PART ONE: RESPONSE PAPER
Be sure to indicate which articles you are discussing by citing with last name of first author. You do not need to include the title of the articles – just the last names of first authors. Your Response Papers should be analytic in nature, which means you will consider what the author(s) is doing with their work rather than offering just a summarization of the reading. Your paper should be 2-4 pages in length (Times New Roman size 12 font, normal 1″ margins, double-space). You will want to address the main points of the reading, how the author is applying theory or research to communicate the main points, how this may relate back to any previous readings in this course, and then a critical analysis of the piece(s)
PART 2: DISCUSSION FORM
Create a discussion question and response. You cannot just pose a question – you have to pose a question OR an interesting topic of discussion, and then elaborate and provide a detailed and well-developed response based on reading that was given. 4-6 sentences for the discussion form.
The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for
Men in the “Female” Professions*
CHRISTINE L. WILLIAMS, University of Texas at Austin
Downloaded from http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on September 16, 2016
This paper addresses men’s underrepresentation in four predominantly female professions: nursing, elementary school teaching, librarianship, and social work. Specifically, it examines the degree to which discrimination disadvantages men in hiring and promotion decisions, the work place culture, and in interactions with
clients. In-depth interviews were conducted with 99 men and women in these professions in four major U.S.
cities. The interview data suggest that men do not face discrimination in these occupations; however, they do
encounter prejudice from individuals outside their professions. In contrast to the experience of women who enter
male-dominated professions, men generally encounter structural advantages in these occupations which tend to
enhance their careers. Because men face different barriers to integrating nontraditional occupations than women
face, the need for different remedies to dismantle segregation in predominantly female jobs is emphasized.
The sex segregation of the U.S. labor force is one of the most perplexing and tenacious
problems in our society. Even though the proportion of men and women in the labor force is
approaching parity (particularly for younger cohorts of workers) (U.S. Department of Labor
1991:18), men and women are still generally confined to predominantly single sex occupations. Forty percent of men or women would have to change major occupational categories to
achieve equal representation of men and women in all jobs (Reskin and Roos 1990:6), but
even this figure underestimates the true degree of sex segregation. It is extremely rare to find
specific jobs where equal numbers of men and women are engaged in the same activities in
the same industries (Bielby and Baron 1984).
Most studies of sex segregation in the work force have focused on women’s experiences
in male-dominated occupations. Both researchers and advocates for social change have focused on the barriers faced by women who try to integrate predominantly male fields. Few
have looked at the “flip-side” of occupational sex segregation: the exclusion of men from
predominantly female occupations (exceptions include Schreiber 1979; Williams 1989; Zimmer 1988). But the fact is that men are less likely to enter female sex-typed occupations than
women are to enter male-dominated jobs (Jacobs 1989). Reskin and Roos, for example, were
able to identify 33 occupations in which female representation increased by more than nine
percentage points between 1970 and 1980, but only three occupations in which the proportion of men increased as radically (1990:20-21).
In this paper, I examine men’s underrepresentation in four predominantly female occupations—nursing, librarianship, elementary school teaching, and social work. Throughout
the twentieth century, these occupations have been identified with “women’s work”—even
though prior to the Civil War, men were more likely to be employed in these areas. These
four occupations, often called the female “semi-professions” (Hodson and Sullivan 1990), today range from 5.5 percent male (in nursing) to 32 percent male (in social work). (See Table
1.) These percentages have not changed substantially in decades. In fact, as Table 1 indicates,
two of these professions—librarianship and social work—have experienced declines in the
* This research was funded in part by a faculty grant from the University of Texas at Austin. I also acknowledge
the support of the sociology departments of the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University; and Arizona State
University. I would like to thank Judy Auerbach, Martin Button, Robert Nye, Teresa Sullivan, Debra Umberson, Mary
Waters, and the reviewers at Social Problems for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Correspondence to:
Williams, Department of Sociology, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1088.
SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 39, No. 3, August 1992