Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The reproduction of our society's sex-gender system has been a continuing puzzle for sociologists of gender. The history of western writings on gender has long included ruminations on the role of culture in constituting gender difference and privilege ( Wollstonecraft 1978 ; Mill 2003 ; and especially de Beauvoir 1993). Yet during the last 40 years of the sociology of gender, material characteristics – in particular, women's position as paid and unpaid laborers – have received more attention than cultural factors ( Hartmann 1980 ; Blum 1991 ). These findings have revealed large differences in the paid and unpaid work lives of men and women in our society, and they have led to a number of political reform movements and initiatives – Title IX, the comparable worth movement, lawsuits demanding equal pay for equal work – that have resulted in somewhat more equality in the workplace. There seem to be limits to these efforts toward workplace equality between the genders, both at the highest levels, where the prototypical “glass ceiling” seems to prevent women from achieving the same levels of leadership afforded to men, and at the lower levels, where women continually seem to function as a “reserve” labor force, dropping in and out of full-time paid labor according to the demands of their families ( Callaghan & Hartmann 1991 ). Even a cursory examination of the beliefs and plans ... log in or subscribe to read full text