fMarielis has 6 post(s)

In the reading “Doing Gender by Giving ‘Good Service’” the author Elaine Hall discusses about two identifiable approaches to the relationship between gender and organizations. These two approaches are connected to one another and I feel that are based on the perception of the people and their expectations. Both the customer and the organization play a big role into these gender roles and expectations. One of those approaches is the defining of gender in organization distinguished as incongruity. To further explain what gendered in organization looks like Elaine Hall explains and gives the example of the waitress and waiter example. Elaine Hall explains that it is more stressful for waiters than waitresses because the data showed that waiters get insulted more. Later on the author explained that waiters who were interviewed explained that waitresses get insulted more often because they are viewed as servant and sex appeal. Also another way is having the mindset that female customers are more stressful than males, because there is a perception that female customers are more demanding. Those are the examples of how organizations are gendered. The next approach to the relationship between gender and organizations is gendered work roles. In the waitering service waitresses are usually seen as sex objects and often the waitresses are instructed to approach customers in a friendly, flirty approach. At restaurants that are female servers it is seen as an obligatory job flirt. But it is also seen as a less of a male’s job, so males tend to be more reserved. I saw that both the approaches of icongruity and gendered work roles go hand by hand because since waitresses are seen as sex objects and servants because they are requested to flirt with the costumers then customers have the chance to offend them, harass them and make them feel less than them like their servant. The actions that most restaurants request from these waitresses are the outcome of the violations some customers have against waitresses. These women are seen with less respect than any job, it is unfair after all.
In the reading “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood” by Michelle Budig and Paula England they discuss about the difference wage between mothers and fathers due to motherhood. In this essay they spoke about motherhood penalty that exist in the United States and also in the United Kingdom. I had no idea there was a “motherhood penalty”, which honestly makes no sense. But Budig and England explained the reasons to why these countries have such penalty for mothers. This penalty also depends if the female is a first time mother or has two or more children. Fathers in the other hand, has no penalty against them to affect their wage or at times they have an increase of wage after their child is born. The motherhood penalty ranges from four percent to six percent of wage decrease for mothers of one child. The more children the higher the percentage gets. It ranges from twelve percent to fifteen percent of wage decrease for mothers that have two or more children. Now that is mind blowing, because that is quiet a high percentage and it affects their income a lot. The reasons stated for this motherhood penalty are the following, companies feel that mothers have less experience than non mothers, are less productive and may work less. The companies believe that mothers have less experience than those who do not have children or are not mothers (fathers) because of the maternity leave, to need to stay with the child, doctor’s appointments all that makes it hard for a mother to always be at work to obtain all that constant job experience. Also the believe that mothers are less productive because they might be tired of the duties they do at home or also might be storing energy for when they arrive home, to have energy for the work at home that awaits them. Also, companies believe that mothers will spend their work time worrying about their child instead of concentrating on work related issues. Lastly, that mothers work less, they mentioned on their essay that mothers might work less because they might have to call out sick to deal with their child’s sickness or appointments. These reasons that were stated to why there is a motherhood penalty do occur but fathers do not pay the same price mothers have to pay. But also there is a reason why we receive “paid sick days”, among other benefits. Women already get paid less than men in general and now are getting paid even less just for producing children. This mostly sounds like a discrimination against women. Lastly they also stated that mothers tend to ask for less demanding occupations to have fewer duties since they consider motherhood to be an “extra shift”.

In the reading Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich she talks about people with low income and their struggle for survival or to make it. Ehrenreich explains how she was very curious to know how low income people did it to maintain themselves and their needs, her goal was to try to see their sufferings and struggles and hopefully understanding them better. By Ehrenreich doing her journalism the old fashioned way she was able to put herself through that experience. Although through her course Ehrenreich had some privileges to help her live a “low income” life in a much more comfortable way than the rest. But the more time she spend in that life she was able to feel and see how difficult it is; hard to find a job, to get paid well, to afford housing, food and necessities. A lot of learning happened during the course of this experiment, going through these struggles and seeing how with each one she was able to slightly better herself and her outcomes but she had to work really hard for that. These struggles make people stronger and helped her see the mistreatment that some management has against workers or just how inattentive they are to their workers. She was no longer the management but this time she was the worker herself, seeing and feeling the mistreatments and the need for better management.

As the story progressed, she found herself looking outside of that community Key West to look for better opportunities elsewhere but in low income communities still. By doing that she noticed that it was almost the same as it was back at Key west, she got a low paying job which the boss did not really care about the workers and their health, she had no health insurance and it was tough paying for a hotel room every night so she had to go in search of a place she could afford. Ehrenreich also pointed out how she always ended up working more hours that she did not even get paid for because her job will take longer to achieve. At the end of chapter two, she points out how these women could get injured at their job, like house maids, and the boss will just tell them that they will be okay. No type of health check provided for them, which is unfair because they could lose a job if they get sick and unable to do the task required to maintain the job.

Based on Ritzer’s reading, he compares our production, work and consumption to fast food restaurants in the way that they both process. He calls this term “McDonaldization”, which both sides production, work, consumption and fast food restaurants can be compared based on the four key aspects. These four key aspects are efficiency, calculability, predictability and standardization and lastly control. Ritzer explains each of these four aspects and how they could relate the production, work, consumption and the fast food restaurants. The main goal for fast food restaurant is give food to the consumer as fast as they can, as well as decent prices, which is what makes them so reliable and a choice for many people. The way production and work is efficiency is because it requires some type of equipment to cut down time on production or time that it takes to complete the task. The way consumption is the aspect of predictability and standardization is because the work is being made to have a routine and a way to be made so that each time it is identical or close to it. The way production and work is control is by management controlling their workers, making sure they are achieving the task has efficient as possible at time management rather exchange human employees for machines (technology) that will do the same task those employees had. It is again like a fast food restaurant, get the task completed as soon as possible but the job needs to be done well because the faster and better the task gets done the more consumption they will obtain.
The relationship that I see that Ritzer’s work of “McDonaldization” has with the economic rationalization of Max Weber is that both signify that there is a reason behind economy. As for Max Weber, he explains how religion it is being used as a reason to expand capitalism, for Ritzer those four key aspects, efficiency, calculability, predictability and standarlization and control, are what he calls “McDonaldization” which is the reason to expand capitalism as well. Both religion for Weber piece and the McDonaldization are what help capitalism expand because the profit is important as it is the goal. It is ways to get the workers to work harder and achieve more during their job because it will benefit the capital but that is not what it is being told to those workers. The workers are the tools which are very highly needed for both McDonaldization and Economic Rationalization to work.

In the reading by Studs Terkel (1972:xxvii) he states how work is very important to people and their “human matters” because it allows you to feel accomplished and gives you self value. Although a job may be tough, rough and tiring to achieve, finishing and completing that job or task gives a person a lot of positive emotions within. From my understandings, Studs Terkel believes that those positive emotions that completing a job offers is what “work ethic” should be about and considered. Terkel will like for people to change the views of what “work ethic” is; from being just about making that money to enjoy the emotions you receive by working and completing a task.
Studs Terkel shows through his readings a lot of stories about workers that had different types of labors. In those readings, we could notice that those workers felt proud of the type of job they did and how hard they worked. With the jobs they had they were able to feel accomplished, satisfied and proud of themselves. They were also able to learn day by day more. Terkel wants people to allow themselves to work for meaningful purposes. He states that maybe a job can not satisfy the human spirit of a person but people can turn that around and use their human spirit to make that job into a meaningful work. It is true we all work to gain money, but our priority should be our passion. Work for our passions and integrity and not the gain of money. Doing so will get you discipline and determination to be able to succeed in your career.
In the story of Joe and Susie Haynes, we saw how Joe followed the family tradition to also work at mines. While working at theses mines and being around the land which he learned about, he increased his knowledge in many aspects. Although working at the mines affected his health in many ways, Joe remembers very well all the hard work he did at the mines and everything he learned about the land and the machines. He was also about to notice how other people were about to use their knowledge to buy off land which would increase their money. He shares his story about how he worked for money and so did his father. By doing that he remembers that he did not get to spend time with his dad just like when he began to work, he was mostly at work the entire day.
Overall, Terkel believes that people should not work so hard to just gain money but instead work hard to gain their success and other positive emotions that come with those.

Marielis Rosado
September 21, 2016
SOC 32014
Prof. Elizabeth Bullock
What are wages?
In the reading, “What are wages? How are they determined?” by Karl Marx he talks about what he considers wages to be. He mentioned that wages are an exchange of labor power for a set amount of money that will then bring those worker commodities. As he continued in the reading he said, that money is able to be exchange to provide commodity, which means that it has a price or a cost. This could be taken as that wages equals price of labor. Karl Marx then touched based on a weaver that works for the capitalist and is given the yarn and the loom to produce the cloth. Marx says that the weaver only gets paid for the labor power, that whether the cloth sells at a higher or lower price than the weaver wage it is not the weaver’s problem. That even if the cloth does not get sold at all it is not the weaver’s problem once more, because the weaver was paid for producing that cloth only. He then compared the weaver to the loom, as he mentioned that the worker was just a tool part of that production but not the final result which is the cloth. So no matter what happens to that cloth, the weaver will still get paid for the amount of money he agreed to produce the product. Since the weaver works for the capitalist, the owner or I should say the capitalist provides the weaver with the required products to produce which in this case are the yarn and the loom, so the weaver does not have to spend their money on those products since they come with the job. If the weaver would have to buy these products, the yarn and the loom, to be able to make the cloth then he would not have the same amount of wage he gets from the capitalist as being a worker. Because the weaver would have to buy these products to produce plus also counting his labor power to make the cloth, that takes away from his wage and time which provides him with commodity. Workers sell their labor power to the capitalist to be able to live, which is their commodity. Workers will produce a product, but in reality Karl explained that what they are really producing is their wages and commodity, this is also the case for the weaver worker.

Marielis Rosado
September 18, 2016
SOC 32014
Productive & Unproductive Labor
In “The Making of the Working class”, by Harry Braveman, he talks about unproductive and productive labor. As it was hard to understand what the difference is between both, he goes in details about it. Productive and unproductive labor is not based on the business, career, or performance but it is based on the labor that it produces and when their productivity of labor remains stable or unstable throughout the process. Those traits define productive and unproductive labor. Productive labor is very much needed for any society, as it is the type of labor that will bring more opportunities and positive outcomes to any society.
As mentioned in the passage, productive labor could be those jobs that most people do not consider productive due to their performance. Jobs like clerical work and transportation are part of productive labor. Part of productive labor is useful objects, useful values and useful services. These are important for the production or that type of labor to remain being needed. Productive labor is considered productive because the business only continues to rise very much. Due to it continuous rising in labor these business are able to offer more job opportunities.
I was surprised to see what some of the unproductive labor are. One of the unproductive labors is construction. After reading the passage I was able to understand why construction would be part of unproductive labor. Construction jobs is not always steady, today you might have a lot of work but then in a week there might not be any projects to need workers to finish the job. Unproductive labors are labors that keep rising and declining. Unproductive labor is unsteady jobs due to the rising and declining of the labor, due to this it causes a lot of workers to get terminated. Many workers end up unemployed due to these unproductive labors; the unemployed rates keep rising and declining.
The differences between both productive and unproductive labor is big, as productive labor is the type of job you can count on for producing and improving for both the individual and the business itself. Productive labor has more opportunities and as mentioned above it has nothing to do with the career. It was surprising to see that there are unproductive labors in every neighborhood which many of us do not consider unproductive. As we all would just like productive labor in our neighborhood I believe both, productive and unproductive labor, go hand in hand.