EXAM II Prep

Check List

Social Inequality: Gender

• The “glass ceiling”

• Kanter’s Men and Women of the Corporation; her demographic structure explanation (from lecture and slides)

• How williams responds to this explanation in the Glass Escalator; what explains the glass ceiling after all?

• Neoliberalism

• Fraser’s critique of liberal feminism

• A feminism for the 99% - what it might look like

Religion

• Bracketing truth claims

• Sacred/profane division

• Collective effervescence

• Definitional strategies for analyzing religion

• 4 elements of religion (McGuire)

• Secularization thesis (Berger)

• Religious competition theory (Finke and Stark)

Health and Illness

• The health/wealth gradient

• Whitehall study

• Chronic stress

• The connections between power, subordination and health

• Phelan et al.’s “fundamental cause” theory

• Replacement of mechanisms

• Flexible resources

• Medicalization

• Neoliberalism

• 3 critical features of neoliberalism that assist the “sleep industrial complex”: enchancement culture, commodification of health, and a “productivity imperative” (Barbee)

Social Inequality

The Glass Ceiling - Unacknowledged, invisible barrier

• prevents women and minorities from rising to the highest levels of a hirearchy

  • particularly in corporate, academic and political sectors

Invisible - it isn’t a written or formal rule (that would be illegal lol). This “Glass ceiling” is maintained by informal structures and biases.

The “Glass” Metaphor - Implying that those underneath can see the top positions and prestige, but they hit a solid transparent barrier when they attempt to reach them.

Why does the Glass Ceiling even exists?

Sociologists look at 3 main levels to explain this:

• Institutional or structural

  • Conflict between institutions

  • If a high-level promotion requires 80 h work weeks and constant travel, it inadvertently penalizes women who still performs the “second shift” - which is just the unpaid domestic labor

  • Social institutions involved in why the glass ceiling exists - the family and economy institution

    • Clash between the “ideal worker” norm of the workplace and the “good parent” norm of the family - Work institution assumes people does not have outside obligations.

• Cultural and Stereotypes

  • There are some deep cultural biases associated with leadership traits (like assertiveness, decisiveness) - often seen as masculine. While feminine traits (like nurturing, empathy) are seen as “weak” for executive roles.

  • If a woman tries to act masculine - seen as abrasive or unlikeable bc she is violating gender norms ~ Likability penalty

  • If she acts feminine - seen as weak or lacking authority bc she doesn’t fit the masculine management prototype

• Social Networks

  • Promotions often happen thru informal networking ~ golf outings, after-work drinks, or private clubs. If women are excluded from these informal circles, they miss out

Related Concepts I Should Know:

• The Glass Scalator - men in female-dominated professions are disproportionately pushed into leadership position faster than their female counterparts

• The Glass Clift - tendency for women to be appointed to leadership roles during times of crisis or downturn, when the chance of failure is highes.

• The Concrete Ceiling - term used to described the added barrier faced by women of color, implying the barrier is not even transparent - it is denser and harder to see thru or break.

Kanter’s Men and women of the corporation (1977) - Shifted the conversation from “women’s personality traits” to organizational structure

• Instead of blaming women for not being assertive enough, Kanter argued that the people’s behavior in organizations is a direct response to their structural position

  • if you change the structure, you change the behavior

3 Structural Determinants:

• The opportunity structure

  • potential for advancement, growth, challenge withing a job

  • historically women were placed in clerical or support roles w no opportunity to move up the corporate ladder. Leading to the stereotype that women are less abitious but they are just stuck by this company structure.

• The power structure

  • Not just ab giving orders - about access to resources and the ability to get things done outside the formal hirearchy

  • Bc women are often excluded from informal “boy’s club” they lacked the external power bases men had, which often forced them into having a more rigid, rule-bound management styles

• The demographic structure (proportional representation)

  • The most tested part of Kanter’s theory

  • Looks at the social composition of the workplace

    • Specially the ratio of majority members to minority

  • Proportions matter!!

The Glass Escalator - By Williams

• Expands on Kanter’s structural theory

  • Kanter → any minority in a skwed group would face the same “token” disadvantages

  • Williams → gender status changes everything

Men in female dominated fields:

If Kanter was 100% right. Then men in these fields should have been “tokens” who were marginalized and pressured, but that wasn’t what Williams found ~

• The Glass Escalator - Unlike women who hit a ceiling. Men in pink collar jobs face an invisible pressure to move UP into administration or management. They are “fast-tracked” even if they don’t want to be!

• Williams argued that Kanter’s theory was too gender neutral. Williams proved that beign a minority is only a disadvantage if you belong to a lower-status group (women)

Updated Study by Williams:

• She updated her sotry in 2013 - noting that the glass escalator works best for white, heterosexual men.

  • Brings up intersectionality

Take Aways

Kanter - “it’s not bc you’re a woman; it’s bc you’re one of the onlt oned here”

Williams - “Actually, it is bc you’re a woman. If a man is ‘one of the only ones here’ in a female dominated field, he usually gets promoted faster bc we value men more as leaders”

What explains the glass ceiling after all?

Combo of 3 things:

1. The ideal worker norm - assumption that a good worker has no kids or “second shift” duties at home

2. Homosocial eproduction - the tendency for those at the top (mosntly men) to recruit and mentor people who are just like them

3. The double bind - the “goldilocks” problem. Where women are either too soft or too aggressive, but rarely “just right” for leadership in the eyes of biased evaluators

Neoliberalism

Both economy theory and a political ideology - In the exam he prob would want you to connect these economic policies to their social consequences (like increasing inequality)

Liberalism - focused on free markets

Neoliberalism (liberalism 2.0) - more aggressive about extending market logic into every aspect of human life

Core principles of neoliberalism:

• Privatization

  • services from public sector → private sectors (private prisons, private toll roads, privatization of water utilities etc.)

• Deregulation

  • Removing government rules that interfere w profits

    • Like weakening environmental protections or labor laws

• Austerity

  • Cuts to social spending

  • Reducing gov. expending on the social safety net (welfare, public edu, healthcare)

• Individualism

  • Belief that the individual is somly responsible for their own success or failure

    • if you’re poor - it’s not a systemin issue, it’s a personal choice!

Social Critiques of Neoliberalism

How does neoliberalism affect the people?

• The rise of precarious work

  • Bc of disregulation → companies moved away from an standard employment (40 h/week + benefits) toward the gig economy (short-term contracts)

  • Results:

    • less stability for workers

    • no health insurance thru work

    • can be fired easily

        **this creates precariat class

• The “Marketization” of self

  • neoliberalism encourages the thinking of ourselves as a “brand” or “human capital”

    • you aren’t just a student → you’re investing in your future earnings

    • leads to high levels of anxiety and burnout bc your “value” as a human is tied to your economic productivity

• Increasing inequality

  • Neoliberalism argues → if the rich gets richer, then they’ll create more jobs

  • WRONG: data shows that wealth has mostly stayed at the top, leading to a massive gap between the 1% and the rest of society. Thinning the middle class.

Neoliberalism Relationship to Gender

• Neoliberaslim worsens the glass ceiling and the second shift

  • when gov. cuts funding for childcare or elderly care - that work doesn’t dissapear. It falls back onto women in the private home

  • Makes it harder for women to compete in a workplace that demans an “ideal worker” who is available 24/7

Neoliberalism and Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminism - focus on individual rights, legal equality, and freedom of choice

• Liberal Feminism ~

  • Women should have same legal rights as men + freedom to compete in the marketplace

• Neoliberalism

  • The market is the ultimate decider of value

  • Individuals are responsible for their own success

Neoliberalism borrows the language of feminsm - empowerment, choice, agency

BUT strips away the focus on structural change - instead of fighting to change the system. It tells women to “work harder” to succeed within the system

Key Concepts to Remember:

1. The human capital argument

   1. In neoliberalism → you’re seen as an entrepeneur of yourself

   2. If women hit the glass ceiling → neoliberal feminist might argue they just need more “human capital” (more degrees, more networking, or better “soft skills”) rather than pointing to structural sexism

2. Market Feminism

   1. idea of feminism being pro-business

   2. Argues that gender equality is good bc it’s smart economics (more workers = more profit)

3. The individualization of risk

   1. Under neoliberalism - if a woman fails to balance a hihg-powered career and a family (the second shift) → it is treated as HER PERSONAL CHOICE or failure to “manage her time” rather than a lack of affordable childcare or corporate flexibility

Fraser’s Critique of Liberal Feminism

Argument: Liberal feminism hass become a “handmaiden” (to serve or assist) to neoliberalism

Core Critique - Distribution vs. Recognition

Fraser argued → feminist movement originally had two goals (breaking stereotypes + recognize women; chanignig the economy so EVERYONE has a living wage + healthcare + social support) but neoliberalism “hijacked” one of them

• Liberal feminism - focused somly on recognition (getting a few women in high-power jobs) & ignored redistribution

  • allowed corporations to look “progressively” by hiring a femal CEO while still underpaying the thousands of women working in their warehouse/cleaning offices

“Progressive Neoliberalism”

Faser used this term to describe the alliance between “mainstream” liberal feminism + high-finance capitalism

• Gloss of diversity - masks the harsh economic reality of neoliberalism

• Logic: as long as woman can become a CEO, the system is “fair”. Even if the social safety net is being destroyed for everyone else

Social Reproduction

Fraser’s most famous concept

Argument: capitalism has always depended on Social Reproduction (work of raising children, caring for the elderly, and maintaining a home)

• the parasite metaphor - capitalism is the parasite

  • Bc it needs healthy workers to sruvive but it doesn’t want to pay for the “care work” required to create those workers

• the neoliberalism twist → by pushing the women into the “first shift” (paid work) while simultaneously cutting public funding for care (austerity). Neoliberalism created a crisis of care

  • people are now too busy to perform the very care work that society depends on to function

Keep in Mind:

• Fraser’s solution → feminism needs to move beyond just “breaking the glass ceiling”

  • She critiques the idea that the goal of feminism is to help women become better “neoliberalism subjects” (competitive, work-obsessed individuals)

  • Feminism must join forces with labor movements and environmental movements to challenge the core of the capitalist system (not just ask for a seat at the table)

  •