DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

Nancy Mariani

Hi, my name is Nancy Mariani but my friends and family call me Nikki. I’m from Brooklyn NY, born and raised.

I am a daughter, a sister, a cousin, a friend, a hard worker and most importantly I am Forensic Psychology Major at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Right now I am in the process of getting my Bachelor’s Degree. After I get my Bachelor’s Degree I intend to pursue my Master’s Degree and then off to get my PHD. My dream is to work with missing and exploited children. 

 

Throughout the course of my Gender Studies class I’ve come across so many social, justice, and cultural issues. The most important social/cultural justice issue to me is Feminism.  Even though women are in a better light than they were 50 years ago, this issue is still something that needs to be addressed. Feminism is such an issue because it happens all over and all the time, sometimes right in front of our faces and is so subtle that we don’t even realize it.

 

Besides Feminism another issues that is important to me is Hegemonic Masculinity. Hegemonic Masculinity is a sociology concept that guarantee the dominant social position for men and the subordinate social position for women. This issue is important to me because I feel that it is linked together with Feminism and in my opinion is the cause of Feminism.

“It’s important for women to work. They need to keep their independence. To keep earning and being challenged.”- Tamara Mellon.

 

There was a time when women couldn’t read, write or be allowed to work; the only “jobs” women had were to take care of the house and their children. After the women’s movement, women were offered more opportunities, but still not considered equal to men. In “The Preference to Work for a Man or a Woman: A Matter of Sex and Gender? Gary Powell and Anthony Butterfield show us how people in today’s society still prefer to work for a man boss rather than a woman boss. In the article, Powell and Butterfield surveyed 257 students varying from undergraduate business students who were expected to enter the labor market upon graduation and did not have a full time job, to part time MBA students who worked full time jobs; both groups varied in ethnicities.

Powell and Butterfield found that it was unanimous that people preferred to work for a male boss rather than a female boss, in each survey that was conducted, 30% and higher of the participants preferred to work for a male boss and under 20% of the participants preferred to work for a female boss. Women have just the same power and the same educational opportunities as men but men have more power/advantage to move up in the work place than women.

 

There are many different theories as to why people have a specific preference for a male or female boss, those theories are gender identity or self-construal’s “which is a component of individuals’ gender belief systems, components of gender belief systems include gender stereotypes, or beliefs about the traits that are characteristic of member of each sex (Kiet et al., 2008) and gender roles or beliefs about the behaviors that are appropriate for members of each sex. (Eagly 1987 and Eagly et al., 200).” Then there is sex typed or non-sex typed individuals: sex typed individuals are “motivated to keep his or her behavior consistent with an internalized sex-role standard.

Sex typed individuals have strong gender belief systems and have internalized sex role standards; to them each job fits a specific gender. Non-sex typed individuals are found to be “more flexible in their responses to situations than sex typed individuals and may have a weak gender belief system associated with the leader role that makes them relatively inattentive to the cue of leader sex and flexible in their leader preferences.” (Powell and Butterfield 2015 p.4),

 

Social identity theory also accounts for people having a preference of boss they would rather work for. Social Identity theory is when “individuals seek to achieve and maintain a positive self-identity by classifying themselves and others into social categories and then making favorable comparisons between members of their own group" ( Williams and O’Reilly, 1998) As Powell and Butterfield argue, “individuals may prefer to work for a boss who is similar to themselves in a demographic characteristic such as sex because they identify more with a boss who is from the same demographic group as themselves" (p.5.)/

 

I am a firm believer that women can do anything a man can and I don’t think that it’s right that women are discriminated in the work place. I don’t think it’s right that people should not want to work for a woman because she is a woman. If she is in that position she is clearly qualified for the job. I feel that men cannot work under the authority of a woman because of their egos and they see women as less because of what society has allowed for women.  When people are sexist and believe that women are inferior, it shapes their identity and how they perceive women.

 

 

 

 

Powell, Gary N. and D. Anthony Butterfield. "The Preference to Work for a Man or a Woman: A Matter of Sex and Gender". Journal of Vacational Behavior 86 (20150: 28-37. Web.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.