Irene Padavic

‘There Oughtta Be a Law Against Bitches’: Masculinity Lessons in Police Academy Training

This article draws on participant observation in a law enforcement academy to demonstrate how a hidden curriculum encourages aspects of hegemonic masculinity among recruits. Academy training teaches female and male recruits that masculinity is an essential requirement for the practice of policing and that women do not belong. By watching and learning from instructors and each other, male students developed a form of masculinity that (1) excluded women students and exaggerated differences between them and men; and (2) denigrated women in general. Thus, the masculinity that is characteristic of police forces and is partly responsible for women’s low representation on them is not produced exclusively on the job, but is taught in police academies as a subtext of professional socialization.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Girls' Sentencing in the Juvenile Justice System

This article examines how gender-role ideology may affect racial/ethnic disparities, using data on the population of Black, White and Hispanic female juvenile offenders in Florida. As expected, Black girls received harsher dispositions than White girls, but contrary to predictions, Hispanic girls’ dispositions were no harsher than White girls’. Interaction models revealed that the effects of race/ethnicity depend on legal variables; up to a certain threshold, White girls appear to be granted leniency. As their offending severity and prior records increase, however, the juvenile justice system becomes increasingly intolerant, and sentencing decisions become harsher for White girls than for Black girls.

An Examination of Competing Explanations for the Pay Gap among Scientists and Engineers

This article uses a nationally representative data set to determine the role of glass ceiling barriers and cohort effects on the earnings differences between women and men in an elite and growing group of professionals: Scientists and engineers. It draws on national data gathered in four surveys during the 1990s for cohorts graduating between 1955and1990.Results indicate a continuing pay gap net of human capital, family status, and occupational characteristics that was not fully explained by either cohort effects or the glass ceiling. The authors suggest that the gender pay gap in these fields results from several unmeasured barriers that neither worsen across the life cycle nor become less problematic for recent cohorts. Improvements will require continued attention to discriminatory barriers.

Racial Diversity, Racial Asymmetries, and Team Learning Environment: Effects on Performance

This paper argues that learning in cross-race interactions is critical for work teams to realize performance benefits from racial diversity but that diversity is a liability when society’s negative stereotypes about racial minorities’ competence inhibit such interactions. We analyze two years of data from 496 retail bank branches to investigate racial asymmetries in the dynamics of team learning and their impact on the link between diversity and bottom-line performance. As expected, minorities’ negative assessments of their team’s learning environment precipitate a negative relationship between diversity and performance, irrespective of White teammates’ assessments; only when both groups view the team’s learning environment as supportive—implying that the team has successfully countered the negative effects of societal stereotypes on cross-race learning—is the relationship positive. We conclude that acknowledging the impact of societal asymmetries between racial groups, especially in regard to learning, can reorient research about the link between identity-group-based diversity and performance.

Mothers, Fathers, and “Mathers” Negotiating a Lesbian Co-parental Identity

This article argues that to gain a more complete understanding of how lesbian families experience parenthood outside of the heterosexual context, scholars must consider how co-parents negotiate a parental identity, rather than presuming that women parents want to mother. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 17 women in a state that denies them parental legal rights, this article asks how a non—biologically related and non—legally related woman parent determines a parental identity in a social system that continually reminds her of her liminal position. Interviewees divided roughly evenly into the self-identified categories of “mother” and “father” and a collectively generated category of “mather,” a hybrid of the two words. The word mather served to anchor co-parents in otherwise uncertain seas, but the other groups felt their parental identity was significantly constrained by ill-fitting role expectations based on gender. We conclude by addressing the possibility for alternative family forms to transform the institution of gendered parenting.

Paternalism as a component of managerial strategy

Abstract Paternalistic forms of labor control have become less viable according to many macro and mid-range analyses. This is true to a point, but it is exaggerated and this exaggeration results, we argue, from common theoretical premises. In the Weberian perspective, paternalism is one of several univocal forms of legitimized authority. The assumption follows that paternalized managerial strategies will be univocally paternalist, and thus will become obsolete as institutional rationalization, and the associated differentiation of forms of authority legitimations, advances. Instead, paternalism remains one element in a multivocal strategic repertoire that presents workers with a variety of rationales and justifications for management actions. To illustrate some of the features of the multivocal employment of paternalism, we present and analyze material from interviews with workers in two secondary labor market firms.

WHITE-COLLAR WORK VALUES AND WOMEN'S INTEREST IN BLUE-COLLAR JOBS

Based on a case study of a large utility company, this article analyzes the effect of a preference for white-collar work on womens job decisions. The sample consists of a group of women who worked temporarily in traditionally male plant jobs in the company and a group of women who remained in white-collar jobs in the same firm. Results indicate that both groups did indeed value job attributes that are found principally in office jobs, such as clean conditions, the chance to socialize on the job, and working with similar people, but these preferences did not significantly influence whether they would consider switching to traditionally male plant jobs. Much more influential were practical considerations, such as economic need. Since many women–especially ones in economic need–would find such jobs desirable, an explanation that takes into account barriers to womens entry is necessary to understand the causes of womens low representation in traditionally male plant jobs.

“Little Girls Unwilling to Do What’s Best for Them” Resurrecting Patriarchy in an LGBT Christian Church

This paper examines how a group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Christians resurrected patriarchal patterns of gender inequality in their local church. On the basis of more than 450 hours of fieldwork, we analyze how a group of lesbian and gay members collaborated with a new pastor to transform an egalitarian, inclusive, and democratic organization into one characterized by the elevation of men and the subordination of women via restricting leadership to men, instituting a gendered division of labor, and discrediting women dissidents. In so doing, the pastor and his supporters, regardless of their intentions, collaboratively reproduced patriarchal practices that facilitated the subordination of women. We conclude by suggesting that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between gains for LGBT organizations and gains for women, and we outline implications for understanding how retrenchment from egalitarian practice can undo gender-equality gains.

The Impact of Legal Inequality on Relational Power in Planned Lesbian Families

Lesbian families have the potential to create families unmarked by the inequalities of power often found in cross-sex relationships. Yet, based on interviews with 27 women with children in such relationships, we find that living in a state that legally restricts the rights of nonbirth parents to child contact if the couple relationship dissolves severely undermines this possibility. Nonbirth parents engaged in three fear-induced strategies that were at odds with these couples’ desire for equitable partnership: acquiescing to the birth mother’s wishes; making themselves financially, emotionally, and legally indispensable; and using communities to police partners’ behavior and ensure accountability. As a result, the potential for such families to model egalitarian family forms that would help destabilize established gender patterns is diminished. We conclude by pointing to the importance of galvanizing to remove the remaining laws prohibiting second-parent adoption and by discussing strategies for social change.

Lay Activism and Activism Intentions in a Faculty Union An Exploratory Study

Prior conceptual work on union renewal places activism in a central role. Understanding of activism’s antecedents, however, remains limited. This study uses a sample of faculty union members at a large public university, thus providing considerable diversity in work settings within a single employer organization. Using survey and archival data, this study explores the role of selected contextual factors on faculty labor activism. A tentative but interesting finding is that linkages to other activists appear to be a stronger predictor of individual activism than does departmental membership density. That is, it seems that “subcultures of apathy” can exist in even high membership density settings and that social ties to activists may spur members to heightened levels of activism.