Cynthia Fuchs Epstein

Encountering the Male Establishment: Sex-Status Limits on Women's Careers in the Professions

Despite impressive extensions in the scope of womens social and political rights, there have been few extensions of sex-linked boundaries in the prestigious, male-dominated professions. This paper identifies the processes and structure of the professions in the United States which act to limit womens participation and achievement within them. Because their sex status is defined within the culture of professions as inappropriate, women find that the institutionalized channels of recruitment and advancement, such as the protege system, are not available to them. Various modes of behavior on the part of women and their colleagues are described which are consequences of womens minority position and which reinforce it. Social changes affecting the traditional structures and opening careers in the professional hierarchy are discussed.

Great Divides: The Cultural, Cognitive, and Social Bases of the Global Subordination of Women

Categorization based on sex is the most basic social divide. It is the organizational basis of most major institutions, including the division of labor in the home, the workforce, politics, and religion. Globally, womens gendered roles are regarded as subordinate to mens. The gender divide enforces womens roles in reproduction and support activities and limits their autonomy, it limits their participation in decision making and highly-rewarded roles, and it puts women at risk. Social, cultural, and psychological mechanisms support the process. Differentiation varies with the stability of groups and the success of social movements. Gender analyses tend to be ghettoized; so it is recommended that all sociologists consider gender issues in their studies to better understand the major institutions and social relationships in society.

Time and the Sociology of Work Issues and Implications

This special issue of Work and Occupations is devoted to exploring time as a factor in analyzing work and the workplace. Social norms specifying how much time people should spend at work are nearly as old as the rules specifying a division of labor (Durkheim, 1902/1947). Patterns of time use are socially constructed. They are supported by cultural traditions that have permitted and forbidden work at various times and are shaped by powerful individuals and groups who have required and persuaded individuals to work according to their dictates. Of course, social rules or conventions regarding work time have been constrained by such realities as season, the length of day and night, and the physical limits of human capacity. Although often regarded as inevitable, these limiting conditions have been altered through the ages through the use of technology, innovations of organizational structure, and redefinitions of human capacity. For example, harnessing electricity made it possible to work at night as well as during the day, and telephones and computers have altered the boundaries of space and distance so that individuals can work leisurely or hard depending on their desire or subjection to the wishes of others. These considerations also underscore the political nature of time allocation as gatekeepers devise or use ideologies in determining time agendas. Of course, like all leaders, they may face resistance from those most affected. Many scholars have investigated the processes involved in the social and political construction of time. Social scientists and political philosophers such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx have written about the time frames that determine the rhythms of the world of work. Many have paid particular attention—although they may not have explicitly theorized time as a category—to the coercive components related to the pace of work, the domination over workers’ time by employers, and the consequences to workers of

BRINGING WOMEN IN: REWARDS, PUNISHMENTS, AND THE STRUCTURE OF ACHIEVEMENT*

I have found it curious that merely pondering the issue of “women and success” has seemed to raise personal anxiety among my female colleagues as well as in myself. Only recently it occurred to me that this distress was probably a variation of the process that Matina Homer has identified as the motive to avoid success,l a syndrome to which women especially fall prey, in this case from simply thinking about women and success. This analysis will not, however, deal with the psychological dimension of success. It will be restricted to a set of sociological explanations of the processes that I believe lead to success, or rather, the processes in the society-and thus in the minds of women-that place severe limits on their attainment of success. It is my conviction that anxiety about success is not the major problem. Although the dynamics of the achievement motivation process remain unclear, we see that while at some levels anxiety destroys motivation, at other levels it drives individuals toward achievement. The far greater problem, I believe, is the general statistical reality that women do not have much success. Perhaps the anxiety that Dr. Homer has so ingeniously identified arises because women’s success is in such short supply, and, as with all scarce commodities that we value, we worry about wanting it, feel guilty about having it, and don’t quite know how to cope with it when we get it. From one analytic perspective, the low incidence of success among women is a pathological state in the society, a state of structural imbalance. Considering the vast participation of women in the occupational sphere and their infinitesimal degree of success, it is apparent that a large investment must be made on their behalf to create even a modest ratio of input to payoff. Until some reasonable ratio is developed, the tiny number of women who have been successful are destined to be regarded as pathological and gender anomalies. In addition, because women are not generally counted among the successful, all women are regarded as deficient. Thus, women outside as well as inside the professions and occupations are regarded as second-class citizens, as incompetents dependent on males to make the important decisions: as giggling magpies who will contaminate the decorum of the male luncheon clubs and bars; as persons who can’t be trusted to be colleagues. I do not think that these last observations are antiquated. Contrary to the beliefs of many, the world has not changed much in the last five years or two years or two months-in spite of the recent legislation aimed at guaranteeing women and other success-deficient groups a larger share of the places at the top. Informants who wish to remain anonymous report that the male gatekeepers of the channels and the structures of success commonly voice strong objections to bringing women in, suggesting that standards of performance will surely be diminished by their presence. Somewhat contradiotorally, these same gatekeepers

THE SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF PROFESSIONAL TIME

A core value of professionalism is the claim that work should embody the primary commitment and identity of the incumbent. The major professions are “greedy institutions” and demand of practitioners that their work take priority over other facets of social life. Today, in the face of a growing escalation of work hours expected of practitioners combined with an increase in the proportion of women in professional life, there are growing demands to reschedule work to permit part-time and other forms of alternative work schedules and to recognize time commitment of practitioners to the family. These developments challenge a cornerstone of the values attached to professional commitment. The organizational context of work mediates a broader claim to a shared professionalism as well as the ways in which part-time and flexible scheduling unfold in practice. Hours at work in different organizational settings – government, industry and private firms – serve as a proxy for explaining commitment and, in turn, professionalism. In this paper, we compare the symbolic meaning of part-time professional work among lawyers in government agencies, industry and large corporate law firms to explain its consequences for the social meanings of professionalism, including lawyers’ techniques for coping with the stigmas attached to parttime status. 011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 011 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Legal Professions: Work, Structure and Organization, pages 79–94. Copyright

Symbolic Segregation: Similarities and Differences in the Language and Non-Verbal Communication of Women and Men

Societies use symbolic means to segregate the sexes conceptually as well as physically. Social rules designate some forms of verbal and non-verbal communication according to sex, to maintain distinctions. This paper explores both the non-verbal means of communication and the content and form of verbal modes as they are related to (1) the creation and maintenance of gender distinctions, (2) the symbolic ways they reinforce social arrangements between the sexes, and (3) the problems of analysis researchers have found in attempting to describe and explain sex differences in communication. The paper points out that in the field of language and communication there has been a tendency to emphasize the findings of differences between the sexes rather than of similarities. It also illustrates that linguistic differences tend to be superficial, to be linked to power differentials, and to be context specific. The paper concludes that these differences are socially created and therefore may be socially altered.

Serendipitous Science and the Prepared Mind: Merton on the Microenvironments of DiscoveryThe Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science, by MertonRobert K. and BarberElinorPrinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 313 pp.

Robert K. Merton-the acknowledged giant of sociological thought and an awesome figure to generations of students; honored by major universities throughout the world as well as by the President of the United States1 who granted him the National Medal of Science (the first awarded to a social scientist)-had his whimsical side. As every scholar whose work was subjected to his editorial pen can attest (and there were generations of them), he highlighted his comments or corrections with imprints from his collection of rubber stamps, for example, a light bulb for a good idea, a pointing finger for emphasis, or a cloud for foggy thinking. Wordsmithing was a frolic for Merton but it was always play with a purpose. He loved the ways in which words and phrases were the carriers of ideas but had their own power to frame thought. Sometimes he gasped at their transformative powers, especially when a word or phrase he coined for a complex idea made it into public discourse, among them role model, the self-fulfilling prophecy, or opportunity structure. And of course, he exclaimed over their misuse through commercialization or banalization.

29.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-691-11754-3.

In Prejudicial Appearances noted legal scholar Robert C. Post argues modern American antidiscrimination law should not be conceived as protecting the transcendental dignity of individual persons but instead as transforming social practices that define and sustain potentially oppressive categories like race or gender. Arguing that the prevailing logic of American antidiscrimination law is misleading, Post lobbies for deploying sociological understandings to reevaluate the antidiscrimination project in ways that would render the law more effective and just. Four distinguished commentators respond to Post’s provocative essay. Each adopts a distinctive perspective. K. Anthony Appiah investigates the philosophical logic of stereotyping and of equality. Questioning whether the law ought to endorse any social practices that define persons, Judith Butler explores the tension between sociological and postmodern approaches to antidiscrimination law. Thomas C. Grey examines whether Post’s proposal can be reconciled with the values of the rule of law. And Reva B. Siegel applies critical race theory to query whether antidiscrimination law’s reshaping of race and gender should best be understood in terms of practices of subordination and stratification. By illuminating the consequential rhetorical maneuvers at the heart of contemporary U.S. antidiscrimination law, Prejudical Appearances forces readers to reappraise the relationship between courts of law and social behavior. As such, it will enrich scholars interested in the relationships between law, rhetoric, postmodernism, race, and gender.

Prejudicial Appearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimination Law

It is the case that even committed feminists who seek equality in all jobs historically labeled as male draw the line at women firefighters. The image of a burning building and a fireman carrying a victim down a ladder to safety just does not permit appreciation of a woman doing that job. Thus it is not surprising that resistance to women’s entry into the occupation has been strong, although a substantial number of women have joined the firefighting corps in many urban communities and have proven themselves able and enthusiastic members having gained entry through litigation and breaking down barriers against them. This vivid and engaging account of the entry of women and minority firefighters into a formerly white male bastion tells us not only something of the nature of prejudice and the mechanisms that enforce isolation of “undesirable” members but also about the culture of the firehouse and the socialization of new recruits. Based on fieldwork in the Oakland Fire Department during the period of academy training and 18-month probation period, this is a sensitive and multidimensioned analysis and description of an occupational community. Furthermore, it shows how much new recruits rely on informal structure to learn the ropes of their trade and how dependent they are on the goodwill and cooperation of old-timers on the job. Not merely a matter of good performance in the formal training that precedes work on the job, competence is as dependent on “belonging” as it is on the acquisition of skills. Similar to situations in professional life (such as the law, which I have studied), women find that coworkers and officers can facilitate or inhibit opportunities to prove oneself by the possibility to be in or out of the action at fire scenes. The lack of opportunities to prove oneself—whether the result of being in a slow station or being purposely kept out of the action—means a delay in acceptance by coworkers. Furthermore, to those scholars who suggest that individuals’ sense of confidence or lack of confidence is a function of their upbringing (or race or gender) alone, Chetkovich shows how situationally determined confidence can be. Both women and members of minorities in firehouses either gain opportunities to demonstrate skills and thus build confidence, or they find that a lack of opportunity to perform well leads to self-doubts. It is no easy matter for anyone to join the firefighting ranks. New recruits of majority groups go through hazing much like military academies and fraternities—often cruel and painful and always a “testing” procedure to determine how much a person can “take it.” Unrelated to the work, practical jokes and casting the newcomer into a position of servitude create a climate of uncertainty to any rookie, but they bear down

Book ReviewsReal Heat: Gender and Race in the Urban Fire Service.By Carol Chet‐kovich. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv+241.

In this important book a leading feminist scholar surveys and critiques gender research in a range of disciplines, showing how distinctions between the sexes are maintained by ideology and social controls.