Gender Inequality Sociology 125 November 2, 2010

Films: November 3 Freedom on My Mind =CN0037 This powerful documentary chronicles the Mississippi Voter Registration Project during the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s. Archival footage and contemporary interviews explore early efforts to register disenfranchised blacks, the Freedom Summer drive and the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Freedom on My Mind garnered a Best Documentary Oscar nomination and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Tulia, Texas The film documents an important episode from the late 1990s and early 2000s in the complicated racial history of Texas. The episode made the news a few years ago and quickly faded from our collective memory. The filmmakers present a balanced, if critical, view of the events in a small town in the Texas panhandle and what happened when a rouge undercover cop arrested 46 people - 39 of whom were African-Americans. The 46 people were charged with selling drugs based solely on the evidence of the single undercover cop. While filmmakers clearly side with the victims, they let the sheriff and the undercover cop speak and they weave together the different voices in the town to present the narrative of the events fairly and honestly. The connections between the fear of drugs and racial prejudices are self- evident.

November 1 & 2 bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=241 In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence. Growing Up Female is one of the first films of the modern women's movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration. It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them- -teachers, counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage. It offers us a chance to see how much has changed--and how much remains the same. Purchased by more than 400 universities and libraries. Killing us Softly Growing Up Female Boys Will be Men Boys are in trouble. The spate of school shootings in 1998 and 1999 amplified a warning being sounded by social scientists. After 20 years of concern over the status of girls raised by the women's movement, some experts say it is boys we need to turn our attention to. There are disturbing statistics to back this up. Four boys are diagnosed as emotionally disturbed for every one girl. Six boys are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder for every one girl. Boys kill themselves five times more often than girls. Boys are four times more likely to drop out of high school than girls are. Girls now outnumber boys entering college. How do boys become men? How do they learn courage, the difference between right and wrong, and the meaning of love? What hurts them, makes them violent, and sometimes kills them? Boys Will Be Men, a documentary film about growing up male in America, seeks answers to these questions.

Sex and Gender  Sex: a biological distinction based on roles in the process of biological reproduction  Gender: a social distinction between roles and expectations linked to sex.  Gender is the social transformation of a biological difference, sex, into a social difference.  Gender norms are the rules of appropriate behavior and roles for men and women.

Justice An inequality is unjust when: a) the inequality is unfair, and b) something could in principle be done to eliminate the unfairness. Social injustices persist because of power inequalities and the unwillingness of those with power to make changes

What is Natural?  Biology and society:  Natural does not necessarily equal desirable or unchangeable  Egalitarian gender relations = equal power and autonomy  But not necessarily identical social roles  For instance, equality might mean equal amounts of leisure time. Is It possible to have a society within which deeply egalitarian gender relations predominate?

What is Natural? Women Men The intensity of caregiving behavior (hours/week dedicated to child care) HighLow Gender gap in caregiving I. Existing distribution of caregiving in a world with strong gender norms High Low # of people

I. Existing distribution of caregiving in a world with strong gender norms II. Hypothetical distributions of caregiving in a world with weak gender norms Women Men Gender gap in caregiving Men Women Gender gap in caregiving HighLow High What is Natural? The intensity of caregiving behavior

Massive Transformation in Gender Relations  Legal Rights  Labor Force Participation  Occupation Structure and Earnings  Political power  Transformation in Family Structure  Domestic Division of Labor  Sexuality

Legal Rights gained by women  Right to vote (1920; 19 th Amendment)  Right to own passport (early 1930s)  Equal right to divorce (gradually since 1940s)  Reproductive rights (1973)  Equal rights to university admission (1960s)  Equal rights to all jobs and equal pay (1960s)  Equal rights to participate in sports (1972)

Paid Work: the new cultural norm

Labor Force Participation Rates of Married Women with Children,

Occupational Structure and Earnings

% Enrollments in Medical & Law Schools who are women,

Some jobs remain highly gendered

Women’s wages = 63% of men’s wages Women’s wages = 82% of men’s wages Men’s and Women’s median wages,

Occupational Structure and Earnings

Educational Attainment

Educational Earnings Gap  In 2001, women with a Doctorate earned 75% of what men with identical educational attainment earned

What Explains the Gender Pay Gap?  Today, human capital differences (education, workplace experience), as well as race (another pay gap), explain less of the wage gap.  Unexplained pay gap is between 9 and 17%. Is this the result of discrimination?  Aggregate data don’t say conclusively  audit studies are suggestive of discrimination  Reflect earnings between gendered jobs: stereotypical women’s jobs pay less on average.  Discrimination alters incentives: who should drop out of the labor market at childbirth?  if her expected earnings are lower, perhaps the woman. If so, this would exacerbate the pay gap but in a way not easily detected as discrimination

% of corporate officers and CEOs who are women

Women elected officials,

Women in national legislatures, 2009 (%)

Political and Economic Power

Transformation of Family Structure: Heterogeneous families  Probability of divorce has increased from 12% (1950’s) to ~50% (2002)  Average age of first marriage delayed (26 for women, 27 for men)

% of Households that consist of a Married Couple

% of Households that consist of a Single Person living alone

% of Women ages who have Never Married,

Probability of first marriage disruption within 10 years by marriage cohort and race/ethnicity: marriages begun

Domestic Division of Labor

Decision making in the household  A Pew Research Center survey (2008) asked men and women living in couples which one generally makes the decisions in four familiar areas of domestic life:  Who decides what you do together on the weekend? Who manages the household finances? Who makes the decisions on big purchases for the home? And who most often decides what to watch on television?

Time devoted by Mothers and Fathers to routine housecleaning mothersfathers

 Men have taken on modestly more amounts of domestic labor  Women’s domestic labor has declined modestly overall, while simultaneously joining the paid labor force

Sexuality  Sexuality and gender relations:  Sexuality is governed by rules and norms  Policing rules about sexuality impacts gender equality  rules change over time and have been impacted by birth control, social movements, and formal laws  Control over sexuality and unequal power relations  Sexual Violence  Laws and norms around sexual harassment  De-criminalization and partial de-stigmatization of homosexuality

Sexual Violence

 04/news/ _1_sexual-harassment- harassment-cases-harassment-claims

Summary  Significant erosion of male domination and substantial increases in autonomy and self- determination for women  Gender inequality remains What explains the transformation of gender relations?

Explaining Changes in Gender Relations  Women have always tried to increase their autonomy and reduce their subjection. But throughout most of history these struggles have produced at best minimal change.  Why do these struggles produce big changes sometimes and not others? Why in second half of the 20th century was there such massive transformation?

The general answer While women have tried throughout history to increase their autonomy and reduce their subordination, they could only succeed in doing this on a large scale once social conditions had changed in ways that made existing gender power relations fragile.

Three basic processes 1. Decline in a coherent interest among men to defend male domination 2. Erosion of institutional system of female domesticity which eroded women’s interest in traditional gender relations 3. Increase in capacity for challenge by women

The decline of coherent male interests in male domination  Central explanation: The rapidly increasing economic demand for literate labor by male employers

Crisis of female domesticity Stable marriage/personal relations fostered domesticity blocked work opportunities increased the attractiveness of domesticity A family wage made domesticity economically feasible dense social networks supported domesticity (neighbors, churches, communities, etc.) cultural norms and sexism reinforced identities and expectations

Collapse of the system of coherent domesticity beginning in the 1960s  decline of stable marriage means women cannot count of support of husbands  expansion of work opportunities increased the viability of alternatives to domesticity  decline of the family wage made domesticity economically difficult  decline of unions and de- regulation of labor markets  erosion of dense social networks makes domesticity more isolated and difficult  challenge to cultural norms and traditional sexism contributes to new identities

increasing abilities of women to struggle against oppression Members of the Political Equality League stump for women’s suffrage in Milwaukee in an early Ford (~ )

Gender relations today  Dramatic decline in family size unlikely to be reversed: permanent erosion of lifetime domesticity as an ideal  Traditional marriage stability unlikely to be restored  women’s labor force participation unlikely to be reversed  women’s participation in powerful and influential positions unlikely to decline How much further can we go in eliminating remaining forms of gender inequality?

World #1World #2 Average wages of men and women are about the same Good quality childcare is provided by the city or employers free or at low cost Generous paid parental leave for caregiving emergencies and early infant care Average wages of women are 75-80% of wages of men No childcare is provided by the city or employers; private daycare is expensive or of poor quality no paid parental leave for caregiving emergencies or early infant care World #1 is like Sweden World #2 is like the United States Imagine two possible worlds

Gains and Losses  Gender equality imposes costs on some women and erodes some of the security that comes with traditional female dependency.  Certain ways of life, valued by many women and men, are threatened by gender equality.  Men have contradictory interests with respect to gender inequality: men have much to gain from gender equality, but some losses as well.  Gains for men: opening up of choices around parenting & work; the cult of masculinity blocks the full development of personhood in men.  Losses for men: more competition for higher paying jobs; end of gender-based privileges at home.

Gendered Division of labor in the Household  Distribution of free time  Implications for employment  penalties for leaving the labor market  Limitations in types of jobs available to married women  Employer expectations about women

Policy Options 1. Pay equity  not just equal pay for identical work, but equal pay for comparable work – jobs with similar skill sets would be paid the same.  would make feminine jobs more attractive to men, because the pay would be higher, thus leading to occupational equality.  Would contribute to equalizing wages between men and women and thus alter the gender dynamics of household work  High quality publicly provided childcare  Egalitarian parental leave

Sources of Child Care

Parental Leave

The Family Ideals and Fallback Positions of Young Men and Women