å Wednesday, November 16th, 2016

As discussed last night, in lieu of meeting next week this two part assignment is due on Wednesday, November 23th, by midnight. Word count: 800 words total. Please make sure everything is in your own words. If you paraphrase, make sure to include the proper citation. We will discuss both essays when we return to class on Wednesday, November 30th.

Part A: In Elaine Hall’s (1993) essay titled “Doing Gender By Giving ‘Good Service,'” she notes two identifiable approaches to the relationship between gender and organizations that can be found in research dating from the 1970s. Using details from the text, explain how Hall distinguishes these two approaches. Why does Hall believe the gendered organization model has more explanatory power when it comes to addressing the way gender is constructed within and between restaurants?

Part B: In their essay “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” Michelle Budig and Paula England review data that supports the claim that women in their “childbearing years” are more likely to be paid less than male counterparts for the same work. Review some of the explanations for this phenomenon, as addressed by Budig and England.

Many say that you don’t know what someone is going thru until you walk a mile in their shoes. Barbara Ehrenreich set out to be different and achieve a thru life experience on how people are living on the pay they have from their low-wages jobs. In on of my other classes I had to do some readings on Ehrenreich, where she tells her story as an undercover maid which is what she also discuss in this chapter. Knowing her reading and previous works, I have to say that Ehrenreich benefits from living the real life experience. She could have gone out and interview couple people about their lives, and how they go on living pay check to pay, however, it would not have the same real life effect as for her to do the old school style journalism.
Ehrenreich benefits from putting herself thru the actual life experience many have to face on a daily basis to have a job that supports their families. She begins to set rules for herself, just in case she can’t any longer take it. Then her search for a place to live and describes how it was difficult to find a place to feel as you are home, finds herself finding places that are no safe to live in or they are no clean. Anyone living on a pay check to pay check low-wage job does not have money for a security deposit; therefore, she has to settle for what she can afford. If she were just interviewing people who live on low-wage jobs, she would not have felt the anxieties when she wasn’t able to find a place to call home. The feeling of anxiety from living in an unsafe, unclean place are not acquired from interviewing people or researching statics.
As she begins her job search, she also faces the channels of not having the proper wardrobe for an office job. An individual who lives from a low wage job would not have a closet full of business wardrobe or the privilege to go shopping for some. Therefore she has to settle to pay for her motel six room. Although Ehrenreich stuck to living her research as much as a person serving and struggle with a low wage job or on the search on, at the end of the day she could always pull out her ATM card and bail herself out of nay problem she faced. Her determination to stick to living as a low wage person gave her the insight on how many have to live paycheck to paycheck without the security of having a job or the education required for a better job. Ehrenreich benefits from sticking to her research and for the short amount of time was able to walk in their shoes.