{"id":303,"date":"2014-05-08T15:03:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T15:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=303"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:07:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:07:01","slug":"women-at-work-when-self-help-isnt-help-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2014\/05\/08\/women-at-work-when-self-help-isnt-help-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Women at Work: When Self Help Isn&#8217;t Help Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<div title=\"Page 1\">\n<p>There have been a spate of new books lately advising women how to turn inward, change their behavior, and remake themselves to be more successful and \u2018leap over\u2019 gender barriers in the workplace. If a woman is not paid what she is worth, passed over for promotion, or even harassed, the solution, it seems, is to <a href=\"http:\/\/leanin.org\/\">lean in <\/a>\u2013 because eventually (soon, in fact) everyone will realize that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deedeemyers.org\/\">women really should rule the world<\/a>. The latest is a book by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman,<em> The Confidence Code<\/em>, in which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/features\/archive\/2014\/04\/the-confidence-gap\/359815\/\">the authors argue<\/a> that the primary barrier to women\u2019s success is not sexism but rather women\u2019s own lack of confidence. And in one way, they are right. Confidence is gendered. Women are less confident than men (and men tend to be over- confident relative to their abilities). Of course confidence matters. But trying to solve a problem of structural sexism with a good night\u2019s sleep, a self-help book, and a smile is a losing proposition.<\/p>\n<h5>In their focus on the therapeutic and their emphasis on self-help, these books foster the kind of high-cost, alienating emotional labor sociologists have been writing about since the early 1980s.<\/h5>\n<div title=\"Page 1\">\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sociology.berkeley.edu\/professor-emeritus\/arlie-r-hochschild\">Arlie Hochschild<\/a>. 1979. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/book.php?isbn=9780520272941\"><em>The Managed Heart.<\/em><\/a> Oakland, CA: University of California Press.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>These books either completely ignore or actively downplay the structural causes of the confidence gap, including the way that primary schools teach girls that their opinions aren\u2019t as valuable as boys\u2019 opinions.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcwonline.org\/\">Wellesley College Center for Research on Women<\/a>. 1992. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aauw.org\/files\/2013\/02\/how-schools-shortchange-girls-executive-summary.pdf\">How Schools Shortchange Girls: Executive Summar<\/a>y. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aauw.org\/\">American Association of University Women<\/a>. Washington, D.C.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>They also turn a blind eye to the fact that rational actors engage in behavior that is rewarded. Women who show the kind of confidence that men show, and who \u201cnegotiate like a man,\u201d are often punished, not rewarded, in America\u2019s workplaces.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/about\/faculty-staff-directory\/hannah-riley-bowles\">Hannah Riley Bowles<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heinz.cmu.edu\/faculty-and-research\/faculty-profiles\/faculty-details\/index.aspx?faculty_id=6\">Linda Babcock<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/business.tulane.edu\/faculty\/facinfo.php?RecordID=llai@tulane.edu\">Lei Lai.<\/a> 2007. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cfa.harvard.edu\/cfawis\/bowles.pdf\">\u201cSocial Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<em>Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes<\/em> 103(1): 84-103<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>Thus, authors like Kay and Schipman are encouraging women to fight with the weapons of the weak instead of helping us all to tackle the more difficult task of breaking down the structural barriers to women\u2019s real and durable success.<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/politicalscience.yale.edu\/people\/james-scott\">James C. Scott<\/a>. 1987. <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/Weapons_of_the_Weak.html?id=foQnAQAAIAAJ\"><em>Weapons of the Weak<\/em><\/a>. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/people\/edgell_p.html\">Penny Edgell<\/a> is a Professor in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. She studies culture, religion, gender, family, symbolic boundaries, and inequality.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><!-- TSP testing --> <ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 234px; height: 60px;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-4670099812817063\" data-ad-slot=\"1069646635\"><\/ins><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been a spate of new books lately advising women how to turn inward, change their behavior, and remake themselves to be more successful and \u2018leap over\u2019 gender barriers in the workplace. If a woman is not paid what she is worth, passed over for promotion, or even harassed, the solution, it seems, is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,13],"tags":[38545,38541,76],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender","category-inequality","tag-gender","tag-inequality","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2014\/05\/13712347043_a50db6e61e_z.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":560,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}