í Assignments

Part A

In “Doing Gender By Giving Good Service” Hall identifies two different approaches on the relationships between gender and organizations which are gender-in-organizations and gendered organization.

In Hall’s essay on gender-in-organization she explains that systems that are in place at certain organizations create disadvantages for women from the early stages of recruitment. Also, there are both collective and individual ways that genders, particularly women take on roles in organizations. In collective gender we see that generally the organization has generally made a certain position a woman’s job. For example a retail clerk is collectively designated to a woman. Individually, gender-in-organization a woman would take on stereotypically female roles such as a caregiver or a mother like role. (Bell 453) Hall also describes that gender-in-organization is brought into gender-neutral workplaces by individuals themselves. She gives us the example of the a police woman who is supposed to be considered to be in a gender neutral occupation but the gender differences can easily be distinguished when sexual harassment is involved. This differentiates the gender roles and what is appropriate and not appropriate behavior. (454)

In gendered organization, organizations are assuming that the gender will play a role in all organizations and will be a part of the person’s job. They will use whichever gender in their particular position in order to successfully complete their task. Gendered organization has already assumed that your gender will be used in a particular way that will benefit the organization and specific clientele. One great example of this method is in the hospitality industry. A waiter or waitress, are given two different names not just one gender-neutral name for a server. Both genders are typically expected to better serve a client of the opposite sex. Waitresses are expected to appear talkative, happy and always smiling. It is also acceptable for a waitress at certain organizations to flirt with male clients. Waiters (men) are expected to do the same with female clients but are allowed to be assertive in this industry. The level of flirting and assertiveness can vary depending on the individual and what the restaurant prefers.

Bell found that gendered organization explanatory power is greater because it defines what male and female roles are in each organization. Organizations, which in her essay are restaurants, the waiters or waitress are able to be in these generalized gender roles but are able to play around with the degree of stereotypical behaviors depending on the restaurant. Gendered organization provides a wider spectrum of issued that can be researched.

Part B

Budig and England give five distinctive cause of how mothers are being penalized in the workplace. Interrupted job experience do to caretaking of children, taking lower paying jobs that are convenient for mothering needs, lack of productivity due to exhaustion from mothering, employer discrimination and the association of motherhood that leads to a lower paying job.

Women lose job experience when they have children and have to care for them. They either temporarily leave work, go from full time to maternity leave or from full time to part time in due to child rearing or order to care for their child. This time lost creates a loss in work experience and loss of on the job training creates a long-term effect for their future wage earnings. The lapses in jobs also contribute to lower wages verses someone who has continuously worked and “proves” that they have more experience.

Some women chose mother-friendly jobs, which are most commonly lower paying jobs in order to balance their lives as mothers. These jobs pay less but the compensation acceptable to mothers because they are able to attain a flexible schedule. The mother-friendly job is less demanding or less hours are required of them. This would be beneficial in exchange for being able to spend more time with their children. If a mother would take on a demanding job with many hours, they would me more likely to be unfocused or distracted due to being tired and household demands, which will eventually make them less productive at work.

The penalty of discrimination by employers is broken down into two different ways. Discrimination based on taste, which would be that an employer just thinks they just would not like to employ mothers, or if they believe their clientele would not like them. The other way an employer can discriminate a mother would be the statistical discriminations. In this method of discrimination, an employer would use generalized data to measure the productivity level that someone with children would likely have. This would help the employer determine/penalize the mother or whichever type of person they are discriminating against and offer them a much lower wage than someone who does not have children.

Motherhood in general can cause someone to be on the lower end of the pay scale. Having a lower education level therefore bearing more children at an earlier age can put a mother out of the job force for a long amount of time, which will eventually lead to a lower wage in the future.

In Terkel’s work he argues that that our concept of a “work ethic” needs to be wrested from its more banal invocation as the effort putting into making a buck. I believe he is trying to show the relationship between people and work. He gives different examples of professions and peoples reaction to what they do. He goes on interviews asking people about their job. I think he is showing a different idea of a calling people who love what they do and aren’t just there for the money but work because they truly love what they do. For example, the musician he spoke to who told the story of juggling a lot of different jobs and how he can go from a show where he’s the center of attention to not being seen. He also said that he even played at a funeral and one would look at it as if his job is tiresome and something we would not do but he enjoyed what he did.

Terkel’s interviews show that no matter who you are of what kind of job hey had every one had a different meaning of what makes work meaningful to them.  When he interviews Mike he found out all the struggles that mike go through just to get his son to go to college and how he stops at the bar before going home because he have to de stress before he goes home because he cant take out his stress on his family.

Almost 50% of us hate our jobs but because of circumstances we are in the job we are we have no way out because of life but we must find meaning in what we do. It might not be what we want our long-term goal but it’s what we do to live and provide for our family so with that title we have to look for meaning and find a way to continue doing that job over and over again each day. Im sure if we take a survey now or interview my classmates we would not get 100% of students who find joy and take great pride in what they do. Maybe the few that are teachers who love molding and preparing children love what they do. He also mention people who were looked down upon because of their job title so they change the name to make it look better when they were with other people who had better job titles.

Part: A

In the Doing Gender by Giving “Good Service” essay Elaine Hall describes the differences between gender -in- organization perspective and the gendered organization approach and how they are both define in the work environment.

The author describes how gender in-organization is different for women and men and it implies that different gender has different approach to the same kind of work. The different genders also are view differently by costumers. (in p.454) This article describes how for example police women are trying to resolve the gender role between being women and a police officers. How the gender expectations and behavior when harassment is involved these behaviors are inappropriate.

In gendered organization approach (in p.454) it describes that the type of job a person chooses will imply the gender at work. This approach is different than gender in organization approach because it tells us that men and women bring different gender behaviors to work. But the gender organization approach implies that the type of job determines how men and women behave differently when it comes to the work environment.

When addressing the way, gender is constructed within and between restaurants. All this because restaurants makeup their own rules when it comes to hiring people to work for them. Some restaurants only hire young beautiful women in order to attract more customers into their establishment. This discriminates on other people trying for the same job. Some places discriminate depending on what type of restaurants they tend to hire older women, not young ladies because they tend be mothers and house wife and are able to take care of families. But if it’s a restaurant they tend to want young women with nice bodies in order to attract and flirt with male costumers. For example, I have a close friend that used to work in a fancy restaurant in Washington highs where I live, my friend felt so much pressure from her place of work and from other co-worker and waitress that she made the decision to go have plastic surgery in Dominican Republic. She felt other waitress were making more money because they had better bodies specifically bigger behinds than she did.

In this case, both the gender -in-organization and the gendered organization played a role in how my friend was able to get this job. Because in this job she walked in with gender neutral believes but quickly realized that wasn’t how she was supposed to act at work but Instead gendered organization determined how she was supposed to look and act around costumers at work, in order to make more money.

Part: B

In the article “The wage Penalty for motherhood” The authors Michelle Budig and Paula England write about how women in their childbearing years are being paid less than women that are not in their childbearing years. All this because when women have children they tend to spend more time at home and away from their jobs. They may get discriminated against because of having children and be seen as less reliable than women without children.

The first explanation (in p.205) is that when women are in childbearing years they spend more time away from work because they are taking care of children causing them to interrupt they carriers and therefore their job experience. For example, when my children where young I had to work and spend more time away from home than I wanted to. But that made me feel guilty about not being with them I was missing out on my children growth. At the same time, I had to work because of fear of losing my place at work, it was a lot of pressure from both sides.

The second explanation (in p.205) is that some mothers may want to change jobs to more mother friendly jobs even if those jobs offer less pay because to them it is more beneficial to be in a mother friendly job, like for example working in a school were later on mothers could bring their children to work with them which makes it essayer for them instead of having to pay for childcare and it saves time.

The third explanation (in p. 207) is that some mothers may earn less pay because having to take care of a young child and working is an exhausting job that can leave them feeling sleepy and can lead them to be unfocused on the job at hand. For some women, it takes about a year to get used to the routine of juggling a job will taking care of their children.

The fourth explanation (in p.208) is that some employers can discriminate against mothers because they feel mothers are less productive than women how don’t have children for the reasons I mention above. In this society, women that have career ambition are viewed as being less ambitious if they also have children. Because bosses tend to prefer women that are not attached to children in order to have their focus on the job at hand.

The last explanation is where the authors sort of retract what they said because they mention (in p.210) that maybe women of childbearing years are at a young age. They may have a lower academic status and that is way they tend to make less money than those women who don’t have any children.

Part A

Doing Gender by Giving Good Service

In Elaine Hall’s essay, she declares two particular identifiable approaches towards the relationship between gender and organizations. Hall mentions the disadvantages of women and how they are affected in a different way when surrounded by gender neutral organizations. She illustrates preexisting systems already in play. These systematic movements have created harsh disadvantages for women since the introductory of recruitment.

Elaine Hall notes the significance of gender and work; our gender dictates the kinds of roles we play and the sort of work we do. There are two approaches, the gender in the organization approach and the gendered organization approach.  The gender in the organization approach focuses mostly on the differences between genders. With the consideration of collective and individual perspective roles in organizations, particularly women, we are able to visualize the generalized norm for certain occupations. Collective genders are organized with specific roles designated for women; such as clerical work.  Men are often identified as servers and women as the sexualized waitress, in reference to this pre-historical agenda systematically referring to women as the caregivers. Women waitresses are expected to flirt with customers as part of her job description. Elaine Hall’s research showed that women were told to mingle, smile, and engage in a friendly manner, more so than the male servers.

Elaine Hall’s notes the role of the women in the police force and the subjective notion of their gender. Immediately, they are perceived and judged based on their ability to ovulate over their professional title. The people’s behavior reflects the gendered approach. This approach reflects the social settings of their relationship among women and men when it comes to gender. Women are often sexualized and idealized for their beauty in their workplace. In a sense, Elaine Hall refers to the weaning out a process of candidates during interviews. Her example of hiring the young and sexy women, and then issuing them uniforms to bring focus to their assets to draw attention to men. This notion only feeds into this ideology of the preferred women instilled by society, conditioning every man to want, and every woman to want to become. In many ways, if you don’t fit this model of this ideal “societal norm” chances are you will become extremely limited in your choices of work. No employer would want to hire women who are not visually appealing. If hired the women is conditioned to up sell the company’s products while the men are obligated to continuously supply and pull longer hours when surrounded by beautiful women.

 Part B

The Wage Penalty for Motherhood

In Michelle Budig and Paul England essay “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood”, focused on women and their childbearing years. Women are more likely than men to be paid a lower wage for doing the same kind of work. They offer five reasoning’s for this theory:

One, Michelle Budig and Paul England speak of the women who spend the majority of their time home raising their children as a caregiver. This gave the women no time to work a full-time job with a salary; they were already doing so at home with their kids. This applies to all women who refuse to miss their child’s first anything, especially if it is their first child. With that being said, a woman with more than one would not possess any sort of free time dedicate to a paying job, making it impossible for single mothers.

Secondly, they explain the rationale of accepting a lower waged position in exchange for childcare. Women who are able to take their kids to work with them offers them the freedom and flexibility to work knowing their children are being taken care of. Women with children require many accommodations in their workplace. These women may have schedule limitations that restrict them from working certain days and needs a shorter work commute than others in order to uphold hold their main priority; their children.

Their third reasoning focuses on the children as a liability. Their children can be seen a distraction leaving the women exhausted and unfocused to their paid jobs. Excuses for further accommodations are to be expected. Like if their child was sick and now they are exhausted from lack of sleep. This cycle of behavior affects their efficiency over women without a child. Their priorities are designated at home rather in the workplace.

Fourthly, mothers in the workplace are discriminated against nonmothers. Different treatment is given to women with children. They are offered less satisfying jobs and should not expect significant wage increases or promotions. Discrimination among perceived liked gender mirrors the gap in wages. Once you become a mother, be prepared to make less than someone without a child.

Finally, the last reason dictates the aftermath of having a child on wages. They home in on the lack of education and the high reflection in numbers who have children. This is due to a limited outlook on available satisfaction. Uneducated women feel having a child will be fulfilling, whereas an education woman seeks a career to be satisfied.

In Elaine Halls essay titled “Doing Gender By Giving ‘Good Service”, She mentioned the two identifiable approaches to the relationship between gender and organizations. They are gender in the organization approach and the gendered organization approach. Hall states that women and women are affected differently in gender neutral organizations.

The gender in organization approach is more geared towards gender differences. Hall mentioned that gender is embedded in the jobs that we do. They believe that women and men are different kind of people who bring different kind of meaning into gender neutral setting Hall states that the jobs we do rub off on us. She mentioned that police women role conflict of being police WOMAN and the professional role of POLICE woman (Hall454). Meaning that being a woman trumps over their professional title.The gendered approach is what people do with their behavior. This approach states that women and men and women encounter gender meaning in relationships in social settings(Hall454). She goes on to talk about the relationship between women sexuality and work. She talked about how women are refer to as waitress and men are servers.  She then spoke about how waiters are caring like mothers and how service jobs are women work.

Hall first points out three ways in which restaurants “do” gender.  Division and hiring gendered women to fill them.  Two where waiters learn their place and how to behave around costumers and three Hall also talk about women servers as sexual objects by both patrons and workers. She used the example of hiring young sexy women as waitresses and giving them uniforms that highlight those areas that men like. For example, in today’s society all the women at hooters are beautiful and mostly blonde women of a certain size that they hire to serve men wings. If you don’t fit the requirement, then you won’t get hired because they need these women to help sell their products men are compelled to order more and stay longer when they are in a room filled with attractive women.

Hall talked about the flirting game where the waitress flirts which is said to be a part of her job. In halls research she found that women were told to smile more be friendly and be more friendly than their male counter parts. Females were treated as worse servant than men in the gendered organization approach just like Hall’s findings of males and female’s treatment at work by their employers and the people they serve. Hall believed the gendered organization model has more explanatory power when it comes to the way gender is constructed within and between restaurants because it fits the data and because it encompasses the multidimensional ways of gender(Hall467). It appears as if it is more explanatory because I involve one’s work and their behavior to provide a full explanation of why society is the way it is.

                                                                                  Part B

In Michelle Budig and Paul England essay “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” they gave five explanations to support their claim why women in their “childbearing years” are more likely to be paid less than their male counter parts for the same work. They are as follows:

The first explanation that Budig and England mentioned is that women spend most of their time at home caring for their child so they don’t have time for a fulltime job because they already have one at home. Which in some case is true if you’re a single mother with no help or its your first child you would want to be there to hold that child and watch them grow. Frist time mother hate to miss a step in their child’s life.

The second explanation is that they would take a lower paying job that cater to the fact that they are a mother for example a job where they could bring their child or have a day care attached to it. They also would need flexible hours and work that they wouldn’t have to work on weekends, less travel time and can keep in contact with their children always.  It’s said that a Mother friendly characteristic is to work part-time (207).

The third explanation is that their children may distract them and leave them tired so their productivity at work is low, they don’t make their quotas or they slack off cut corners because they were up all night with a baby with fever. Mothers are less productive than non-mothers because they storing energy for home.

The fourth point is discrimination against them because they are mothers. They are treated differently for example they are given less rewarding jobs and are not considered for promotions. Sex discrimination creates a gap in pay but not a gap between women mothers or none mothers (Budig& England 208). They spoke about both types of discrimination taste and statistical discrimination.

Last but not least they mentioned that the fifth is the effects of motherhood on wages. Where they start of by saying maybe there Is no effect on wages just because they are mothers (210). They state that women with lower academic skills may more likely have children early because of their career prospects are not good and children give more satisfaction.  I am not sure I agree with this as a female but it sound like they said women have kids because that’s all they could do if they can’t get their life together. Maybe I read it wrong.

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.