Name two ways in which a woman’s household roles impact her work

Answer each of the questions below in short-answer format. Write your responses in complete sentences. Your answers to each question should include 2-3 paragraphs.

Carefully read the questions to ensure that each component is answered with the appropriate depth and detail. Your answers should be free of spelling and grammatical errors. When you use reference material, you must properly cite your sources with in-text citations. You must also include a reference list. All documentation must be in APA citation style.

1. Name two ways in which a woman’s household roles impact her work outside the home.

2. How does stereotyping related to the female gender role impede female managers as they perform their corporate roles and as they strive for upward mobility in those roles?

3. Explain the gender wage gap from the conflict and functionalist perspectives.
Based on research evidence, which theory provides the better explanation?

4. Discuss the reasons why girls experience a drop in self-esteem in high school and why boys begin to outperform girls in some academic areas.

5. Discuss the impact of gender typing on education and on the career opportunities for women and men.

Focusing Your Learning

Lesson

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you

should be able to:

1. Describe ideology and the economy.
2. Describe historical gender expectations of theworkplace.
3. Compare/contrast social stratification in employmentopportunities.

Instruction

Objective:

Describe Ideology and the Economy

Political leaders and other sources

of information often espouse ideology that gives more credence to cultural beliefs

than research actually supports. Popular U.S. beliefs about work affect

interpretations of employment and unemployment. Four popular beliefs that

influence perceptions of work include:

1. People control their own destinies.
2. People should have different rewards if they madedifferent efforts.
3. The more formal education one has, the better off he orshe will be economically.
4. The more work experience one has, the better off he orshe will be economically.

Based upon these four perceptions,

work is considered a relatively simplistic endeavor. A person is responsible

for his/her employment and will be rewarded monetarily if he/she works hard,

has a good education, and diligently refines his/her skills. By these

standards, anyone can attain The American Dream.

In reality, though, employment and

work are much more nuanced, and many other factors besides determination affect

a person’s employment. The persistence of inequality based on race, class, and

gender contradicts the dominant ideology. People don’t necessarily receive

higher wages the longer that they maintain a job. Education does not guarantee

a good paying job. Rising housing costs, increased age discrimination,

homelessness, and a cost-of-living that increases faster than wages are all

indications that the U.S. ideology is not reality. Yet, the persistence of

cultural beliefs continues to influence perceptions of employment.

 

Objective:

Describe Historical Gender Expectations in the Workplace

Economic opportunities and gender

are linked throughout history. The number of people who are employed or

actively seeking work (labor-force participants) has increased steadily since

the end of World War II. Immigrants and women who entered the paid workforce

altered the economy of the U.S. The business principle of supply and demand

affected pay and jobs. With more workers in the workforce, employers could

reduce wages. The cost of living, however, increased – which also contributed

to who worked and who didn’t. People, especially families, struggled to survive

on a single-earner income, and individuals (usually mothers/wives/women) were

expected to find paid work to help support the family. However, household

requirements (e.g., childcare, cooking, and cleaning) remained. Gender

expectations remain strong in the culture, which has resulted in the second-shift

and the glass ceiling.

 

The new political economy has also

affected work and femininity/masculinity. In the 1970s, a loss of well-paying

manufacturing jobs, which were mostly male-dominated jobs, increased the need

for women’s paid work outside the home. In the 1980s, corporate mergers and

takeovers led to more job loss (downsizing), and the threat of job loss

affected pay rates. People became more willing to take low-paying jobs than to

become unemployed, so wages decreased. In the 1990s, the fastest growing jobs

were low-end jobs (e.g., cashiers, service industry). Low wages, few

benefits (health insurance, retirement), and outsourcing (relocating jobs to

other countries) have affected employment for all genders. When a person

accepts a new job, the average earnings in the new job are less than the person

received in the old job. The ideas of career advancement and economic

enhancement – ideas that were taken for granted in the 1970s – are rapidly

coming to an end.

 

Objective:

Compare and Contrast Social Stratification in the Workplace

The earnings gap, or the

discrimination in wages, is supported by ideology. Earnings have been based

historically on beliefs of a family wage. The expectation that one

family member’s earnings would provide financial support for the entire family

justified men’s higher wages. As the head of household, the man would

require more money to support his family, so a man should be paid more than a

woman. The gender bias is also based on heterosexual ideology. Women are

expected to care for the household and be dependent on a man’s wage. Thus, any

woman in the workforce shouldn’t require a large salary because she is simply supplementing

the man’s wages. The idea that a single woman must support herself is not even

a consideration.

Prior to the 1960s, most jobs were men’s

jobs – construction, physical labor, and manufacturing. Women worked in

jobs that were occupied by other women – housecleaning, secretarial, and

support staff. Rapid workforce change occurred with affirmative action in the

1970s. Employers moved experienced female employees from secretarial to

professional jobs, and some women became managers. During the 1980s and 1990s,

the pace of change slowed – women were not promoted as quickly. An increase in

subtle and covert discrimination entered the workplace. The glass ceiling

referred to the barriers that women faced in the advancement of their careers.

Today, many people still work in occupations that are dominated by one sex or

the other. Many women have jobs in which the majority of people are women.

Although a change in the composition of jobs has occurred, sex segregation

continues to persist.

When comparing occupations,

male-dominated professions tend to have more intrinsic rewards – more autonomy,

more decision-making power, and more opportunities for training and promotion.

Female-dominated jobs have fewer extrinsic rewards – lower pay, lower job

security, and fewer fringe benefits (promotion, vacation, etc.). The

patriarchal ideology of men and masculinity (men protecting women and children)

influences the value of jobs. Men are expected to perform high-risk jobs

– jobs of value and importance. By adhering to the ideology, women’s jobs

are overlooked and devalued.

Summarizing Your Learning

List three jobs that you’ve had or

wanted to have. Consider the following:

1. What have you gained by being the gender that you are?
2. Have you missed any opportunities because of yourgender?
3. If you were the opposite gender, would theopportunities have been greater?
4. If you were born the opposite sex, how would your lifebe different?
5. How has your life been affected by the jobs that you’vehad?

Assessing Your Learning

Complete the five question short-answer

assignment.

Lesson 8 Short Answer (25 points)

Have You Met The Objectives For This Lesson?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Opinion After 40 Years in the

Classroom

I

have witnessed many panaceas in my professional lifetime on “How to Fix the

Educational System in America.” I remember being told that by the time

the year 2000 A.D. came upon us, teachers would only be “facilitators” in the classroom.

Most everything would be done by computers and that we may eventually be

replaced by “teaching machines.” What these so-called experts failed to

take into account is the importance of the human touch in the classroom that

cannot ever be replaced by a machine. What makes or breaks the quality of

a classroom is the person who leads the class each day. It’s not rocket

science people. If you want quality education in our nation, keep the

standards high for college students studying to become teachers, pay a wage

that will lure some of our best and brightest young people into the profession,

have them mentored for their first two years by an experienced teacher, and let

them discover their strengths and then, get out of their way and let them teach.

Don’t stifle their creativity by requiring them to all teach the same lessons

on the same day and give the same examinations on each unit of study.

We’re not dealing with robots but rather, talented and creative people who go

into this profession because they want to give something back to society.

Knock off the ever increasing emphasis on standardized testing and let the

teachers cover the required material through their own methodologies.

I’ve seen too many talented young teachers leave the profession within a few

years because of the overabundance of rules and regulations placed upon them by

the state and federal government. We entered this profession

because we love to learn and we want to share our knowledge with others.

I only wish the bureaucrats, who know little or nothing about teaching, would

fund the schools properly and leave the nuts and bolts of educating to the

people that know how to do it best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is one resignation letter from a veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti, a

social studies teacher at Westhill High School in Syracuse, N.Y.:

Mr. Casey Barduhn, Superintendent

Westhill Central School District

400 Walberta Park Road

Syracuse, New York 13219

Dear Mr. Barduhn and Board of Education Members:

It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school

year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30,

under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible

for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of

actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some

point as a substitute teacher.

As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man

here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was

educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds

of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small

core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet.

I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to

work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior

secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it

has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and

even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of

these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a

lesson, a lecture or a presentation. With regard to my profession, I have truly

attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me,

I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life,

education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always

referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching,

attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any

topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but

denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data

driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a

zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a

lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic

freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in

a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education

and particularly not at Westhill.

A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their

pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling

children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York

State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a

much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and

dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our own

administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns

and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation

systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian. This situation has

been exacerbated by other actions of the administration, in either refusing to

call open forum meetings to discuss these pressing issues, or by so

constraining the time limits of such meetings that little more than a conveying

of information could take place. This lack of leadership at every level has

only served to produce confusion, a loss of confidence and a dramatic and rapid

decaying of morale. The repercussions of these ill-conceived policies will be

telling and shall resound to the detriment of education for years to come. The

analogy that this process is like building the airplane while we are flying

would strike terror in the heart of anyone should it be applied to an actual

airplane flight, a medical procedure, or even a home repair. Why should it be

acceptable in our careers and in the education of our children?

My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust,

dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own

quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own

students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the

materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers

in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers

the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a

one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the

classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a

constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission

of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little

time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual

discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek

personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly

evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important

product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly

appropriate to this case.

After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in

truth, it has left me. It no longer exists. I feel as though I have played some

game halfway through its fourth quarter, a timeout has been called, my

teammates’ hands have all been tied, the goal posts moved, all previously

scored points and honors expunged and all of the rules altered.

For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard

at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”.

While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that

those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean.

Sincerely and with regret,

Gerald J. Conti

Social Studies Department Leader

Cc: Doreen Bronchetti, Lee Roscoe

My little Zu.