Perrone, K., Wright, S., & Jackson, Z. (n.d.). Traditional and Nontraditional Gender Roles and Work--Family Interface for Men and Women. Journal of Career Development, 8-24.

In this article, researchers examine traditional and nontraditional gender roles and work—family interface for men and women. Recent empirical literature is reviewed and implications for career counselors are discussed. They discuss changing gender roles in career, marriage, and parenting and provide strategies for helping clients to cope with work—family role strain and to find a satisfying balance between life roles.

Questions to Consider:

1)  According to the results of this research study the number of dual-employment parents is on the   rise.   How might the three sociological perspectives analyze this trend?

 

2)  What can an individual, hoping to become a career counselor, learn from the results of  this study? How can the results of this study help counselors understand the many roles men and women play in our society today?

 

King, E., Botsford, W., Hebl, M., Kazama, S., Dawson, J., & Perkins, A. (n.d.). Benevolent Sexism at Work: Gender Differences in the Distribution of Challenging Developmental Experiences. Journal of Management, 1835-1866.

In a sample of managers in the energy industry, men and women reported participating in a similar number of developmental experiences (with comparable levels of support), but men rated these experiences as more challenging and received more negative feedback than did women. Similarly, a sample of female managers in the health care industry reported comparable amounts, but less challenging types, of developmental experiences than their male counterparts’. The results of three complementary experiments suggest that benevolent sexism is negatively related to men’s assignment of challenging experiences to female targets but that men and women were equally likely to express interest in challenging experiences.

Questions to Consider:

1)What can be done, in your opinion, to combat sexism that still exists in some companies?

 

2)  What questions for further research studies do you have after reading the results of these  studies?

 

Cralley, E. (n.d.). Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 300-314.

Two studies investigated whether modern sexism predicts men’s use of gender-biased terms for women. When established norms suggest a preference for neutral terms (e.g., woman, female), men lower in sexism should avoid potentially biased terms (e.g., lady, girl). Adhering to such an established norm, however, may require conscious effort. In Study 1, men lower in modern sexism used fewer gender-biased terms in a written format than did men higher in modern sexism. Study 2 replicated this result using an oral format but only when men were not cognitively busy with another task.

Questions to Consider:

1)What is the relationship between language and the formation of stereotypes?

 

2)Which sociological perspective would focus on the meaning of certain words and how these words impact how women and men are perceived in our society?

 

3)What can researchers learn from the results of this study?

 

Pomerantz, S., Raby, R., & Stefanik, A. (2013). Girls Run the World?: Caught between Sexism and Postfeminism in School. Gender & Society, 185-207.

How do teenage girls articulate sexism in an era where gender injustice has been constructed as a thing of the past? Our article addresses this question by qualitatively exploring Canadian girls’ experiences of being caught between the postfeminist belief that gender equality has been achieved and the realities of their lives in school, which include incidents of sexism in their classrooms, their social worlds, and their projected futures. This analysis takes place in relation to two celebratory postfeminist narratives: Girl Power, where girls are told they can do, be, and have anything they want, and Successful Girls, where girls are told they are surpassing boys in schools and workplaces.

Questions to Consider:

1)What do the authors mean by a “postfeminist view”?  How would a symbolic interactionist analyze how girls might develop this view?

 

2)Why, in your opinion, were some of the girls in the study unlikely to see their experiences as normal rather than sexist in nature?

 

3)What questions for further research studies do you have after reading the results of these interviews?