Gender in Contemporary America

s we discovered in the previous section, although racism is prevalent in our society, biological explanations of race are largely discredited. The ideology of racial superiority might be in decline—the evidence is mixed—but direct appeals to nature as an explanation of race differences are increasingly uncommon. Our attitudes about race are becoming more sophisticated, even if they not straightforwardly more liberal.

Let's begin with a collaborative project.

When we examine public discourse about gender, however, we see a very different development. Whereas the argument that racial inequality reflects natural differences is now relegated to the fringe of civic culture, the argument that gender differences are biologically determined remains center stage in our public life. Americans agree that both men and women have important roles to play, but there is much conflict about what those roles should be. The notion of "separate spheres"—that men are responsible for the public sphere and women for the private—remains popular, particularly in religious settings.

ccording to 1996 data, among those who say that their religious commitment is not very strong, twelve percent of American men believe that a married woman should not work if her husband is able to support the family. Fourteen percent of women with little religious sentiment also believe this. Among those who say their religious commitment is strong, twenty-one percent of both men and women believe the woman should not work.

Similarly, among those with little religious feeling, seventeen percent of men and thirteen percent of women believe that women should take care of running their homes and leave running the country up to men. Among the very religious, eighteen percent of men and twenty-three percent of women believe in the idea of separate spheres.

(Why do you suppose that religious women are more conservative on gender issues than religious men?)

American society is patriarchal. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the dominance of men in public life. As we saw in our investigation of language and power, men are substantially more likely to appear as speakers in newspaper articles. (Our data showed that men are substantially more likely to appear as speakers in the New York newspapers.) Men are over-represented among elected officials. (This will be the basis of our fourth Internet investigation.) Almost a decade since 1992, widely proclaimed in the media as "The Year of the Woman" in politics, only 9 of the 100 U.S. Senators, only 56 of the 435 Representatives, and only 3 of the 50 Governors are women.

he idea of separate spheres first emerged in the U.S. in the first half of the nineteenth century. At this time commercial capitalism was rapidly changing the economic basis of American life, especially in the North. Social norms changed also. A new ideology of gender was developing among the capitalist class. This new ideology would change gender roles for all women, and the changes proved to be long lasting. Not until the modern women's rights movement was the "cult of domesticity" seriously challenged.

According to Christine Stansell, a historian of New York City,
Women of the emerging bourgeoisie articulated new ideas about many of [the] aspects of their lives. Designating themselves moral guardians of their husbands and children, women became the standard-bearers of piety, decorum, and virtue in Northern society. They claimed the home as the sphere of society where they could most effectively exercise their power. In their consignment to the household as the sole domain of proper female activity, women suffered a constriction of their social engagements; at the same time, they gained power within their families that also vested them with greater moral authority in their communities.[REF]
The new ideology was something of a trade-off for upper class women. They lost access to most of public life but gained some power over domestic affairs, particularly religious practices and education. Outside of the home, they were permitted a limited role in the moral reform movements that developed in this period, including temperance, poor relief and bible study.

Working class and poor women, however, lost much and gained nothing. As Stansell points out, "It was the ladies who expanded on [the ideology's] possibilities and the workingwomen who bore the brunt of its oppressions."[REF] They had little time to enrich themselves in the reform movements -- indeed, they were more likely to be the target of, than participants in, the reforms.

Even in the present, class differences in women's roles persist. Wealthy women still view charity as an important domain of self-expression.[REF] For working women, economic necessity leaves little time or energy for "moral reform."

ven though women are more active in the labor market, the ideology of separate spheres affects their activity and identity. Women are more likely than men to feel conflict between their job and home responsibilities. In discussions of the social impact of child care, for example, it is the mother's decision to work that is considered problematic.

Patriarchy results in various forms of inequality. Gender discrimination in public institutions is largely illegal, but de facto discrimination persists. Even if, today, a large majority of Americans dismiss the notion of separate spheres, structural differences remain; women and men do not possess power equally. This fact of American life has several important sociological implications.

Earlier, we saw how gender relates to poverty. From 1949 to 1991, the prevalence of poverty for men fell from about 35% to 7%. For women, the prevalence over the same period fell from about 60% to 35%. (Based on this data, we can suggest that women are about eight times more likely than men to be poor.)

Women are economically disadvantaged across the class hierarchy. According to 1998 data from the U.S. Census, women with a high school diploma earn about 71% of what similarly educated men earn. The ratio of median earnings for women and men is about the same for those with a college degree. Among those with a professional degree, the inequality is even more pronounced; women earn about 61% of that earned by men. Women who entered the labor market between 1991 and 1993 earned, on average, about 67% of that earned by men who entered in the same period.

nequality in income leads to inequality in wealth. As we saw earlier, according to Mishel, et al., most households have little wealth. Because home ownership is the most common asset American families possess, it is a convenient way to measure wealth for working and middle class families. About 80% of married-couple households own their primary residence. Among male-headed households, about 56% own. Among female-headed households, however, only about 47% own. To make matters worse, because female-headed households are less likely to own, they have less access to consumer credit, and face higher interest rates.

According to 1995 Census data, female-headed households were about twice as likely to experience economic difficulties, such as termination of utilities or eviction, as male-headed households. Female-headed households were also twice as likely to be receiving government assistance.

The gender gap in education appears to be closing. According to Census data, in 1940, 1.45 men had four or more years of college for every one women with similar educational attainment. In 1970, the ratio was 1.52 to 1. But in 1998, 21,832,000 men had achieved this level of education as had 20,142,000 women -- a ratio of 1.08 to 1. Indeed, in 1998, the rate of completion of a Bachelor's degree was higher for women than for men.

In 1964, women received only 2.7% of all MBAs awarded to Americans. In 1994, women earned 36.5% of these degrees. Over the same period, the educational share of women increased for medical degrees (6.5% to 37.9%) and law degrees (3.1% to 43%). Women have more of a presence in the professions, but equal representation has not yet been achieved. In some fields, especially, inequality endures: only 16.4% of engineering degrees went to women in 1994.[REF]

ducation affects class position by way of occupation. Jobs which return more rewards—both in terms of income and status—generally require higher levels of educational attainment. Given that American women are earning college degrees at the same rate as men, we might expect that gender inequality will decline in the future as occupational differences disappear. Another factor, however, complicates the situation. Occupational differences persist, even when controlling for education.

One reason for this is gender segregation in the labor market. Social scientists have been trying to explain occupational segregation for quite some time; there are number of competing explanations in the literature. The classical economic explanation has to do with differential allocation of time and effort to work for wages. This explanation rests on the gender division of labor that begins in the household. Because women are more likely to have more responsibilities in the household economy, they have less time and energy (and also, perhaps, interest) to devote to paid employment. Because the devote fewer of their psychological resources to work for wages, they are less valuable to employers, and hence, command lower wages in the labor market.

Recent sociological work, however, disputes this economic model of gender segregation. Bielby and his colleagues have demonstrated that the amount of time and effort devoted to work, paid and unpaid, is not constant, and moreover, is not equal across gender. It might seem quite logical that if one works a certain number of hours at home, one would reduce the amount of time one works outside the home by the same amount. If practice, though, it usually doesn't work that way—especially for women. Because women devote more time and effort to household work, they tend to end up working more overall, because they typically don't reduce their time and effort to wage work. (This is why feminists have called household work the "second shift.") Further, Bielby's work has shown that women tend to have higher expectations about the amount of work they must do. Men are more likely to reduce their household work to compensate for additional paid work than are women. [REF]

aterial differences are not the only manifestation of gender inequality. Other aspects of quality of life are determined, in part, by patriarchy. The notion of "separate spheres" places restrictions on the activity of women in the public realm. Moreover, the strict distinction between public and private has implications for the operation of power in the private sphere as well. Although women are assigned the role of "guardians of morality," and the home is where they are to focus their attention, household power remains, for the most part, in the hands of men. As a result, men have an interest in keeping the household outside of the scope of governmental concern; because they have the larger share of public power, they are largely successful in this endeavor.

American society inherited the English view of the household as a hierarchical polity with a man at the top. Indeed, the patriarchal household was seen as the foundation of society as a whole. The security of the nation, it was often said in the early modern period, rested on the well-ordered household. In the Anglo-American tradition, household members were governed by the head of the house. Their legal status and rights were mediated by the power of the head of household; he was the "master" and they were his "dependents." Women, children and servants were all of the same status in this regard.

Anglo-American law reflected this peculiar view of a well-ordered society. Men had formal authority over women; a husband could dictate his wife's behavior and "correct" her insubordination; he represented her in the public realm. In addition, men had property rights in the labor of their dependents. If a wife worked for wages, for example, the husband was legally entitled to the money—it belonged to him, in the eyes of the law, not to her.

Modern American society has rejected much of the legacy of master-servant law. (A wife's wages, for example, are now legally hers. Domestic violence is now a crime.) Social norms have been slower to change. It is still relatively common for a wife to be seen as an adjunct to her husband. It is traditional, for example, for a woman to assume her husband's surname upon marriage.

Despite the fact that women are participating in the labor force in a more substantial way than they have in the past, gender stereotypes remain. Feminist scholars, such as Roslyn Feldberg, have shown how gender role expectations have led to the systematic devaluing of the kinds of labor commonly available to women. Beginning in the nineteenth century, wages have tended to reflect the social norm that a man's income was to support the household, and a woman's income, if any, was to supplement the man's. Labor unions, in fact, have used the "family wage" argument to advocate for higher wages for men. In the nineteenth century, when women began taking jobs in factories or as out-workers, craft and trade unions opposed the idea of women working outside the home, because it would result in lower wages for men.

Today, the theory of comparable worth posits that the sexual division of labor results in the systematic devaluing of women's work, including unpaid labor (maintaining the household, raising children, and increasingly, care for elderly parents). There is nothing in the working of the economy that necessitates the undervaluing of women's labor. The labor market simply reflects historical customs, and as a result, perpetuate gender inequality. Employers tend to oppose the idea because if would raise the cost of labor, but it cannot be justified on the basis of any particular economic need.

Comparable worth suggests that the value of work can be -- and, indeed, should be -- determined by the nature of work itself, rather than the characteristics of the worker. This means that the prevailing labor market cannot be used as the justification for gender inequality, as has been the case. The labor market is not a natural object, but rather, a social construction, and sexism has been built into it. To correct the problem, an attempt must be made to systematically determine the value of work on the basis of work tasks.