Blog 33

More and more women are gaining high-powered positions in law firms. They are sometimes discouraged because they work really hard and do not always get the positions they are working towards. Some of the challenges they face are how to be authoritative and how to get your point across without seeming like a not so nice person. Some women realize that if they are too nice, they will be taken advantage of or walked all over. But other women also realize that being bitchy is not the best way to handle every situation, people begin to avoid you and do not want to be around you. Also the fact that a lot of male lawyers only want to train and mentor other males, they are often the ones that get the bigger cases. There is a discomfort when men and women have to travel together. They are afraid that there will be rumors about them sleeping together, so they sometimes try to take cases that are not cases that they will have to travel for. A few women in decided to start their own law firm that will be a women only law firm. They said that it had been a challenge, but they are finally beginning to take off. They are hiring new associates and they are all female and the partners are all female as well.

Blog 32

High-powered women lawyers are viewed as suspect parents because of all the time it takes in order for them to get into that position, it is time that was not spent with their kids. Parenthood is viewed differently for men, they are almost expected to not be at home, but be a work. They are viewed as the breadwinners, so if they are not at home at night with their families, it is alright. But if a woman works as many hours as a man does and has children, some parents look at her like she is not a good mother. Women have to get clever in how they manage their time at work and at home so that they will be able to have plenty of time to spend with their children. One woman says that she was looked down upon because she had a person that ran errands for her and cooked and cleaned. She defended her decision by saying that she does not have a lot of free time period, and she wants to be able to spend that time doing the things she enjoys doing, like being a mom and being with her children, rather than running around doing errands.

Blog 31

There are many problems with work and family balance in the legal profession. For example, when a woman gets engaged, people are automatically wondering when she will be leaving because she has a baby. It is extremely difficult for women to have children, leave the workforce for a period of time and then re-enter and continue working the same hours that she worked before she had a family. Some ways that legal firms have tried to deal with balancing work and family is by allowing flexible work schedules. Some may want to work from home one day a week, or leave the office by 5:00 pm at the end of the work day. This becomes problematic because the lawyers that are working like “real” lawyers get upset and view the lawyers that have flexible schedules as “not real” lawyers. The individuals, who work flexible schedules, begin to feel guilty and end up taking on more of the workload and get right back to where they were before, working 80 hour weeks. They also realize that there is no room for advancement, they are not going to make partner not working like a “real” lawyer. They also begin to feel resented by others at work; people no longer want to work with them because they think they are just slacking off at home instead of actually working and helping them out. They get ridiculed a lot and people make jokes about how they are not really available at home when they say they are or that they do not take their job seriously.

Blog 25

With sexual harassment laws, came positive change and negative change in the workplace. Women are able to say “no” without the fear of repercussions. The overt sexual harassment has decreased, but “underground harassment,” has developed. Underground harassment is “leers, off-color jokes, and pornographic e-mails.” There is also “story making” where people join into the rumor mill if a man partner is working too often with a female associate, there is an assumption that they must be sleeping together. This has caused men and women to retreat into same-sex groups and networks to avoid the rumors. English says that, “Many people view sexualized behavior aimed toward workplace success pragmatically, a “weapon in the arsenal” that a woman can deploy to gain an edge” (43). A male lawyer says that he does not think there is anything wrong with women using the sexuality in the workplace, as long as it is used properly. English also says that the negative effect of using sexuality in the workplace is that “it de-legitimizes a woman by reawakening the stereotype that a woman’s mere presence is overwhelmingly sexual rather than professional” (44).

Blog 23

From the 1960s to the 1980s, men wore identical suits to court and women tried to look like men. They wore boxy black or navy suits, skirt suits, and had their hair pulled back into a bun while in court. According to English, “Over time women decided they didn’t like the required masculine look, whereupon they “rebelled and “demanded” a return to a more traditionally feminine look” (19). One woman changed her appearance only after hearing a jury mocking what she was wearing, so she began dressing in more fashionable clothes to increase her credibility. Another woman received a make-over that boosted her confidence enough that she was able to make partner. Michelle Obama dresses unlike most of the other first ladies. She talks about all of the things she wants to do in the White House and dresses like many American women. She says that she buys clothes from J. Crew, but admits that for occasions when she has to dress up, that she wears designer dresses and accessories. In English’s book, one woman says that she wears lipstick in order to look older and more authoritative during board meetings. She often gets misjudged because she is young and a woman. She dresses up and puts on make-up as an “armor.” Women were rewarded for looking more feminine with greater power and control, they were not just dismissed. Many men believe that women have an easier time with dress as lawyers than men do because of how great the range in choices for clothing is for women and not for men. For men, they are either formal, in suits, or casual, in khakis and a polo shirt.

Blog 22

Sonia Sotomayor was going to be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice and the third female Justice. Race and gender played a role in her qualifications as a Justice. She believes that judges out to look at the impact of their rulings on individual businesses and government. She also believes that her gender and race are assets to her being a judge. People that disagreed with her being sworn in as a Justice was because of comments that that she said that made her seem like a liberal activist and that her own personal and political agenda is more important than the law as written. People were concerned because she had shown a personal bias based on ethnicity and gender. Republicans wanted to make sure that before she was sworn in that she understood that the role of jurist in our country is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences. She has had a reputation of frequently arguing in favor of minority plaintiffs and points of view. In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor served as a 3-judge panel that declined to address the Constitutional issues of this case. White firefighters were sewing for reverse discrimination because when not enough minorities scored well enough on a promotional test, the test results were thrown out. Six of her decisions went to appeal, five of those six were reversed and the sixth decision, the court disagreed with her reasoning but kept the ruling.

blog 17

Building relationships with inmates present dangers for prison officers in several ways. One officer said that when inmates are put in prison it is because of poor decisions they made on the outside. When inmates form relationships with other inmates, their individual poor decisions come together to form one big issue for officers. One woman in the film said that she would form relationships with officers and then use their relationship to get money and other things out of them. The warden of the North Carolina women’s prison said that it was dangerous for officers and inmates to form relationships because the officers could potentially bring in dangerous contraband and drugs into the prison. All of these things make it more difficult to maintain order in a prison. Women inmates sometimes felt like they could manipulate male officers with tears or excuses. They felt they could get away with more with male officers than with female officers. The major assumption officers had of women inmates is that their issues with one another and the system were petty compared to issues that male inmates had. They often started fights or had altercations over small things. They argued with the officers over everything. The officers said that they felt like they were always being questioned or second-guessed whenever they told the women inmates to do something. Officers made a distinction between older inmates that “do their own time” and younger, less experienced violent inmates. Since African Americans and Latinos are the overwhelming majority of inmates, the officers faced unique challenges that white officers did not face. These officers are sensitized by their everyday interaction with racism. Most officers viewed inmates as humans that had made mistakes while out in society. The officers also revealed that they sometimes felt like baby sitters when taking care of the inmates.

blog 16

No one in Britton’s study said that they grew up wanting to be a correctional officer. Most of the men were in the service before they became correctional officers. Once the men got out of the service, they saw becoming a corrections officer as the logical next step. The men did express that they wanted to do something in law enforcement, like be a police officer, when they were children. Some of the women did say that they wanted to be police officers when they were children. Most of the women were working in clerical positions before becoming a correctional officer. A few of the women said they worked as baby sitters previously. They did not see how the two would be connected, but now realize that they are. They often compare being a correctional officer to being a baby sitter. Criminal justice and criminology majors are very popular as undergraduate majors at universities. Many people find out they are interested in corrections by taking a class about it and then decide that is the field they are interested in. Social networking played a role in some of the women’s progression into becoming a correctional officer. For example, one woman said that she was working as a secretary in corrections administration and was asked if she would like to work some overtime as an officer. She realized that the pay was better and that she actually enjoyed the work so she became a corrections officer full time. One woman was a manager at a retail store. She was looking for a different job and was told by a customer, a corrections officer, that the prison was hiring. The woman looked into it further and found that the pay was much better. So, she did her “stuff and got in.”

blog 14

Penitentiaries have always been very masculine in nature. In the beginning, men and women were housed together. Women were seen as a nuisance. They were blamed for making men do immoral things in prison, such as masturbating and getting women inmates pregnant. While men were responsible for learning tasks that would make them productive members of society, women were responsible for sewing and mending male inmates and officers clothes. Male criminals were seen as “idle, vicious, and depraved” men and the penitentiary’s disciplinary techniques were comprised of correcting these issues and, thus, creating the model citizen. Women were supposed to be “idle,” so the woman criminal was said to go against the morality of women and were unable to be reformed. Reformists sought to have women housed separately from men. They created women’s reformatories. These women’s reformatories were organized by middle-class women who saw this as their social mission. They created places where women would learn domestic skills, such as housekeeping. Their training programs emphasized traditional women’s roles. These women’s institutions were to be run by female staff and officers. They were designed like the “cottage plan” and were meant for young, first time criminals. These reformatories are a lot like female corrections facilities today. In the beginning women were seen as annoyances. Ideas about masculinity and femininity shaped the men’s and women’s reformatory movements. The women’s reformatory movement was successful only in the view of reform for the “fallen” white, working-class woman, women of color and poor white women continued to be treated like male convicts. They were commonly housed with men on prison farms and also were leased out like men during the convict leasing times.

Blog 13

Images of prison guards in popular media are male. They are often big burly men carrying batons or guns. These male officers are not afraid to use brute force when necessary and images of prisons in popular culture are violent. Women are not usually present as guards in popular media depictions of prisons. Masculinity is defined by being able to use violence, like a “real man”, when necessary. Women’s violence goes against all norms of popular views of femininity. The popularized views of prisons go against the realities of prisons today. Weapons are not permitted in the living areas of correctional facilities and violence is rare. Many people think that women cannot handle themselves in policing type jobs and it is more dangerous for them to be in those jobs than it is for men. The women depicted in popular media are usually “butch” looking women. They are not usually small women, but rather, strong and very masculine like. The promotional videos of women working in non-traditional jobs usually show a more masculine type woman, as opposed to a very feminine woman. The women in policing type jobs said that they like to be able to leave work and home life separate. One woman said that she never gets dressed in her uniform at home and always changes before she leaves work. She also said that she didn’t like to talk about being an officer because sometimes people would not want to be around her or associate with her because of her occupation. Her husband also did not like it in the beginning that she was going to be a police officer. He was afraid that she was not tough enough. She also explained that when she was considering becoming a SWAT officer, she was weary at first because she was afraid that the other officers would not want to be on the same team as a woman.

Blog 12

According to the YWCA Employment fact sheet, women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. African American and Latina women earn even less compared to man, 68 cents and 56 cents respectively. Even more shocking is that 60% of minimum wage workers and 60% of low wage workers are women. Sex segregation in jobs continues to exist despite laws prohibiting sex discrimination because “women and people of color tend to be concentrated in lower paid clerical, service, and retail occupations” (YWCA). Being part of the “secondary labor market,” these jobs are “characterized by low wages, few benefits, and little occupational mobility” (YWCA).

Gender socialization aids in the formation of occupational segregation because when women or men envision having a career that does not fit into their gendered roles in society, they are often discouraged from following that career goal. If a man wants to pursue a career that is seen by society as being a feminine job, their masculinity is questioned and they may be teased about their sexuality. Women seeking traditionally “male” jobs often have their intelligence and stamina challenged.

Women gain many advantages by entering into a non-traditional career. For example, non-traditional jobs usually pay 20-30% more than jobs traditionally held by women (YWCA). Therefore, non-traditional jobs can be a pathway out of poverty for the many minimum-wage and low-income women. Non-traditional jobs also offer short training programs, apprenticeships, and on-the-job training, enabling trainees to work and gain firsthand experience at the same time. Succeeding in a non-traditional job, not only allows for the individual to receive more attention, but also opens the door to others.

Men are not loosing anything by women entering into male dominated careers. According the YWCA, the percentage of women employed in non-traditional occupations has been and continues to decline. Additionally, a large percentage of young women continue to remain in traditionally female roles of attending schools for cosmetology and healthcare. Finally, according to the YWCA, women make up an extremely small percentage of the high paying construction and trade occupations. Not only do women make up, at the very most, 5% of the workers, it was also found that men were 9 times more likely as women to be employed in trade work, and 4 times more likely than women to be in protective service occupations (YWCA).

Blog #10

Welfare reform forced many single mothers into the work force, all the while dismissing import child care needs. Mothers were happy to be off of welfare and were encouraged by being economically self-sufficient. The mothers in the study all echoed the same struggles, finding quality child care and working with the agencies. Through the Work Experience Program (WEP), mothers participated in training and internships for long periods of time before finding a full-time job. During WEP, the mothers are supposed to receive child care benefits and many continue to use other public assistance programs. As was often found with the mothers in Chaundry’s study, the payments were often late getting to the provider or there was a systematic problem with the payments, in both cases causing conflict between the provider and mother. Some of these conflicts resulted in the termination of care and mothers having to quit the program to look for other child care arrangements and to take care of their children for a period of time. Many mothers used kin care as the primary care for their children most often in the beginning of the child’s life when the mother had to return to work. Kin care was also used most often by young mothers that did not know very much about the system and relied on their personal networks for care. Over time, the mothers began to view kin care as the non-preferred type of care and only turned to it in times of greatest need. Once their personal networks were exhausted in regards to child care, the mothers turned to their personal networks for getting assistance from agencies. The mothers began to prefer agency based care to kin care.

The mothers in Chaundry’s study had to develop survival strategies from the very beginning of work entry after welfare reform. At the time of their initial entrance into welfare-to-work, mothers based their work around child care. They often stopped working when care arrangements broke down or when child care could not be arranged. Over time, mothers began to base their child care around their work. They realized the importance of maintaining a job and being able to be economically self-sufficient. This often resulted in mothers strategically making child care arrangements around their work.

In many of the cases in Chaundry’s study, the mothers were unable to get their preferred arrangement and settled for a second best option. Although the mothers settled for the option that was available and not the most desirable, they did not settle, they continued to search and wait for their ideal arrangement. Some mothers gave up spots or kept their children in a specific care arrangement longer than they normally would because they liked that specific type of care and wanted to keep their child there longer.

The child care options available to mothers is limited in the hours they provide care. Many mothers expressed frustration over having to be at work before the center opened or worked after it was closed and how they would make the necessary arrangements. In Julia’s case, Sonia, the provider, agreed to watch Jacqueline longer than the normal care hours to accommodate Julia’s work schedule. Center care does not provide much flexibility in their hours of care while family day care often can and will.

Chaundry found that the stereotypical idea that the welfare recipients are poor because they are lazy or stupid is far from the truth. The mothers in this study explained their struggles to go to school, work, provide for their children, and receive the benefits they needed. Poor working mothers often have to work long hours and do not have very much to show for it. Many mothers must resort to having multiple jobs in the hope that they can make ends meet. Single mothers are forced to take on the responsibility of providing for their children and often sacrifice a large amount of the day with them because they need to work. With their mothers working long hours at multiple jobs, the children are being moved from provider to provider decreasing their sense of stability. Chaundry, along with other information, suggest that there should be increased and overlapped funding for child care. He suggests that there should be an overlap program between family care and center care. Chaundry also argues that policy should acknowledge single mothers in today’s work force. In the radio broadcast, Robert Rector argues that there needs to be behavioral changes to decrease the number of children born out of wedlock. In the same broadcast, Professor Adair emphasizes the need for higher education for low-income individuals in order to break the cycle.

Blog #9

According to NCCP, 26% of child immigrants are poor. In Sara’s story, she was originally from Ecuador and moved to United States when she found out she was pregnant. She lived with her mother for a while but when they did not get along, she moved back to Ecuador to live with her daughter’s father and his family. She decided that she wanted to have her daughter grow up in the United States and have more opportunities so she came back. Sara left her daughter with a neighbor in her mother’s building who ultimately asked Sara to sign custody over to her. Scared and not knowing much about the legal system, Sara and her daughter left and became homeless. Over time, Sara learned about the system and began school and enrolled her daughter in a center. The NCCP says that 20% of children under 6 live in poor families and 18% older than 6. This can be attributed to the fact that it is difficult for working mothers to get child care support, especially in the early years. Mothers are often working minimum wage jobs with irregular hours, leaving them strategically planning child care arrangements. Sometimes when child care falls through, mothers have no other choice but to quit their job to either take care of their child or to arrange other child care. Another issue that children face is that they do not have healthcare. Most low-income mothers work for companies that do not provide healthcare benefits to their employees or their families. Additionally, mothers are often working sporadic jobs, some part-time and some full-time, and work multiple jobs at once. Another issue is the length of time poor working mothers usually stay at a job continuously, sometimes they are forced to quit to take care of a child and for other reasons and are therefore, unable to receive benefits.

Blog #8

There are many problems that “urban poverty” creates for poor working mothers. For example, many mothers are afraid for their children’s safety because of where they live. Jessica, from the video “7 Days at Minimum Wage,” said that she will not allow her children to play outside because she is afraid they will get shot or killed. She also said that while she refuses to live in Section 8 housing, she lives in an apartment that has holes that need to be fixed and lives where drugs are being sold next door. When people in general are afraid to spend time outdoors where they live, it begins to sever community ties and any meaningful exchanges that were once had. The deterioration of inner cities and middle class citizens moving away creates many of these problems. Along with the middle class moving out comes the deterioration in real estate and an increase in abandoned buildings. According to William Julius Wilson, the deterioration of inner cities is caused by the decline in the labor markets and “brain drain,” meaning that more men are going to jail leaving mothers to care for their children alone. “Urban poverty” also makes it very difficult to get out of poverty regardless of how hard you work or how much education you have. Jessica says that she has been working at minimum wage her whole life and currently only makes a little more than minimum wage. She is upset by the fact that every educational step she completes, she finds herself in the same position as before. She wants her children to focus on staying out of trouble and getting an education and moving out of poverty. Jessica can see the vicious cycle of working low-income jobs and having children and not being able to get out, and does not want her children stuck in it. These problems differ from that of poor women working in mixed income neighborhoods because their children have other examples to look to.

Blog #7

Julia spent fourteen months in the shelter system before Jacqueline was born and they moved into a permanent residence. When Julia went to school, Jacqueline’s father watched her and her sister. This arrangement lasted only the semester and ended because they broke up. She was still relying on public assistance during her summer break and was the primary care provider for her children but she was struggling. Julia had been cut off from receiving food stamps because she did not receive a notice about finger-imaging while she was in the shelters. When the next semester started, Julia’s oldest daughter, Izzy, moved in with her and watched the younger kids for almost five months. Izzy and Julia ended up taking jobs at the Burger Joint, trying to work their schedules around taking care of the children. Julia quit after five or six weeks because she did not want her PA to get cut off. When Julia applied for ACD, she was put at the end of the long waiting list because her case was not high priority. Her case was not a high priority case because she was neither working nor attending school. When she was called into the Work Experience Program, she received child care benefits and put Jacqueline into family day care arrangement that did not last very long. The arrangement ended because the WEP continuously messed up her checks or paid the provider late, making it so Julia always owed the provider money. Julia had to take a month off of work to get it sorted out. When she went back to work, she turned to her cousin to watch Jacqueline, but this arrangement was also short lived because the welfare agency lost all Julia’s file. After missing more than a month of work trying to sort everything out with welfare and almost losing both jobs, Julia turned to Becky from the CWP who helped her get ACD. Julia put Jacqueline into family care with Sonia and it turned out to be the most stable and long lasting arrangement. Sonia was flexible with Julia’s work hours and agreed to keep Jacqueline longer than hours than normal. Julia was still receiving PA and knew once she was required to make ACD copayments she would not be able to pay Sonia to keep Jacqueline the extra hours and she would have to have her mother watch her while she was at work. Minimum wage jobs make it difficult for poor working mothers to find and maintain child care because of the systematic barriers. It is difficult for them to work with the system either because they don’t understand it or are unaware of the benefits they could receive. Mothers have to either come up with a strategy to find work that works around child care or child care that works around work. Often times, mothers work odd hours or different hours so they are always having to change their care arrangements, sometimes they are even forced to leave their jobs and take care of their children.

Blog # 6

Chaundry explains that there are several types of child care used by low-income mothers. There is home-based care or individualized child care, which includes kin care, informal care by neighbors or strangers, and father care. The next type of care is family child care, or daycare, in a licensed care givers home. Mothers also use center care, including Head Start programs, Pre-K and preschool programs, and group daycare. Finally, some mothers used specialized care or special needs care. Most mothers used kin care as the primary care arrangement for their children when they were infants even though it was not always preferred. Harriett used kin care for her son because she thought it was important to “establish an ongoing relationship across generations and preserved a family’s identity” (p. 43). Like many mothers, she also chose kin care because she believed that babies need to be in the care of a loving family member, whom she trusted, and she can be sure her child will not be neglected. In many cases though, kin care was not the ideal care arrangement for the mothers because it was often inconsistent and the mothers thought the children should be in a more structured environment and be exposed to other children. Kin care was less expensive than formal care settings, making it the only option available for mothers just starting out. Many mothers chose family day care because, as Annette explains, it is more structured and more educational for children. Not all family day care is structured and educational, sometimes it was more like babysitting and the mothers worried about what went on while they were working. Center care provides the socializing and learning skills for children as they get older. Many mothers prefer to have their children in center care by ages two or three to get them ready for school. Mothers, like Dona, noticed developmental improvements when their children entered center care. Most mothers were unable to get their child into a center as early as they would have liked. The centers were full with long waiting lists, forcing mothers to make other arrangements while waiting for an opening. A lot of the children in the study had developmental issues, the most common was speech delay. The mothers of children with speech delay encountered many obstacles before getting their child into a special needs program. Mothers are often forced to choose less desirable arrangements either because of systematic issues, monetary issues, and most common, availability.

Blog #5

Chaundry argues that “we are asking the lest fortunate to strive and work harder, we are deeply discounting our public responsibility for the children born into the poor families and disadvantaged communities” (p. 14) because the focus of welfare reform was getting people working, while discounting the need for support and opportunities for child care. Chaundry argues that the welfare reforms put child care and working in separate spheres, forcing mothers to choose low-quality care because there were no other options available. Rather than increasing support and opportunities available to the working poor to help communities as a whole, welfare reform brought very little new support and cut off other support to working families. With welfare reform, the public is putting an emphasis on work and economic self-sufficiency for the poor, and therefore, it is our public responsibility to offer support and equal opportunities for the children of poor and low-income families. The videos identifying the working poor support Chaundry’s perspective that it is a public issue, not a private one. Most people in the video identified the working poor as people working for minimum wage. One man said that the working poor are the people that are working but still cannot make ends meet because housing, healthcare, and child care is too expensive. The video, “Living with a Hole in Your Pocket,” asks the question, “why doesn’t working work?” The most significant reason is barriers that the working poor face. The quirks and catch 22s of the system make it impossible for the working poor to make it out of poverty. It becomes a vicious cycle for these families. The video states that the quirks in the system have gotten worse and are making it a very public issue. The apparent increase in systematic barriers must be publicly addressed in order for the working poor to break the cycle and move out of poverty.

Blog 3

The care work that I experienced in my family was mainly out sourced. By this I mean that I have always had a nanny, or at least until I turned 16 and could drive myself around. Neither of my parents really did traditionally men’s jobs or women’s jobs in the home. We had landscapers that cut the lawn and did the yard work. My mom made sure the house was neat but we had someone that came to clean our house once a week. When it came to family time, I think that both of my parents shared the care work equally. They would both play with us or help us with our homework.

When I was young, my great-grandmother fell down and broke her leg and came to stay with us for awhile. While she was there, my mom would take care of her and help her during the day while my dad was at work and when he got home, they would both help her and spend time with her. Me and my brothers also helped with taking care of her by getting things she needed or helping her walk around the house.

I thought that the efforts and policies being made in the UK to address the issue of juggling work and home life were insightful and seem to work. It makes sense for a company to have policies and practices to make it easier and less stressful on an employee that is also a carer. It would help stop the revolving door effect that occurs when someone is needed at home and their employer is open to being flexible. Since I work in a extremely flexible office, I completely see how helping your employees when they need it produces positive effects. When you are understanding and empathetic about someone’s situation and allow for flexibility, it allows for improved productivity and a more loyal employee.

The home is not just “woman’s work,” a carer can be someone that needs to care for a sick parent or grandparent or even spouse. In order to apply the policies that companies in the UK have done, is to recognize that children aren’t the only people that need care, and that women are not the only ones that are able to do it.

Blog 2

Sex segregation is when certain jobs are usually held by either majority male workers or majority female workers. I am not too familiar with how sex segregation exists in employment at ASU, but I have noticed that in the health clinic, the majority of people working there are female. I have also noticed that a lot of the people seen doing janitorial work in the MU are female. These two examples coincide with the examples used in Paula England and Lori McCreary’s article.

Growing up, my dad was the one that worked and my mom was a stay at home mom. Even though my mom was not working, we, me and my two younger brothers, always had a nanny that picked us up from school, took us to our extracurricular activities, and was usually the one to make sure we got our homework done. Although we had nannies, I think that both of my parents were extremely involved in our home lives. My mom is not a “normal” housewife in terms of a patriarchal sense. Both her and my dad have always shared the “supreme authority” equally. I think because they were so equally involved in all aspects of our lives, I identify with being a strong independent person that can perform any job that I want. I don’t think that I think of jobs in a way that certain ones are for one gender and not the other.

My dad works extremely hard and has always instilled a good work ethic in us and has always encouraged us to pursue any career that we wanted. I have worked in my dad’s office since I was 15 and am now the office manager. My dad is a physician and all of the employees in his office are female. While he is technically the “boss,” I am in charge of the business side of the office and our employees. So, in a sense he is the “supreme authority,” but him and I also share that authority, just perhaps in different areas of the business.

According the radio report, sex segregation and the wage gap continue to exist even when more women are employed than men for several reasons. First, women are making less money than men; they make $0.77 for every $1.00 men make. Second, the majority of jobs that women hold do not have benefits attached to them. The majority of jobs men hold provide benefits to their employees. I found it interesting that only one out of three women have life insurance when there are more women that are the “bread winners” than men now. The radio report also brings up a good point that this recession could be positive for women politically. It is raising the awareness of the unevenness in wages and benefits for men and women.

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