cmn 685 online discussion 5

Why and How Gender Persists

Cecilia Ridgeway, as we read back in the beginning of the semester, has argued that: the most consequential implication of gender is that it acts as the basis for inequality and her main research question is: What is the dynamic of persistence that allows gender inequality to survive (despite shifts in the economic and social organization of society over the past 200 years)? Ridgeway argues that gender inequality’s staying power derives from people’s use of biological sex and gender together as a primary frame or organizing the most fundamental of activities—relating to another person. She also considers cultural status beliefs about gender that shape expectations for behavior at the interpersonal level.

Ridgeway argues that the social practices that constitute males and females as different and unequal involve social processes at several levels of analysis that encompass both the symbolic and the material:

1. Economic, political, and cultural process at the organizational and institutional level
2. Interpersonal expectations and behaviors at the social relational level
3. Socialization of self and identity at the individual level

Finally, she argues that “the use of gender as a framing device spreads gendered meanings, including assumptions about inequality embedded in those meanings, to all spheres of social life that are carried out through social relationships. . . . gender equality is rewritten into new economic and social arrangements as they emerge, preserving that inequality in modified form over socioeconomic transformations” (7). She notes that there must be some independent dynamic that cause people to reestablish inequality in new and changing contexts, and she asks: “of what might such a dynamic consist, and is it likely to still be operating now?” Over the course of the book, Ridgeway identifies the relationship between positional and status inequalities working together as a cause of the persistence of gender inequality.

Joan Williams similarly has developed the concept of “reconstructive feminism,” which she argues starts with the premise that people have thousands of “real” differences that lack social consequences. The question she asks is: Why do differences between men and women become salient in a particular context and then are used to create and justify women’s continuing economic disadvantage? Reconstructive feminism rejects the view that any of these differences, whether physical, social, psychological, are inherently meaningful by shifting attention away from women (as an essential site of difference) and onto masculine norms (as a socially constructed marker of difference).

Often, Williams argues, what gives women’s difference salience in the workplace is the weight of unstated masculine norms. Equality will require deconstructing the masculine norm. Also, we may say that women as a group are more influenced than men by the norms of femininity, which may lead to challenges for them in a masculinized workplace culture.

Williams argues in her conclusion that Sarah Palin sent the reassuring message to many American women that she could be a good mother and hot babe (femme), and a successful leader (firm, commanding, competent, confident) and breadwinner (tomboy). Nothing needs to change, we do not need feminism, but women just need to adapt to masculine expectations in the professional world and uphold feminine expectations at home and in life. However, Williams argues that, as long as good jobs are designed around men’s bodies and men’s traditional life patterns, mothers will remain marginalized. As long as mothers remain marginalized, women will not approach equity—and a society that marginalizes it mothers impoverishes its children.

Now, take this Harvard Project Implicit Bias Test:

First go to:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.ht…

Then click on “I wish to proceed” at the bottom of the page; then click on the Gender-Career IAT button on the left-hand side. Answer all of the preliminary questions about yourself, then take the test.

Then watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEcfzfyRXF4 (Links to an external site.)

Then read through this “50 Ways to Fight Bias” presentation/activity from LeanIn.org.

50Ways-Bias-presentation-Set-1-updated2.pptx

Record your answers to questions in Slides 16-54 as you go through it (note the first side is the question in this sequence and the second slide gives the answer—so right your answer before you click on the next slide beginning with slide 16). You will report on your answers and reflect on this activity in your online discussion response in the questions below.

Answer these questions in your post:

What was your score on the Implicit Bias test regarding Gender and Career?

Why does Cecilia Ridgeway argue that gender frames or stereotypes about gender “persist,” or remain surprisingly unchanged? Do you think that these gender frames influence our “implicit bias” and will ensure that gender persists in even new and innovative career fields (e.g. in tech start-ups or new professions that may emerge out of this new “remote work” revolution that we are seeing)?

What were your answers on the “50 Ways to Fight Bias” activity? Did your answers match any of the suggested responses?

How did your results on the Implicit Bias test and the “50 Ways to Fight Bias” activity bring to light some of the ways that gender persists in framing the way that you think about men, women, and careers?

How has doing both of these exercises (The Implicit Bias Test and “50 Ways to Fight Bias” brought to light stereotypes that may constrain your thinking about men and women, professions and careers? How might you approach issues of gender and the workplace, and gender equality, differently in your future professional lives and careers as a result of thinking through these potential biases?

 

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