Blog Post #2

1. Sex segregation is a form of discrimination that is intended to keep women in “female jobs” and men in “male jobs.” Typical male jobs are professions like computer programming, public relations, office managers, accountants, insurance agents, real estate agents, and bartenders. Jobs that are considered “female jobs” include teaching, social work, and secretarial work. Also, now that it appears that the gap in sex segregation is closing, we are noticing a gap in the wages of those who do the “work of the other gender.” This mainly affects women who are in male dominated professions. We see them earning significantly less money then men for the same work.

I have never really thought about sex segregation at ASU. Now days, it is a lot harder to be outwardly discriminatory against one gender because of Title VII. However, when I really think about it, I do see a little bit of sex segregation in what out professors teach and their sex. For example, I have noticed that many of the professors in the Family Studies/Child Development Major are women. Most of the sciences seem to be taught by men, with TAs that are women. Also, I have noticed that many of the core justices classes are taught by men, while women tend to teach the more specialized classes and the special topics classes.

2. I feel like my home socialization was not based on patriarchy at all actually. However, I am well aware that I had a rather rare childhood. After I was born, my father quit his job and cared for me. My dad was a stay at home dad for four years, until my little brother was born. Then he started working nights so he could be home with us during the day. This arrangement came because my mom had just graduated from college with a really good job offer and he wanted her to take it, and because of his own childhood, he never wanted his children to be cared for by someone outside of the family so he did it himself. I feel like the way I was raised was in more of a matriarchy. My mom is a CPA which is generally a male profession. Because of that, my mom also handles all the finances. My dad goes to work during the day, he is the plant manager of Rubbermaid, and when he gets home he is in charge of dinner and homework for my little brother. Like I said I realize my experience is very much outside the ordinary. It was not until I got older that I realized that jobs tend to be gender segregated. I learned this mainly from TV, but not from home or school.

3. Right now, men have an extremely high unemployment rate, especially in comparison to women. This is because the kinds of companies that are cutting back or closing down are construction, manufacturing, and financial services, which are all male dominated fields. Men are starting to find themselves unemployed, making the women the main income earners for family. The problem with this is that women still makes significantly less money than men. Currently, women only make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. A problem bigger then this that these families are facing is the lack of benefits offered in female jobs. Benefits such as health insurance and life insurance are, many times, offered in occupations that men tend to hold. So these families are not only losing money because women are not making as much as their male counterparts, but they are also losing their benefits.