å Saturday, November 19th, 2016

PART A

In her essay, “Doing Gender by Giving ‘Good Service’”, Elaine Hall discusses two identifiable approaches to the relationship between gender and organizations: the gender-in-organization approach and the gendered organization approach. Hall goes on to assert that the gendered organization approach has more explanatory power in addressing the way gender is constructed within and between restaurants.

Hall begins by describing the gender-in-organization approach. This approach states that in organizations in which both males and females work, the organizations themselves are where people behave differently, according to their genders (Hall, p.453).  She continues that the stereotypical characteristics of genders that people have learned from society carry out in the workplace, perhaps to be able to cope with the jobs they must perform (Hall, p.453).  This approach asserts that males and females work differently and therefore bring this to work with them (Hall, p454).

Contrastingly, the gendered organization approach posits that because jobs themselves are gendered, people act according to their genders at work (Hall, p.454). This approach sees gender differently than the gender-in-organization approach and states that instead of one’s gender being brought to work with them, the job determines how males and females behave differently at work (Hall, p.454).  Specifically, some jobs require females to “do” their gender and behave effeminately at work (Hall, pps.454-455).

Because of the gendered organization’s belief that people do not bring their gender to work with them, but the work brings out people’s genders, this approach can better explain the way gender is constructed at work. Hall first points out three ways in which restaurants “do” gender.  First, restaurants see serving customers as women’s work, since it creates a feeling of caring for people the way a mother would care for her own family (Hall, p.455).  Restaurants perpetuate the stereotype of the female servant, as although both males and females make up wait staff, it is the females who are treated more poorly (Hall, p.456).  Finally, restaurants set up and allow interactions with females to be viewed as sexual objects, by both other staff and patrons (Hall, p.456).

While restaurants themselves set the stage for how males and females are treated according to their genders and therefore behave differently, the employees are also treated differently by their patrons. In the research that Hall did, she studied five different restaurants of three different prestige ranks, all of which employed both males and females.  Hall also looked at three different types of scripts that servers use with their patrons-friendliness, deference, and flirting.  It was found that females were told to smile more and were seen as friendlier than their male counterparts.  Although both males and females were treated as servants at times, females were often given the silent treatment and treated more like servants than the males.  Flirting was also done by males and females, but females were also sexually harassed and felt more ashamed of their flirtatious behavior than did the males.

The gendered organization approach is much more in line with Hall’s findings of males and females being treated differently at work, by their employers as well as the people they serve. This, in turn, causes them to react differently, usually in ways that are more congruent with their assigned genders.

PART B

In “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood”, authors Budig and England highlight the notion that mothers earn lower wages than women who do not have children.  They refer to this decrease in wages as a “penalty”, as it seems that being a mother punishes a woman when it comes to earning money at work.  Budig and England discuss five different possible explanations for the correlation between being a mother and earning lower wages.

The first explanation is that motherhood causes women to lose work experience, thus allowing employers to pay them less.  The longer one is at a job, the more time they will have had to gain seniority as well as attend trainings, which presumably makes them more productive workers (Budig and England, p.205).  Additionally, workers with more seniority are paid higher wages so that companies can keep staff employed that they have already invested time and money into (Budig and England, p.206).  Budig and England also note that when comparing women who have an equal amount of experience in the workforce, it is those women who do not have gaps in their experience that are paid higher (Budig and England, p.206).

The second explanation is presumptuous of employers’ ideas of motherhood.  Budig and England state that many employers assume that mothers are less productive at work because they are drained from working ‘second shifts’ at home after they leave work, or they are saving up their energy to be more present at home with their families (Budig and England, p.206).  If mothers are not drained at work, then they are preoccupied with thoughts of their children, are doing things at work for them, or are even calling in sick to tend to them (Budig and England, p.207).

The third explanation is that mothers seek jobs that fit better into their schedules of also having a family to care for.  Unfortunately, jobs that are part-time, do not require travel, do not require weekend hours, or that allow employees to make personal calls at work may not pay as highly as more demanding jobs.  Employers know that if they offer these extra ‘perks’, they are able to get away with paying lower wages, taking advantage of mothers (Budig and England, p.207).  As long as mothers are willing to settle for this, employers will continue to do it (Budig and England, p.207).

The fourth explanation is blatant discrimination such as paying women with children lower wages and promoting them less (Budig and England, p.208).  While this is not illegal, sex discrimination is, so it must be proved that an employer is not treating all of their parents differently, but their parents who are women specifically (Budig and England, p.209).  Again, this may be difficult to prove, but as long as employees are silenced, changes will not be made.

The final explanation of the correlation between motherhood and earning low wages states that there may not be causation.  Budig and England posit that perhaps situations that lead to lower-paying jobs for mothers may also just happen to correlate with higher rates of having children (Budig and England, p.210).  Examples given are: lower academic skills and caring less about being rich (Budig and England, p.210).  If these characteristics are present in someone who then has children, it cannot be said that they are paid less because they are mothers.

All of Budig and England’s possible explanations as to why mothers earn lower wages in the workforce seem valid.  Again, if people are not standing up to this injustice to create change, the reasons why do not really matter.