childcare, or they may be placed on on “mommy tracks” in their professions, with lower-paying and less prestigious jobs that can better accommodate their caring responsibilities. Scholarship shows much smaller motherhood penalties in countries with more cultural and institutional support for childcare.

A second consequence of little support for caring responsibilities is emotional. As Caitlyn Collins writes, mothers in many nations feel guilt and struggle to balance the responsibility to care for their children and their jobs. However, in the United States this guilt and emotional burden is particularly acute because mothers are left almost totally on their own to bear both the practical and moral responsibility for raising children. The guilt parents feel, as well as the stress of balancing childcare responsibilities and full-time work, may be one reason that there is a larger “happiness gap” between parents and non-parents in the United States when compared to other wealthy nations that provide better public support for raising children.

The pandemic has brought a number of social realities into stark relief, including the fact that individual families have to navigate childcare on their own, never clearer than when school closings kept kids at home. As we imagine a post-pandemic future and the potential to “build back better,” we should consider what social research tells us about who should be responsible for caring for kids, the weight of that responsibility, and how public policy changes might provide better care for the nation’s youngest citizens.

Imposter Syndrome and the Limits of Diversity

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos on October 6, 2021
A illustrated image of men’s faces in striped shirts and hats. All of the men except one, who is orange, are yellow. Image via pixabay, Pixabay License.

For many, the start of the school year brings a mixed bag of emotions, from budding anticipation to feelings of unease and anxiety about self-worth and competence, otherwise known as imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome exists well beyond academia, disproportionately affecting minorities and women, groups underrepresented in fields like business and medicine. What does social science research tell us about what imposter syndrome is, how it works, and how it can be addressed?

What it Is

Imposter syndrome, first described as the “impostor phenomenon,” refers to individuals’ perceived fraudulence and unworthiness within high-pressure environments and workplaces–the feeling that they don’t fit or aren’t really supposed to be there. It appears to be most prevalent among systematically marginalized groups like women, first-generation students, and BIPOC and queer people. Imposter syndrome flourishes in spite of, or perhaps even because of, increased diversity and representation. Individuals with imposter syndrome doubt the validity of their achievements and fear being exposed as frauds. These feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness are often compounded by social anxiety and depression, which can lead to self-sabotage. Imposter syndrome may partially explain higher drop-out rates among undergraduate groups in fields historically dominated by white men like medicine, mathematics, and science.

Impression Management

To manage feelings of inadequacy, individuals rely on what Erving Goffman called impression management. Impression management is the practice of keeping up appearances and matching one’s identity and behavior with societal expectations for social roles, positions, and identities. Imposter syndrome can emerge in settings with conflicting roles or expectations or when someone’s background, identity, and interaction style does not fit well with what is expected. This can lead people to using perfectionism and workaholism to exhibit competence. For instance, research on female facilities managers shows that performing competence often leads to higher performance outcomes despite persistent feelings of inadequacy. Displaying competency despite feelings of inadequacy can exacerbate the role conflict individuals experience or the tension between self-doubt and high achievement.

The Challenges of Diversifying

Efforts to “diversify” high-status fields like academia, law, and medicine sometimes fail to address the subtle cultural factors that can marginalize and exclude underrepresented groups. Lack of familiarity with field-specific concepts like peer review and tenure track or norms like networking or mentoring can leave individuals feeling alienated. This unfamiliarity is often at the root of the unease associated with imposter syndrome. To address imposter syndrome schools and workplaces have proposed a range of solutions including targeted mentorship programs and additional support for nontraditional students and employees. Scholars emphasize that addressing imposter syndrome should involve solutions that emphasize flourishing and well-being over identity-based inclusion efforts.

Gender, Cultural Change, and the Catholic Church

Christine Delp on September 23, 2021
Image description: A blonde woman sits in a church pew, facing away from the camera. Image courtesy of pixabay, pixabay license.

This October, Pope Francis is kicking off a three year synod, assembling leaders and laypeople to discuss issues of church doctrine and practices. One big question on the table: should the Catholic church ordain women women as deacons? Driven in part by a growing movement of women around the world who feel called to ordination, the case for ordaining women will likely be to be one of the most hotly debated issues among Catholics worldwide. 

After hundreds of years restricting the role of women in church leadership, how did the Church even get to this point? The story begins with changes in mainstream culture. Historically, changing norms around sex and gender have encouraged church leaders to reexamine their existing doctrines, particularly if church participation is declining. As  mainstream culture changes, religious institutions face the challenge of “retraditioning” themselves for the future: adjusting their doctrines and practices to better align with changing mainstream culture. Religious leaders then debate proposed changes to church doctrines and practices–exactly the point that the Catholic Church is at today with the upcoming three-year synod.

What will happen at the end of the synod in 2024? Historical research suggests that after church leaders begin debating ideologies, changes to church policy often come through sheer luck, force, or the influence of powerful personalities. Only time will tell if the church leaders will have responded to the calls of these Catholic women.

A Woman’s Place is in the Octagon

Jillian LaBranche on March 2, 2021
Image: A black female fighter braces for a tackle, a white female fighter wrapped around her center. Image courtesy of Matt Brouse, Porrada Photography.

On a recent podcast, ESPN commentator, Stephen A. Smith, expressed his dislike for women’s participation in combat sports. He said, “… I don’t want to see women punching each other in the face. I don’t want to see women fighting in the octagon and stuff like that, but that’s just me.”  Female fighters like Kaitlin Young have expressed outrage at his comments, as they often do when men question the validity of their participation in combat sports. This public exchange highlights the contentious balancing act between female fighters and the masculine combat sports in which they partake — shedding light on the intricate ways women navigate gender norms in hyper-masculine spaces.

Female fighters in mixed martial arts transgress patriarchal gender norms by merely participating in violence, which often elicits responses like those from Smith. Men and women with essentialist views of gender difference, such as the belief that women are weak, often struggle to view women as capable of violence. Although sociologists and those studying gender have rebuked these essentialist claims, arguing instead that gender is socially constructed and continuously performed, society struggles to conceptualize women not only as fighters but as physically powerful.
Women’s participation in combat sports often results in individual empowerment and sometimes even progressive social change. But viewing female fighters as solely women who transgress gender norms can also overlook the many ways some female fighters uphold gender norms in their sport. Female fighters often grapple with displaying an “appropriate” amount of femininity. Wearing pink boxing gloves, for example, is an appropriate display of femininity, but wearing make-up or crying while sparring is generally not. 
While women may employ their femininity to encourage other women to join the gym, commercialize their sport, and challenge sexist beliefs about women’s capabilities, the pressure to conform to gender norms while engaging in gender-transgressing activities, like combat sports, may enforce the very gender norms and sexist beliefs that women often fight against. 
Image: Black and white nude silhouettes of Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate face off at the center of an advertisement for their upcoming fight. Image used under fair use guidelines, for educational purposes only.
It is worth highlighting how gender and sexuality are conflated in the media coverage of women’s combat sports as well. When women compete professionally, their bodies often become sexualized by the media. A recent study found that when female athletes were sexualized in fight promotions, men reported more positive attitudes toward the ad. This also resulted in respondents finding the female fighter less talented, successful, and tough than those not sexualized in the combat ads. 

Women in combat sports have come a long way since UFC President Dana White declared women would never fight in the UFC, but both recent events and research suggest that the sports world and society itself still have a long way to go when it comes to gender equity and inclusion in sport.

Gender and Participation in the College Classroom

Jean Marie Maier on February 10, 2021
Image: An empty lecture hall, seats in the foreground. Image courtesy of Kai Schreiber, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Two years ago we published Gender, Confidence, and Who Gets to Be an Expert, which covered some of the research on why women are less likely to volunteer for the “expert” role and are sanctioned more for doing so. How has it held up to new research on the college classroom? 

According to analysis of 95 hours of observation across several disciplines at one elite school, men still speak more than women in the college classroom. Specifically, men speak 1.6 times more than women, including being more likely to interrupt or offer prolonged comments. Men are also more likely to speak assertively, whereas women are more likely to be hesitant or apologetic. These findings parallel what Michaela Musto found in middle-school classrooms in her flagship journal article.
The gender gap in participation doesn’t just stem from women being less likely to volunteer in front of a large lecture hall, it is also present in activities designed to elicit participation from underrepresented groups and assist learning. A new  study of introductory biology classrooms found that within a course built around active participation exercises, including group work, small-group discussion, clicker questions, and other structured activities, men still participated more than women in six out of seven categories of participation. 

We don’t know yet whether the shift in modalities from the covid-19 pandemic will ultimately shift gendered patterns of participation in college courses. Some writing suggests that the same inequalities are present in Zoom as in in-person meetings, while other writing is more optimistic that tools like the chat function will raise the percentage of female student participation. 

In general, nothing much has changed. Men still speak and participate more — demonstrating that the “chilly climate” of college classrooms still matters for how we think about gender inequality in education.

Culture, Inequality, and Multilevel Marketing

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos on February 4, 2021
Image: A black and white photo of a white woman standing in the center of a circle of women, holding tupperware. Image via wikimedia commons, creative commons usage. Tupperware was one of the first direct sales companies that targeted women, specifically.

As the COVID-19 recession deepens, many of us have been receiving more calls from long-lost friends or relatives selling energy drinks, workout videos, jewelry, or various household goods. In the absence of social insurance policies to soften the pandemic’s devastating toll, more and more Americans desperate for financial stability are turning to multilevel marketing (MLM), also known as direct sales or network marketing to provide for themselves and their loved ones. For decades, MLMs have offered participants flexible hours, a support network of other dedicated sellers, and the tantalizingly elusive promise of getting rich to those facing uncertainty.

But these programs promise more than just an opportunity to flex your entrepreneurial skills. Apart from selling, these multilevel marketing programs offer participants the promise of luxury cars, tropical getaways, and an end to financial squalor for those who work hard enough. But how does this industry work? Social science research points to this decades-old business model’s potential pitfalls for disadvantaged participants.

Business structure

From essential oils to protein powder to plus-sized clothing and just about everything in between, MLMs sell a wide range of consumer goods. Here’s the catch: you can’t buy these items online or in stores. Sellers – “distributors” in direct sales parlance – purchase product in bulk from companies (think Avon, Herbalife, LulaRoe, Plexus) to sell to friends, family, and contacts. While companies profit from these transactions, sellers seldom see these dollars themselves. To profit, these distributors must recruit new team members. The more members – or “downlines” – on their “team,” the higher commission the “upline” – the recruiters – receives. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the high start-up cost and lack of benefits, research from the AARP suggests that 73 percent of those who participate in MLMs lose or make no money at all, deepening the vulnerability of already disadvantaged participants. 

Direct sales and gender

Since its inception at the turn of the 20th century, the predominantly male traveling sales industry evolved into the female-dominated MLM model we know today. To curb the unsavory reputation itinerant sellers engendered – reputations commonly laced with antisemitic tropes and xenophobic stereotypes – companies began culling vendors from a more acceptable population: middle-class, predominantly white women and, at first, young college students. With companies pledging flexible hours and easy sales to their social circles, this business model took off following WWII. Tupperware revolutionized the way products were sold; instead of door to door sales or sales calls, buyers — mostly unemployed housewives — attended parties filled with product demonstrations and socializing. While social media and the internet have changed the nature of direct marketing, feminized notions of work and domestic responsibility still permeate this market, from the products sold (cleaning products, kitchen supplies) to the emotion-laden bonds forged within teams of distributors. Such MLM opportunities remain attractive, in part, due to the persistence of sex discrimination in employment, and the antiquated expectations that still limit women’s earning potential, self-image, and job prospects.

Charisma and Risk

Much to the chagrin of regulatory agencies, many MLM products have been marketed as “cure-alls” for all manner of maladies and ailments. In April 2020, the FDA publicly chastised seven direct sales companies about misleading claims, arguing their products protected against coronavirus. Alongside these audacious claims, these companies have long used self-empowerment rhetoric to energize distributors and build their following. This charismatic language has drawn often vulnerable populations seeking economic stability and community into the MLM orbit. Research demonstrates how these emotion-laden themes work alongside promises of socioeconomic advancement to make multilevel marketing a promising career path for a wide variety of aspiring entrepreneurs and desperate sellers alike. Instead of offering financial security, MLMs dangle audacious promises and a competitive environment for individuals to pursue prosperity, often with little success.

Best of 2020: Caring is Work

Allison Nobles on January 5, 2021
A woman helps an elderly man get up from his chair
Photo by Brian Walker, Flickr CC

Originally published May 4, 2020

When we talk about work, we often miss a type of work that is crucial to keeping the economy going and arguably more challenging and difficult than ever under conditions of quarantine and social distancing: care work. Care work includes both paid and unpaid services caring for children, the elderly, and those who are sick and disabled, including bathing, cooking, getting groceries, and cleaning.

Sociologists have found that caregiving that happens within families is not always viewed as work, yet it is a critical part of keeping the paid work sector running. Children need to eat and be bathed and clothed. Families need groceries. Houses need to be cleaned. As many schools in the United States are closed and employees are working from home, parents are having to navigate extended caring duties. Globally, women do most of this caring labor, even when they also work outside of the home. 
Photo of a woman cooking
Photo by spablab, Flickr CC
Globally, women do most of this caring labor, even when they also work outside of the home. Historically, wealthy white women were able to escape these caring duties by employing women of color to care for their children and households, from enslaved African Americans to domestic servants. Today people of color, immigrants, and those with little education are overrepresented in care work with the worst job conditions. 
In the past decade, the care work sector has grown substantially in the United States. However, care workers are still paid low wages and receive little to no benefits. In fact, care work wages are stagnant or declining, despite an overall rise in education levels for workers. Thus, many care workers — women especially — find themselves living in poverty.  

Caring is important for a society to function, yet care work — paid or unpaid — is still undervalued. In this time of COVID-19 where people are renegotiating how to live and work, attention to caring and appreciation for care work is more necessary than ever.

Inequality and Opportunity in Online Dating

Mahala MIller on December 3, 2020

Although Covid-19 has made dating more difficult, people are still finding ways to make connections and initiate more intimate relationships. Like a lot of life right now, people are using the internet to meet and date potential partners. But, unlike zoom birthday parties or virtual weddings, online dating is nothing new. Even before the pandemic, 3 in 10 Americans reported having ever used a dating website or app. Sociological research shows us both the promises of online dating and its potential to entrench existing inequalities.

The internet has expanded the dating pool, potentially displacing “traditional” ways of meeting partners in school or through family connections. This is particularly impactful for people who might have “thin” dating markets where they live and in their community including LGBTQ people and middle-aged heterosexual people. Online dating provides a way for people to seek connection, love, or monogamy with a broader social network, one that is connected to geography and place in both new and familiar ways.
The “online” in online dating introduces concerns about authenticity that are not necessarily present in face-to-face interactions. Users worry that their online dates are not who they say they are, and carefully analyze date’s online profiles to try to determine “the truth.” Individuals with stigmatized identities, such as disabled people, worry about how to “disclose” this identity in cyberspace, a concern that is not necessarily present in the embodied offline world.
Although it is tempting to view online dating as transformative, it can also entrench existing inequalities. “Assortive mating” in which people seek partners similar to them in terms of race, educational experience, and class happens online, too. For instance, users set their preferences and search profiles in ways that reinforce racial segregation and hierarchy. The inequalities of the “real world” are also present online, with the added barrier that only those who can access computers and the internet can participate.