Transcript WOMEN: THE OPPRESSED MAJORITY

WOMEN: THE
OPPRESSED
MAJORITY
CHAPTER 15
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education,
Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458.
All rights reserved.
Women and Minority Status
• Subordinate status means confinement to subordinate
roles not justified by a person’s abilities
• Biological differences between males and females
• Must separate differences of gender from those
produced by sexism
o Distinctions result from socialization
• Feminist movement has long history beginning in 1800s
• Child care and housework still disproportionately
responsibilities of women
• Both men and women find it difficult to conceptualize
women as a subordinate group
o Not all women live in ghettos
o No longer attend inferior schools
o Freely interact and live with their alleged oppressors – men
• Five properties of a subordinate or minority group
o 1. Women experience unequal treatment
o 2. Women have physical and cultural characteristics that
distinguish them from the dominant group – men
o 3. Membership in the subordinate group is involuntary
o 4. Women are aware of their subordinate status and have a
sense of solidarity
o 5. Women are not forced to marry, yet many feel subordinate
status defined within marriage
• Stereotypes of Women
o Considered emotional, irresponsible, weak, or inferior
o Fight subtly against the system
o Allegedly try to outwit men with feminine wiles
Sex and Gender Roles
• Sexism
o The ideology that one sex is superior to the other
• Androgyny
o The view that there are few differences between the sexes
• Permits people to see that humans can be both aggressive and
expressive depending on the situation
• People do not have to be locked into masculine or feminine
behavior
• Gender Roles
o Society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes, and
activities of males and females
o Origin of gender roles are not clear
• Animal studies and gender
• Cross-cultural studies and gender
o Socialization has powerful impact on development of females
and males in U.S.
• Boys are admired for athletic ability, coolness, toughness, social
skills, and successful relationships with girls
• Girls are admires for parent’s economic status, physical
appearance, social skills, and academic success
o Gender differences are maintained in our culture through
systematic socialization
o Acceptable behavior for men and women change over time in
a society
• Gender differentiation in U.S. culture embedded in
social institutions
o Family, education, religion, politics,
economy, medicine, and mass media
Sociological Perspective
• Functionalist
o Sex differentiation contributes to overall social stability
o Persuasive in explaining the way men and women are
brought up is US society
• Conflict Theory
o Relationship between females and males is one of unequal
power with men being dominant over women
• Functionalists and conflict theorists
o Acknowledge it is not possible to change gender roles
drastically without dramatic revisions in a culture’s social
structure
• Functionalists see potential social disorder or unknown social
consequences
• Conflict theorists contend no social structure is desirable if
maintained through oppression
The Feminist Movement
• Women activists and sympathetic men who spoke of
equal rights
• Often were ridiculed and scorned
• Emerged during the early part of the nineteenth
century
o Seneca Falls, NY 1848
• Evolved out of the oppression of women and children
within the colonial family and society
• Role of women in the abolitionist movement and its
influence on the development of the women’s
movement
• The Suffrage Movement
o Suffragists
• Worked for years to get women the right to vote
o Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Seneca Falls
women’s rights convention of 1848
o Susan B. Anthony arrested in 1872 for attempting to vote in
the presidential election
o Opposition to the women’s vote
• Liquor interests and brewers afraid of anti-alcohol women
• South feared my Blacks (women) voting
• Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919)
o Amendment was introduced in 1879
o Remarkable achievement because it had to rely on male
legislators to do so
o Many of the most prominent female suffragists died before
ever getting the right to vote
o The nineteenth Amendment did not automatically lead to
other feminist reforms
The Women’s Liberation Movement
• After voting rights were achieved the women’s
movement faded then regained prominence in the
1960’s
• Encouraged by the civil rights movement there was
a re-emergence of feminism (Women’s “Lib”eration)
o Women felt unfulfilled with homemaking and guilty about
being in the labor force
• Several events delayed progress in 1960’s
o Civil rights movement and the antiwar movement slow to
embrace women’s rights
o New Left as sexist as the rest of society in practice despite
talk of equality
o Protest groups rejected women leaders
• Eventually civil rights movement, New Left, and
established women groups endorsed feminist
movement
• The women’s movement has also brought about a
reexamination of men’s roles
o “male liberation” from masculine value system
• Expected to achieve physically and occupationally regardless of
their values or other’s values
o Men must redefine their roles as workers, husbands, and
fathers
• Feminist movement underwent significant change in
1970s
o Betty Friedan (1921-2006)
• Founder of National Organization for Women (NOW) 1966
• Feminine Mystique
o Women had to understand that society saw them only as their
children’s mother and their husband’s wife
• 1980s called for restructuring the “institution of home and wife”
o Recognized women’s frustration with being unable to do it all:
career, marriage, and motherhood
The Economic Picture
• Occupational segregation of women
o Women are concentrated in low paying occupations
• Increase in female labor force participation over the
last century
• Sexism in employment
• Bureau of Labor Statistics segregation index
o 54% of women and men workers would need to switch jobs to
create a labor force without segregation
• Occupational segregation by gender continues, but
women have increased participation in labor force
• Women earnings have increased significantly over the
last quarter century
o From 62 cents to 80 cents for every dollar earned by men
o Show little further narrowing through 2012
Occupational Segregation
and Discrimination
• Sources of discrimination
• Primary cause is segregating influences in the labor
market
• The social and occupational roles of men and
women have become segregated
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Ideologically
Physically
Socially
• Ideological devaluation of the occupational roles
of women
• Efforts to eliminate discrimination as it applies to
women
o 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
o Address cases of sex discrimination
o Pay Equity (Comparable worth)
• Calls for equal pay for different types of work that are judged
to be comparable by measuring:
o
o
o
o
o
Knowledge
Skills
Effort
Responsibility
Working conditions
• Primary goal of feminists-eliminate sex discrimination
in labor force and equalize job opportunities
• Glass Ceiling
o Refers to the invisible barrier blocking the promotion of a
qualified worker because of gender or minority membership
• Despite debate over affirmative action, consensus is
that there is little room at the top for women and
minorities
• Mommy Track
o An unofficial career track that firms use for women who
want to divide their attention between work and family
• Can’t be applied to all women
• Implies that men are not interested in maintaining balance
between work and family
Sexual Harassment
• Recognized as any unwanted and unwelcome sexual
advances that interfere with a person’s ability to
perform a job and enjoy the benefits of a job
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Sexual Harassment
• Sociocultural theory of sexual harassment
o Rooted within patriarchy and male dominance
o Takes place where the hierarchy of authority finds White
men at the top and in which women’s work is valued less
than men’s
• African American women 3 times more likely than White
women to experience sexual harassment
• Power theory of sexual harassment
o Rooted within the distribution of power within organizations
o Function of the difference in power relations
• Conflict Perspective
o Women, especially women of color, are most likely to be
victims of sexual harassment
o These groups typically are an organization’s most
vulnerable employees in terms of job security
Feminization of Poverty
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Poverty and women
Increase in the number of female headed households
Increase in divorce
Displaced Homemaker
o Defined as women whose primary occupation had been
homemaking but who did not find full time employment after
divorce, separation, or widowhood
• Declining alimony and the lack of child support
• Lack of family friendly Federal
policies
Education
• Sex-segregated classrooms
o structure and tracking by gender
• Discrimination in admissions and financial aid by sex
• Increase in the number female faculty on
campuses
• Equal access to educational resources
• Education Act of 1972 and Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare guidelines of 1974 and 1975
o Collectively called Title IX provisions
• Regulations designed to eliminate sexist practices from almost all
school systems
o Schools must make changes or lose federal assistance
• Eliminate all sex-segregated classes and extracurricular activities
• Cannot discriminate by sex in admissions or financial aid; cannot
inquire if applicant is married, pregnant, or parent
• Schools must end sexist hiring and promotion practices among
faculty members
• Although women do not have to be admitted to play on allmen’s athletic teams, schools must provide more opportunities for
women’s sports, intramural and extramural
Family Life
• U.S. society equates work with wages
o Women who do household chores and volunteer work are
given little status
• Sociologist Susan Walzer (1996)
o Mothers are much more involved than fathers in the invisible
mental labor associated with taking care of a baby
• Media attention (21st century)
o Focused on high profile women who choose not to climb the
last steps of corporate ladder
o “opting out” led to generalization on all women
• Seventy-two percent of care givers are women
• Psychologist Mary Clare Lennon and Sociologist Sarah
Rosenfield (1994)
o 67% men suggested uneven distribution of housework fair to
both spouses
o Married women with fewest alternatives and financial
prospects most likely to accept unequal household
arrangements
o Women who view unequal housework as unjust experience
more depression
• Sociologist Arlie Hochschild
o Second Shift
• Describes the double burden – work outside the home
followed by child care and housework that many women
face and few men share equitably
• Issue increasingly important as more mothers work outside the
home
o Mommy Tax
• Economic cost of “second shift”
o Lower salaries women receive over their lifetime because they
have children
o Lose job experience
o Trade off higher wages for following mommy track
o Discriminated against by employers
Abortion
• Controversial subject affecting family life in US
• Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973)
o Applauded by pro-choice groups and condemned by pro-life
• Social class issues and abortion
• Abortion issue centers on the distribution of power
and the (control) over the roles and rights of men and
women in society
• In terms of social class, right to terminate pregnancy
affected poor people
o 1976 Hyde Amendment
• Banned use of Medicaid and other federal funds for abortion
o Another obstacle – access to abortion providers
• Fewer hospitals allowing doctors to perform abortions except in
extreme cases
Political Activity
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Women constitute 53% of the voting population
Under-represented in National political offices
More representation on Local and State level
Lack of representatives is a function of a number of
factors.
o 1. Fewer women in business and law– the grooming ground
for a political career.
o 2. Fewer women in political organizations and decision
making.
o 3. Some women may feel that a political career may interfere
with family responsibilities.
Matrix of Domination:
Minority Women
• African American Feminist Patricia Hill Collins (1990)
• Matrix of Domination
o Whites dominate non-Whites; men dominate women; and the
affluent dominate the poor
• Gender, race, and social class not only systems of
oppression
o Profoundly affect women and people of color in U.S.
• Double Jeopardy: Minority Women
o Subordinate status twice