New York University Cultural Sexism Questions 1. The media are thought to be major contributors to what is called “cultural sexism.” How are women depicted

New York University Cultural Sexism Questions 1. The media are thought to be major contributors to what is called “cultural sexism.” How are women depicted in the media and how might these depictions influence the perceptions that women have of themselves?

2.What does the “culture of poverty” theory propose? What criticisms can be made of this theory?

2. Discuss the reasons why students from low-income families achieve lower levels of education on average than students from middle- and upper-income families.

DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES. INCLUDE MATERIAL FROM LECTURES, VIDEOS, WHERE APPROPRIATE.

Your answers should go beyond a purely descriptive account.Include in your analysis those theoretical perspectives covered in the course that you believe best deal with these types of social problems from a policy standpoint

EACH ANSWER IS TO BE NO MORE THAN 2 PAGES TYPED DOUBLE SPACED SIZE 12 FONT- ONE INCH MARGINS.

Your answer should adhere to an analytical/critical perspective. Be Analytical, Be Concise.

The required material to help answer will be uploaded. The videos and articles to aid for the answers are linked below.

https://ourworldindata.org/literacy#historical-change-in-literacy

https://data.unicef.org/topic/education/literacy/

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2017036-eng.htm

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/180905/cg-b001-eng.htm

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/180905/t001b-eng.htm

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-604-x/2019001/ch/chb-eng.htm

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/171025/dq171025b-eng.htm

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016016/98-200-x2016016-eng.cfm

https://www.theloop.ca/watch/news/canada/human-trafficking-survivor-shares-her-story/6134713615001/1659176271502859500/the-social/

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/abpopprof/infogrph/infgrph.cfm?LANG=E&DGUID=2016A000011124&PR=01

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-over-criminalizing-poor-indigenous-and-substance-users-who/

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2017/oct/paying-prescription-drugs-around-world-why-us-outlier

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-004-m/75-004-m2019004-eng.htm

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/women-politics-canada-election-1.5368227

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/04/the-us-ranks-75th-in-womens-representation-in-government.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2018/03/13/how-media-portrayal-affects-women-and-what-geena-davis-is-doing-about-it/#2da2ee8e2962

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-503-x/2015001/tbl-c-g-eng.htm

https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-science-technology-engineering-and-mathematics-stem/

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/society/racial-gap.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 Traditional images of North American gender roles reinforce the idea that
women should be subordinate to men. (Photo courtesy of Sport
Suburban/Flickr)
US SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.
Billionaire COO of Facebook
GENDER INEQUALITY
“Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the
challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building
good governance.”
—Kofi A. Annan, Nobel Prize winner, 7th Secretary-General of the United
Nations
The Global Context: The Status of Women and Men
• According to the United Nations, gender disparities and deep and pervasive
• Higher mortality rates for girls and women
• Gender inequality is structural
Sex or Gender?
Sex – A person’s biological classification as male or female
Gender – The social definitions and expectations associated with being female or
male.
• A transgender individual (sometimes called “trans” or “transgender”) is a
person whose sense of gender identity—masculine or feminine—is
inconsistent with their birth (sometimes called chromosomal) sex.
Sexism – The belief that there are innate psychological, behavioural, or intellectual
differences between females and males and that these differences connote the
superiority of one group and the inferiority of another.
Beliefs – Inferiority or superiority = Discrimination
Basis for Discrimination
Difficult to determine
• Gender intersects with age, race, sexual orientation
• Double, triple, multiple jeopardy
United Nations Report (2005 – 2017)
• Higher mortality rates among girls and women
• Structural inequality
• Millions of women remain victims of violence, discrimination, and abuse
(Leeman 2000; Austin 2000
Some Facts
• 60 million+ young girls are listed as “missing” – likely victims of infanticide
or neglect
• Two million girls (ages of 5 and 15) are forced into the sex trade each year
• Half a million women each year die of complications from childbirth
• Two-thirds of the world’s women are illiterate
• One in three women has been abused, beaten, or coerced into having sex
• Globally, 750 million women and girls were married before the age of 18
and at least 200 million women and girls in 30 countries have undergone
FGM.
• The rates of girls between 15-19 who are subjected to FGM (female genital
mutilation) in the 30 countries where the practice is concentrated have
dropped from 1 in 2 girls in 2000 to 1 in 3 girls by 2017.
• In 18 countries, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working; in
39 countries, daughters and sons do not have equal inheritance rights; and 49
countries lack laws protecting women from domestic violence.
• One in five women and girls, including 19 per cent of women and girls aged
15 to 49, have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate
partner within the last 12 months. Yet, 49 countries have no laws that
specifically protect women from such violence.
• While women have made important inroads into political office across the
world, their representation in national parliaments at 23.7 per cent is still far
from parity.
• In 46 countries, women now hold more than 30 per cent of seats in national
parliament in at least one chamber.
• Only 52 per cent of women married or in a union freely make their own
decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and health care.
• Globally, women are just 13 per cent of agricultural land holders.
• Women in Northern Africa hold less than one in five paid jobs in the nonagricultural sector. The proportion of women in paid employment outside
the agriculture sector has increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 41 per cent
in 2015.
• More than 100 countries have taken action to track budget allocations for
gender equality.
• In Southern Asia, a girl’s risk of marrying in childhood has dropped by over
40% since 2000.
Inequality in Canada
Historically, women have had to fight for equality:
• The right to vote
• Equal pay for comparable work
• Quality education
• Entrance into male-dominated occupations
• Legal equality
Even today, society does not treat women and men equally:
• Women have lower incomes
• Hold fewer prestigious jobs
• Remain concentrated in traditionally female-dominated fields of study at
universities and community colleges, and trade apprenticeship programs
• More likely than men to live in poverty
Sociological Theories of Gender Inequality
Structural-Functionalist Perspective
•
Pre-industrialized society required a division of labour based on gender
•
Emphasis on biological and nurturing roles for women
•
Men – economic providers
•
Social change and Industrialization rendered the traditional division of labour less
functional but supporting belief system persists
•
Industrialization made traditional division of labor less functional, belief system remains.
– Women nursed and cared for children.
– Men were responsible for material needs.
Conflict Perspective
Historically – The relationship to economic production shaped male dominance and female
subordination
•
Private property – men gained control of the modes of production
•
Inheritance and property laws consolidated gender positions
Contemporary Society – Changing nature of work
•
women compete with men for jobs and wages
Belief system supports gender inequality
•
Women less intelligent, less reliable, less rational
•
Women are inferior outside the home.
•
Women more valuable in the home (maternal instincts and naturally nurturing)
• Subordinate position of women – consequence of social inducement not
biological differences
• Continued domination by males requires a belief system that supports
gender inequality.
Symbolic Interactionist Perspective
• Socialization process – taught the meanings associated with being feminine
and masculine
• Lifelong process of learning gender roles – Family, school, and peer groups
• Gender and gender roles are learned through socialization process.
Women are socialized into expressive roles.
• Roles into which women are traditionally socialized (i.e.,
nurturing and emotionally supportive roles).
• Men are socialized into instrumental roles.
• (i.e., task-oriented roles)
Feminist Perspectives
• Challenge role allocation on gender lines
• Expressive (nurturing) and instrumental (task oriented) roles – result from
learning social expectations of the worlds into which we are born
• Gender operates as a manifestation of social norms that vary from region to
region
• Everything we think about “sex” is the effect of culture than of biology.
Queer Theory Perspectives
• Contest approaches to gender that take the obvious that there can be only
two genders
• Gender is contingent, fluid, and unstable
• The behaviour has to be learned and constantly repeated if one is to maintain
an identity
Gender Stratification: Structural Sexism
• Also known as “institutional sexism” – Structural Sexism: The ways in
which the organization of society, and specifically its institutions,
subordinate individuals and groups based on their sex classification. This has
resulted in gender differences in educational attainment, income levels, and
occupational
Civil Rights, the Law, and Structural Sexism USA
• Discrimination still occurs in the workplace as evidenced by the thousands
of grievances filed each year with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
• One technique employers use to justify differences in pay is the use of
different job titles for the same type of work.
• Discrimination, although illegal, takes place at both the institutional and the
individual levels
• In the United States, women often have difficulty obtaining home mortgages
or rental property because they have lower incomes, shorter work histories,
and less collateral.
• Until fairly recently, husbands who raped their wives were exempt from
prosecution.
• Women in the military have traditionally been restricted in the duties they
can perform.
• Underrepresented in political involvement
Education and Structural Sexism
• Least developed countries – 70 percent as many women as men are literate
• Canada – proportionate number of women with earned university education
has increased
– women’s representation in advanced graduate degrees remains lower than
men – Gender difference in fields of study
– Education Dividend: The additional benefit of universal education for
women is that it reduces the death rate of children under 5 years of age.
– Literacy rates worldwide indicate that women are less likely than men to be
able to read and write, with millions of women being denied access to even
the most basic education.
– In 2009, few differences existed between men and women in their
completion rates of high school and college degrees. In fact, in recent years,
most U.S. colleges and universities have had a higher percentage of women
than men enrolling directly from high school.
– Further, women earn fewer advanced degrees than men because they are
socialized to choose marriage and motherhood over long-term career
preparation.
– From an early age, women are exposed to images and models of femininity
that stress the importance of domestic family life
It is interesting to note that women currently possess higher education levels
than men, but this does not translate to pay equity in Canada.
Contributing to the inequities in wages is the differential enrollments between
gender and STEM based courses. See link in today’s Moodle.
Income and Structural Sexism
• Despite substantial gains in earnings during the past two decades, women
still earn less than men (Statistics Canada 2003b).
• Even when men and women have identical levels of educational
achievement and both work full-time, women earn less than men.
Gendered occupations
•
Human Capital Hypothesis: The hypothesis that pay differences between females and males are
a function of differences in women’s and men’s levels of education, skills, training, and work
experience.
•
One variation of the human capital hypothesis is called the lifecycle human capital hypothesis. that women have less incentive to invest in education and marketable skills because they know
that they will be working less than their male counterparts as wives and mothers.
•
Devaluation hypothesis – Argues women are paid less because the work they do is socially
defined as less valuable than the work performed by men.
•
Emotion Work – Work that involves caring for, negotiating, and empathizing with people.
•
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), in 2008, women made up 40.4% of
the world’s total labor force.
•
Worldwide, women tend to work in jobs that have little prestige and low or no pay, where no
product is produced, and where they are the facilitators for others.
•
Women are more likely to hold positions of little or no authority and to have more frequent and
longer periods of unemployment.
•
For example, between 1983 and 2009, the percentage of female physicians nearly doubled from
16% to 32%, female dentists increased from 7% to 30%, and female clergy increased from 6% to
17%.
Occupational Sex Segregation – The concentration of women in certain occupations and men in other
occupations.
•
Glass Elevator Effect: The tendency for men seeking or working in traditionally female
occupations to benefit from their minority status- Although the type of career pursued may be the
woman’s choice, it is a structured choice—a choice among limited options as a result of the
structure of society.
•
Pink-Collar Jobs: Jobs that offer few benefits, often have low prestige, and are
disproportionately held by women.
•
Glass Ceiling: An invisible barrier that prevents women and other minorities from moving into
top corporate positions.
•
•
There is evidence that working mothers pay a price for motherhood – the “motherhood penalty”
include women who feel pressured to choose professions that permit flexible hours and career
paths, sometimes known as mommy tracks. (i.e. Elementary Education)Research indicates that
when qualifications, background, and work experience were held constant, evaluators rated
mothers as less competent and committed to paid work than non-mothers.
Politics and Structural Sexism
•
Canada -Universal suffrage – But under-representation of women in elected office
Table 2 Percentage of Federal Candidates Nominated and Elected in 2008, by Party
Political Party Total Candidates
Nominated Elected
Bloc Québécois 75
49
Conservatives 307
143
Liberals
307
77
NDP
308
37
Male Candidates
Nominated Elected
55
34
244
120
194
58
204
25
Female Candidates % Female Candidates
Nominated Elected Nominated Elected
20
15
28%
30.6%
63
23
20%
16.1%
113
19
37%
24.7%
104
12
34%
32.4%
While women have made many gains in the political realm over the past twenty years, progress has been
slow. From about 1993 until 2011, the numbers of women elected to the House of Commons hovered
around the 20% mark. Fortunately, this past federal election in May of 2011, Equal Voice celebrated a
new record when nearly 25% women (24.6%), 76 women in total, were elected to the House of
Commons.
Women are over 50% of Canada’s population and currently comprise an average of 25% of Canada’s
municipal councils, provincial legislatures and the House of Commons.
Canada’s international ranking on women’s political representation is currently 39th (as of November
2011). Despite the notable gains in the recent federal election, Canada still has fewer women elected than
most of Europe, parts of Africa, and Australia (see the Interparliamentary Union’s web site for a full
listing.)
Polling data consistently demonstrates women care about different issues. The United Nations has
emphasized that equality in decision-making is essential to the empowerment of women, noting a critical
mass is needed before legislatures produce public policy representing women’s concerns.
Table 1 Percentage of Seats won by Women in Canadian Federal Elections, 1984-2008
Year Total Number of Seats Seats Held by Women Proportion of Seats Held by Women
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2006
2008
282
295
295
301
301
308
308
308
27
39
53
62
62
65
64
68
9.6%
13.3%
18%
20.6%
20.6%
21.1%
20.8%
22.1%
Comparison – Female Representation – In U.S. Government, 2011
•
U.S. Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton
•
U.S. Governors: 12%
•
U.S. Congress: 16.6%
•
Average State Legislatures: 23.6%
•
Colorado’s State Legislature: 41%
*** SEE UPDATED REPRESENTATION BY WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT LISTED IN THIS
WEEKS MOODLE NOTES
Measures Towards Equity?
•
Ontario: Pay Equity Act, 1988
•
Comparable worth
•
But…. Earnings Gap persists
•
Comparable Worth:
•
The belief that individuals in occupations, even in different occupations, should be paid
equally if the job requires “comparable” levels of education, training, and responsibility.
•
In a comparable worth lawsuit, nurses successfully sued the city of Denver for paying
them less than other employees (e.g., tree trimmers, sign painters) who had less
education.
•
Women = 1/3rd of world’s labour force
•
Jobs with lower prestige and power
•
Pay and prestige decline when jobs shift to women’s work
Finally Consider the wage gap between the intersections of gender and race. Also see the link on
this topic in Moodle.
A Deficit Worth Worrying About: The Gendered and Racialized Wage Gap –
December 13, 2017 Kate McInturff – This blog was originally published by the Canadian
Women’s Foundation
I was really hoping the recent release of Census data would bring good news: wage gap closed!
Racial discrimination gone! Equality achieved!
Not so much.
Gaps in pay for women and racialized groups persist. Ditto for immigrants and Indigenous
peoples.
Consider Toronto, Canada’s largest city and one of its most diverse. More than half of Toronto’s
population are immigrants. Exactly 50 per cent of the city’s population identifies as a visible
minority. Maybe in the next Census, Statistics Canada will swap “visible minority” for
“racialized,” seeing as 50 per cent is not a minority.
Take a closer look below at the economic life of Toronto’s diverse population. Here’s what you
get: the wage gap is there for every group of women—both when compared to the paycheque a
white man brings home and when compared to men within the same group. White women earn
more than any other group of women (but still 22 per cent less than white men).
One in six Torontonians is South Asian. South Asian men make only 68 per cent of what the
average white man makes in the city. South Asian women make less than half that amount. And
while your jaw is dropping and ire rising, consider also what the city and its women are missing
out on in economic terms. If those same women were making the same salary as their white male
peers (and I only looked at women who had employment income and were between the ages of
25 and 54 years), they would have added $6.8 billion more to Toronto’s economy and their own
bank accounts in 2015. That seems like a deficit worth worrying about.
As much as I enjoy picking on Toronto, it seems only fair to point out that other cities don’t fare
any better. Winnipeg has one of the largest Indigenous populations among Canadian cities; more
than one in ten Winnipeggers is Aboriginal. Aboriginal men see a 12 per cent shortfall in their
wages compared to non-Aboriginal men. Aboriginal women bring home 30 per cent less than
non-Aboriginal men and 21 per cent less than Indigenous men. Which is better than the national
average, but maybe not something you want to brag about.
Edmonton is the best city in Canada to be a man, as far as employment incomes go (see guys,
I’m keeping an eye out for you). That is, unless you’re not white. One in four Edmontonians
identifies as part of a racialized group. Racialized men bring home nearly $25,000 less each year
than white men and racialized women earn less than half what white men earn. Less than half. 46
per cent to be exact.
For the 5 per cent of Edmonton’s population that is Aboriginal, the picture is better, but only in
comparison to bad. Aboriginal men earn 87 per cent of what non-Aboriginal men do, and
Aboriginal women earn 57 per cent of what non-Aboriginal men bring home and 65 per cent of
what Aboriginal men earn.
There are other forms or discrimination that are not captured by the Census, but which have been
shown by smaller studies to have a negative economic impact. A large-scale survey of trans folks
in the United States found patterns of discrimination in hiring, firing and pay for the trans
community. This is a pattern which a smaller study based in Ontario echoes. An analysis of
income data for gay men and lesbian women finds that although as a group they have higher
educational attainment levels than their straight peers, gay men earn less on average than straight
men. Lesbian women and straight women also earn less than both gay and straight men.
Women with disabilities continue to be among the poorest in the country. People with disabilities
report employment as their main source of income, yet they continue to face high rates of underemployment and low levels of earnings. People with disabilities in Canada earn 56 per cent of
what those without disabilities earn.
Now I know you’re thinking, this is all just because some people are working full-time, and
others aren’t. Or maybe it’s a difference in education. Plus, babies. This is the beautiful and
terrible thing about Census data. You can account for all those variables. Turns out, a 30
something female dentist with a university degree, working full-time full year, still earns 74
cents on the male dentist dollar. Women earn less than men (working full time, full year) in 133
out of 140…
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