Barbara Reskin

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Barbara Reskin (born 1945) is a professor of sociology. As the S. Frank Miyamoto Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, Reskin studies labor market stratification, examining job queues, nonstandard work, sex segregation, and affirmative action policies in employment and university admissions, mechanisms of work-place discrimination, and the role of credit markets in income poverty and inequality.

Contents

Reskin has spent many years teaching, holding previous faculty positions at University of California-Davis, Indiana University, University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Harvard, and Ohio State University. Reskin has written six books and many articles on gender and racial inequality in the workplace.

Biography

Reskin was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in Renton, Washington. [1] After a brief stint at Reed College, Reskin moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she was involved in the Congress on Racial Equality. Reskin returned to the Pacific Northwest and received her bachelor's degree, in 1968, and Ph.D., in 1973, from the University of Washington. [1]

Honors

Reskin served on the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey and on several National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committees. A past fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Reskin is a fellow of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She served as the 93rd President of the American Sociological Association in 2002 and was awarded a Distinguished Scholar Award of the ASA Section on Sex and Gender. Other honors include the Cheryl Miller-Sociologists for Women in Society Lecturership and the SWS Mentorship Award.

Queuing theory

Barbara Reskin is known for her expansion and use of queuing theory to explain the persistence sex segregation in the workplace despite the movement of many women into new occupational fields. While occupational segregation has declined since 1970, most workers remain in sex-segregated jobs. [2] [3] Through the queuing approach we are able to see how and why sex segregation remains a prominent feature of the workplace. A variety of social and economic forces enable segregation as well as to diminish it. [3]

Queuing

A queuing perspective suggests that labor markets consist of labor queues and job queues. Labor queues consist of all possible workers in a "queue" to fill a particular job, and the employer determines the order of the workers in this queue. Similarly, job queues consist of all possible jobs available to a worker, with workers ranking the available jobs. [3] Employers hire workers from as high in the labor queue as possible and the workers will accept the best possible job. By doing this the most wanted jobs go to the most favored workers, while the less preferred jobs go to the less wanted workers. This procedure then leaves the deprived workers with no job or occupying jobs that others have rejected. [3]

Three factors influence job and labor queues: the ordering of the elements, whether or not these elements overlap, and lastly their shape. [3] The order of the elements pertains to the order that workers rank preferred jobs and employers rank potential workers. [3] The overlap of the elements refers to the strength of the ranker’s choices for one element over another. [3] The shape is determined by the absolute and relative numbers of elements in a queue. [3] An example would be a situation in which the preferred workers group was the same size as the preferred job group, in which the preferred group will dominate the occupation of the good jobs.

Occupational feminization

There are four notable reasons that there has been a change in occupations' sex composition. [3]

The first is job deterioration which is attributed to the changing of the ordering of job queues. [3] Most of the jobs Reskin studied feminized after the rewards changed, therefore making them less appealing than other possibilities.

The second factor is job growth which shows that there was a change in the shape of the job queues. [3] There was a time when you wouldn’t need to hire women because you had enough men to do the job. But with an increasing job market, there was more of a spread of who wanted what jobs.

The third factor was the emergence of a sex-specific demand for women which reflected the changes in the ordering of labor queues. [3] After anti-discrimination laws were passed, employers were concerned about the costs—both monetarily and reputation-based—that they would run into by hiring solely men.

Connected to the third factor is the fourth which is the declining preference for men. [3] This is due to the changes in employers’ preferences. As stated before, the public would no longer tolerate discrimination towards women. Actions such as the civil rights movement and the feminist movement reinforced this concept.

Understanding occupational composition

First, we see that queuing highlights the group nature of sex segregation that occurs due to rankings that are socially structured by groups in conflict. [3] It also takes the effects of noneconomic factors into account—the rankings of both employers on potential employees and perspective employees’ rankings on the jobs available. [3] Lastly, queuing presumes that a person will rank occupations similarly based on their sex, which ultimately foreshadows women’s entry into traditionally male occupations based on the rewards they offer. [3]

Publications

Books

Book chapters

Recent peer-reviewed articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex segregation</span> Physical, legal, and cultural separation of people according to their biological sex

Sex segregation, sex separation, gender segregation or gender separation is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their biological sex. Sex segregation can refer simply to the physical and spatial separation by sex without any connotation of illegal discrimination. In other circumstances, sex segregation can be controversial. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a violation of capabilities and human rights and can create economic inefficiencies; on the other hand, some supporters argue that it is central to certain religious laws and social and cultural histories and traditions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social stratification</span> Concept in sociology

Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit.

Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, gender, sex, religion, national origin, and physical or mental disability. State and local laws often protect additional characteristics such as marital status, veteran status and caregiver/familial status. Earnings differentials or occupational differentiation—where differences in pay come from differences in qualifications or responsibilities—should not be confused with employment discrimination. Discrimination can be intended and involve disparate treatment of a group or be unintended, yet create disparate impact for a group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in the workforce</span> All women who perform some kind of job

Since the industrial revolution, participation of women in the workforce outside the home has increased in industrialized nations, with particularly large growth seen in the 20th century. Largely seen as a boon for industrial society, women in the workforce contribute to a higher national economic output as measure in GDP as well as decreasing labor costs by increasing the labor supply in a society.

Gender inequality is the social phenomenon in which men and women are not treated equally. The treatment may arise from distinctions regarding biology, psychology, or cultural norms prevalent in the society. Some of these distinctions are empirically grounded, while others appear to be social constructs. While current policies around the world cause inequality among individuals, it is women who are most affected. Gender inequality weakens women in many areas such as health, education, and business life. Studies show the different experiences of genders across many domains including education, life expectancy, personality, interests, family life, careers, and political affiliation. Gender inequality is experienced differently across different cultures and also affects non-binary people.

Occupational inequality is the unequal treatment of people based on gender, sexuality, height, weight, accent, or race in the workplace. When researchers study trends in occupational inequality they usually focus on distribution or allocation pattern of groups across occupations, for example, the distribution of men compared to women in a certain occupation. Secondly, they focus on the link between occupation and income, for example, comparing the income of whites with blacks in the same occupation.

Occupational segregation is the distribution of workers across and within occupations, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. Other types of occupational segregation include racial and ethnicity segregation, and sexual orientation segregation. These demographic characteristics often intersect. While a job refers to an actual position in a firm or industry, an occupation represents a group of similar jobs that require similar skill requirements and duties. Many occupations are segregated within themselves because of the differing jobs, but this is difficult to detect in terms of occupational data. Occupational segregation compares different groups and their occupations within the context of the entire labor force. The value or prestige of the jobs are typically not factored into the measurements.

Ascription occurs when social class or stratum placement is primarily hereditary. In other words, people are placed in positions in a stratification system because of qualities beyond their control. Race, sex, age, class at birth, religion, ethnicity, species, and residence are all good examples of these qualities. Ascription is one way sociologists explain why stratification occurs.

Gender pay gap in Australia looks at the persistence of a gender pay gap in Australia. In Australia, the principle of "equal pay for equal work" was introduced in 1969. Anti-discrimination on the basis of sex was legislated in 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminisation of the workplace</span>

The feminization of the workplace is the feminization, or the shift in gender roles and sex roles and the incorporation of women into a group or a profession once dominated by men, as it relates to the workplace. It is a set of social theories seeking to explain occupational gender-related discrepancies.

In the United States, despite the efforts of equality proponents, income inequality persists among races and ethnicities. Asian Americans have the highest median income, followed by White Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans. A variety of explanations for these differences have been proposed—such as differing access to education, two parent home family structure, high school dropout rates and experience of discrimination and deep-seated and systemic anti-Black racism—and the topic is highly controversial.

Structural inequality occurs when the fabric of organizations, institutions, governments or social networks contains an embedded bias which provides advantages for some members and marginalizes or produces disadvantages for other members. This can involve property rights, status, or unequal access to health care, housing, education and other physical or financial resources or opportunities. Structural inequality is believed to be an embedded part of the culture of the United States due to the history of slavery and the subsequent suppression of equal civil rights of minority races.

In Russia the wage gap exists and statistical analysis shows that most of it cannot be explained by lower qualifications of women compared to men. On the other hand, occupational segregation by gender and labor market discrimination seem to account for a large share of it.

The social and economic changes in Thailand in the past decades have important implications for the quality and quantity of labor. The economic and non-economic roles of women in Thailand can be traced back several hundred years in Thai history, when there were traditional discriminatory attitudes towards women in the culture of Thailand. The transformation of Thailand's social and economic structure since the 1960s led to the gender disparities in Thai society. Recently, the position of Thai women in the labor market has improved a lot in comparison to the past as a result of modernization. In 2011, Thailand ranked 69th out of 143 countries in the Gender Inequality Index. In labor economics, gender inequality is widely discussed in terms of concepts of sex segregation and employment discrimination. Thai government and non-governmental organizations have put forth many policies and programs to address gender inequalities in the last few decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender pay gap</span> Average difference in remuneration amounts between men and women

The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally found to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted versus adjusted pay gap. The latter typically takes into account differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience. In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average woman's annual salary is 79% of the average man's salary, compared to 95% for the adjusted average salary.

Paula S. England, is an American sociologist and Dean of Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research has focused on gender inequality in the labor market, the family, and sexuality. She has also studied class differences in contraception and nonmarital births.

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References

  1. 1 2 American Sociological Association biography Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  2. Reskin, Barbara; Padavic, Irene (2002). Women and men at work. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. ISBN   978-0-7619-8710-9.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Reskin, Barbara F. (1994), "Labor market as queues: a structural approach to changing occupational sex composition", in Grusky, David B. (ed.), Social stratification: class, race, and gender in sociological perspective, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, pp. 718–733, ISBN   978-0-8133-1065-7.