Sociology of the Workplace ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gender Inequality at Workplace

Annotated Bibliography

Dixon, S. (2001). Work Experience and the Gender Earnings Gap. New Zealand Economic Papers, 35(2), 152+. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002436019

In this article, Dixon reviews and presents the information about the work experience profiles of men and women working in New Zealand. The author uses two methods, which were introduced by Zabalza and Arrufat (1985) and by Filer (1993) for adding the women's actual paid work experience into the house hold survey databases. By using the imputed experience values and other skills, Dixon determines the components that are responsible for gender wage gap in late 1990s. This article is useful for research because it investigates that the shortfall in average hourly earnings of women is due to women's lower average level of skills which are needed for productivity. Moreover, it also discusses briefly the male and female differences in job distribution. One of the main limitations of this article is that, variables of this study like "highest qualification" and "years of work experience" are very basic measures of skill and they do not show the productivity related attributes of employees which affect their earnings. The result of the article suggests that gender differences in measurable skill related job attributes are quite large which result in a large male and female wage gap. This article will be helpful in research for understanding how gender differences at work places affects the earnings.

Gazso, A. (2004). Women's Inequality in the Workplace as Framed in News Discourse: Refracting from Gender Ideology. The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 41(4), 449+. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5008547670

In this paper Gazso presents the analysis of women inequality in the work place based on 107 newspaper dialogues which were published during two years. The purpose of this article is to analyze how newspaper articles shape gender as a social structure. The discussion of this article will be helpful for understanding how gender issues are shaped in different articles and how this issue is perceived by different authors writing in newspapers. The results of the article show that the unequal workplace experience of women is due to their inability to fit in to the job and due to the burden of work and family responsibilities. The results also indicate that due to the female's caregiver gender ideology and male's dominant breadwinner ideology, gender is shaped this way in the news dialogues. One limitation to this study is that different newspaper articles had different backgrounds but they all were analyzed with same method. Secondly, non-professional women and other some groups of women like ethnic-minority were excluded from the analysis. Despite these limitations, this article will help in making the basis of my research regarding how the women inequality in the workplace is framed by gender and how the women inequality news dialogue can further construct gender.

Goldscheid, J. (2009). Gender Violence and Work: Reckoning with the Boundaries of Sex Discrimination Law. Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 18(1), 61+. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5042079040

This article discusses the issue of workplace inequality due to gender which has not come to an end, despite several antidiscrimination laws. Goldscheid has proposed a "second generation" discrimination solution in which employers get engage into an interactive process with survivors of gender-based violence before taking any undesirable actions against them. This article will be supportive for my research as it focuses on the gender discrimination issue as well as emphasizes on the point that sex discrimination law can broaden its goal of eliminating sex based inequality at workplace. Goldscheid has wisely divided this article into three parts, all of which will be helpful in the study; for instance first part of the article provides an overview of the literature on the unconscious bias and the way in which laws can be applied to the survivors of gender violence. Second part of the article discusses the antidiscrimination law and the last part introduces with a framework in which antidiscrimination law can be used in better ways to solve the sex discriminated violence. This article will provide a deep understanding of the antidiscrimination law as well as its better utilization.

Kelan, E.K. (2009). Gender Fatigue: the Ideological Dilemma of Gender Neutrality and Discrimination in Organizations. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 26(3), 197+. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5037493978

Kelan writes this article...

The author focuses on the point that major ideological dilemmas are faced by the workers and they make sense of different and potentially conflicting realities within their working lives. This article will be helpful for research because Kelan has identified a central ideological dilemma which is a way in which different workers confirm to have gender discrimination at their work place and then at the same time claim that their organization is gender neutral. Furthermore, this paper will also help to understand that current gender issues as the author also discusses how the dilemma is solved in the modern organizations with in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector. While using this article for research, it is also important to note that it also has some limitations. For instance, it is based on the analysis of only two companies only and secondly, it examines ICT industry in Switzerland. In order to reach to any conclusions, same research needs to be conducted in other countries and other sectors as well.
Koeske, G.F., & Krowinski, W.J. (2004). Gender-Based Salary Inequity in Social Work: Mediators of Gender's Effect on Salary. Social Work, 49(2), 309+. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5006657069

This article discusses the differences between the men and women salaries at workplace and focuses on the point that women are paid less than men. Koeske and Krowinski claim that in terms of fair equity and gender, men and women that perform same job with equal merit should receive equal salary, unfortunately which is not the case. In order to examine this issue, they have used classical meditation approach and modern approach, and have studied the salary discrimination in a regional sample of professional workers. This article will be helpful in the study as it discusses the issue of gender-based salary inequity at large scales and examines the aspects of identification with the field of social work and variables that are related to the identification. The study also examines, if merit mediators like education, experience and job activity are statistically controlled, gender will not have direct affect of salary anymore. One of the limitations to this study is that it was conducted on a randomly selected sample of 608 Pennsylvania social workers. Therefore the results and conclusions of this article cannot be considered to be true and applicable for all countries.

Matt L. Huffman Gender Inequality across Local Wage Hierarchies, Work and Occupations 2004; 31; 323, http://www.sagepublications.com.

In this article, Matt Huffman reviews the issue of gender inequality across local wage hierarchies. Matt investigates how the how gender wage inequality varies as a function of a job's ranking in its specific local labor-market context. This article can be very useful for the research as inequality in terms of wages is also one of the critical issues regarding the gender inequality at workplace. It is quantitative study along with lot of qualitative information provided in the literature of the article. Matt has used different measures and statistical tools in this study in order to measure the inequality gap and factors behind this gap. The results of the study suggests that there are many individual and job level controls; for instance female dominated jobs are paid less compared to the male dominated job and the penalty of female dominated job is very strict and harsh for women. However, no evidence was found which proves that the tendency for female-dominated jobs to pay less than comparable male-dominated jobs is stronger in high-ranking jobs. The results also showed some other useful findings which will be very helpful in planning the research in this area.

Reskin, B.F. (2000). Getting It Right: Sex and Race Inequality in Work Organizations. Annual Review of Sociology.707. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001790211

Reskin writes this article with the aim of conveying an important message that inequality at work do not just happens by itself, it takes place due to some acts and the failure to perform some acts by the people who run the organizations. This article can be used as a useful resource because it focuses on the challenges that organizations face today. Furthermore, it also focuses on the issue of structural discrimination and highlights the importance of investigating how organizational actors use structures to heighten or minimize the importance of race and sex. This article also contains literature from some sociology handbooks and from some other journal articles, but the author has not conducted any quantitative research on the topic. She has only collected qualitative data and discussed…