å November 2016

Part A

In the essay, “Doing Gender by Giving Good Service”, Elaine Hall explains how gender roles play a big part of how people are treated and how a persons gender scripts of “good service. It tends to break it down to role and gender played. Friendliness, deference, and flirting is perceived asa stereotype for waitressing. On page 456, Hall explains how waitresses have to preform a job flirt,  and we know that the only reason they have to do it, is because thats the way they will make their money. Waitresses are perceived to be happy-go-jolly cheerful attitudes. She explains that because of her “gender”  employers are likely to hire women for jobs like these, or other like, house keeping,  My understanding of “to give good service” has to do with a man and a women’s job. In a way it also shows us how the gender in organization acted upon. She also talks about gender-neutral jobs such a policemen. She explains how women and men working in this type of organization are perceived differently, and described women police officers are the “problem resolving” or conflict. How Genders play a role in jobs.

PART B

In the essay, “Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” by Michelle Budig and England, I completely agree with their entire point of view. In the essay it shows that mothers earn lower wages that other women women without children. Mothers may earn less money than women without children because they lose job experience, be less productive, trade off higher wages for mother-friendly jobs and be discriminated against employers (204). In page (204), Budig and England explain how having children and in order to work it can cause many interruptions. I agree with this statement because as a Mother of 2 (small) children sometimes I cant work because I don’t have childcare or enough money to pay for childcare. At a point in my life, when I had my first child, because he was a premature baby, I was unable to go to work or finish school because I had to stay home to care for him. That is an interruption and its also like a small break from school.

Another point she mentions is that mothers choose jobs that have less energy, flexible hours, demand for travel, on weekends, daycare of site, availability” (page 207) OnE advantage that women without children is that they can work without any limitations. They will be able to work all kinds of hours and overtime without a problem. This is also true, I also speak about my own experience as a working mother, that there aren’t many people available (for children) unless you pay them. You must be able to work flexible just because you have children or incase there is an emergency. When you have an employee who doesn’t have these things extra things on their plate have nothing to worry about.

On page 209, They tell us that discrimination is used against mothers as far as, education, experience, work less. (Budig and England) That one of the differences against mothers and other women is work effect or not enough work effort, which I disagree because regardless of how “tired” I am I still have to get and provide for my children, why, because I am the caregiver and because no one else will. Which also leads us too the statement the writes say where there is an interruption from your daily life. Part time and full time work, school take approximately one-third wage penalty for motherhood,  5% lower wages.  Its unfortunate how mothers  or women in general are discriminated upon and taken advantage of, when we do double the work.

Toniann German

Soc: #9

I personally agree that Barbara Ehrenreich could have done her research from her study. I don’t feel that she necessarily had to live the life of a worker to understand how they survive off of the little wage they earn. I also feel that by giving herself limitations she didn’t not allow herself to fully understand or experience the hardships they must deal with as a result of their pay. I feel her half-gained experience was not necessary for the calculation of numbers. Most of her work could have been done threw calculation, interviews, and shadow observations.

I do however believe that it is important for her to have these experiences so that she may understand how finical hardship can have a strain on one’s life, emotionally, mentally and physically. From her study Barbara could have seen that it is nearly impossible to survive off of such minimal wage. However, when looking at it from this perspective we tend to micro manage others money and make judgments on what they spend, deciding for them what it is a necessity or not. Through her experience I feel she understood that it is easy for one to micromanage anothers money however when you are in their shoe’s you begin to realize the hardship and sacrifices one must make.

I do not agree with the parameters the she set up for her “Research”. If you are really trying to understand the way that a person on minimum wage survives then you must have no rules or parameters and let your self be vulnerable to the real and brutal world we live in. She had luxuries such as being able to use her car, where most people making such a small wage take public transit and cannot afford a car yet alone meet their basic needs. Another rule she set for herself was finding a place to live that offered security and privacy. I didn’t agree with this rule of hers because many people do not have the luxury of having a secure place, it factors in to all the other stresses in their life and is most times a direct result of the wage they are making.

I give her credit for trying but the truth behind it is (in-which she admits) that because she had a better life she was never any real fear, or danger. The things she went through were not real in a sense, because they were happening as an experiment and not as something that she really had to worry about.

Toniann German

Soc: #8

Mcdonaldization is a term invented by George Ritzer. It is used to describe the process of rationalization in today’s society. McDonaldization is the process in which principles of fast food restaurants have begun to dominate very aspect of society. We are living in a fast pace world where people are obsessed being able to calculate, predict and control as much as they possible can. The reason for this is because of fast food establishments like Mc Donald’s that feeds off society by making their products convenient and affordable. The process of Mcdonaldization takes one task and breaks it down as small as possible. The task is rationalized to see how it can become more efficient. For example, making a hamburger might take you ten minutes however if you only had one job in the process of making the burger you may be able to produce 10 or 20 burgers in ten minutes. George Ritzer goes more in depth with this idea by describing the five dimensions of Mcdonaldization.

Efficiency: Efficiency is the best and fastest method for completing a task Ritzer discusses the efficiency seen into Todays societies as we step away from our stoves and kitchen mittens and move more towards fast food or frozen foods. Due to this we see an increase in food production in fast food industries hence the reason for wanting to create more at a faster pace and create foods that do not take long to cook.

The second principle is predictability: if things are predicable then we tend to feel more secure. Ritzer describes our predictability when it comes to food, because we are familiar with how food taste from fast food we will never question or worry about that changing. This reminds me of small medium and large sizes that are offered. With this option one can predict how much food will come each container. Predictability spreads like a virus, taking over our communities so that things seem more familiar to us and give us comfort. As a result, shopping areas, fast food restaurants, highways, traffic signs, and even schools are pretty predicable in appearance.

The third and fourth dimensions of Mcdonaldization is control and calculability, it is the focuses on the quantity of a product rather than the quality of a product.

The fifth dimensions involved. One of the issues that arise due to Mcdonaldization is the replacement of human workers for technology. Technology is replacing the need for human workers, this is because industries crave predictability and countability, while trying to eliminate uncertainties.

This connects to Max Weber in that his idea of rationalization was the process of replacing traditions with efficiency. With Ritzers explanation of Mcdonaldization we see that family traditions such as home cooked meal and family dinners are disappearing and are being seen as an inconvenience in the lives of this new upcoming fast pasted society.

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.

Due: December 7th. If you plan to complete the midterm extra credit assignment please follow the instructions below. Please keep in mind that these assignments will be evaluated according to the original question raised in the exam and the rubric that is posted under “resources.”

If you received a high score on the exam but would like to revise one of your essays, you can. In this case I recommend you confer with me (in person or via e-mail) prior to completing the assignment.

1. After you have completed the assignment, access our course on Blackboard. Choose “extra credit” from the menu on the right hand side, and upload your assignment.

2. On the last day of class, bring in a hard copy of your assignment and the original midterm exam. You will not receive extra credit on the assignment unless you hand in the bluebook with your revised essay.

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.

In Nickel and Dimed Ehrenreich uses an old fashion method of journalism but going undercover as a low wageworker that “just” got off of welfare. I think there are benefits and drawbacks to this way of conducting research.

Ehrenreich particularly did not conduct her research in an authentic way because she did have some “cushions” to try to make her research a little easier. Generally a woman just coming off of public assistance would not have the luxury of having access to a vehicle. Ehrenreich was able to find affordable long term housing in motel while she looked for a place to live which seemed to be standard for people with low income in Portland Maine where she decided to conduct some of her research. Maine was a location that she chose in order to conduct her research in a area that was very “white” in order to avoid the pressures of being in a low wage work force with other races that would be typical workers in the service industries. Maine was so white that this would not be an issue. She discovers that this is a similar place as some of the other locations that she has been conducting her research. Similar jobs to attain with similar wages for the unskilled woman.

Ehrenreich was able to get jobs as a dietary aide and also as a maid without having any experience in these fields. She is able to meet people/Co Workers at these jobs and is able to learn a different perspective of some of the other struggles these individuals face such as limited funds for childcare or the uneasiness of having to leave your child with someone that you do not fully trust. Also, the struggles of not being able to take a day off because your job will not be secured if you miss a day of work. Being able to have an insider’s perspective of her co-workers was the real benefit of putting herself in this position to conduct this research.

I do partially agree that Ehrenreich did not need to leave her home to fully conduct this research. I think that she could have gotten testimony from different people of all races and from a few different age groups in order to get some stories of what it is like to live as a low wage worker. Besides the benefit of meeting the people she worked with and knowing their stories, I feel like Ehrenreich being a white woman in America who is educated has a slight upper hand compared to others that are living below the poverty line without even realizing it.

Toniann German

Soc#Ass.7

I feel what Terkel is arguing is that in order to understand the true meaning of work ethic we must separate the idea that work is about making money.  Rather Terkel suggest that we must find meaning within the work that we do. Even if you are stuck in jobs we may not like, we must take pride in what we are doing. His example of the waitress may show that although to some her job may seem simple, To the waitress it is meaningful.  She takes pride in that she is good at her job and provides great service to her customers. The waitress takes pride in making her customers happy. I feel that although the work may not be enjoyable Terkle wants us to look at how our work is benefiting our lives and values.

I believe that because we live in a world were work ethic is not viewed in Terkles point of view, society has had to try to sell happiness along with their products. For example, most of us have heard the saying service with a smile. This is because many people are being told to fake smiles and fake their happiness in order to make sales. Instead Terkel is saying that we must find joy in what we do so we can provide a real joyful experience.

There is a human disconnect from work, Terkel expresses how the people through his interviews felt as if humans no longer matter in their work. Terkel brings up the point of human jobs being taken over by technology. As a result people no longer feel as if they are being noticed or appreciated in their jobs in addition to feeling as if they are not making a difference.  I also found his interviews with the blue-collar workers and the white-collar workers very interesting. I found it very surprising that in both types of work the employees felt unhappiness and at times invisible.

Although I agree with Terkel in that it is important to find happiness within your work, especially because not everyone has the option to purse their dreams. I do however think that it is easier said than done. It is very hard to find happiness in a job which you work in only to maintain your survival. It is hard to find happiness in work where you are unappreciated, underpaid, and replaceable by machinery.