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Besides racial and ethnic minorities, there are sex/gender minorities, age minorities (the very young and the very old), religious minorities, and minority status based on disability. Most ascribed aspects of master status, then, can lead to social differentiation (being set aside for differential and often negative treatment) for many Americans. Since at least half of the population of the United States is female (actually it is about 52% female), the minority status of women must be addressed.
Although much has changed for women since the 1960s, much remains the same—women still receive less pay than men, are less likely to be promoted to upper-level management positions than men, are less likely to be hired for typically “male” jobs, are more likely to live in poverty, are more likely to be fired or to work part time or second jobs—they still have fewer socioeconomic opportunities, over all, than men. In the corporate world the glass ceiling still exists. However, a 2009 study by the Pew Research Center found that
a
larger share of men in 2007, compared with their 1970 counterparts, are married to women whose education and income exceed their own, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of demographic and economic trend data. A larger share of women are married to men with less education and income.(External Link)
According to Sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter, sex polarization and segregation of occupations are ubiquitous—there is men's work and there is women’s work. And, although that is changing, the glass ceiling is firmly in place for women and racial minorities in 2010, Barack Obama’s election to the presidency of the United States notwithstanding. Factory-bureaucracy gained ascendancy because
it was a way to gain control over activities that would otherwise have a high quotient of uncertainty, and coping with uncertainty was a principal aim of the new forms of organization.Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Men and Women of the Corporation . New York: Basic Books, 1977. p. 19.
The managerial viewpoint stressed rationality and efficiency as the raison d’être for managerial control. Taylorism and deskilling are addressed as dehumanizing—the very design of organizations was oriented toward and assumed to be capable of suppressing irrationality, personality, and emotionality.Ibid . pp. 19-25. Mayo’s human relations model is seen to stress the inherent social-psychological differences between managers and workers and women are
the antithesis of the rational manager. Ibid . p. 25. Concerning women’s entrance into the work force, it is argued that
the growth of modern administration brought women into domination in the office but left them absent in management. Ibid . p. 26.
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