Sociological Theories of Low-Wage Work

This review addresses the use of sociological theories in the examination of low-wage work. Due to the vast volume of literature on this topic, only theories that help to explain the dynamics of low-wage work are described, along with the differences and controversies surrounding these theories. These theories are divided into four topic areas related to theories of work, racial and gender theories, immigration theories, and intersectionality theory. The theories of work include different models of wage determination, namely, functional, conflict, and structural models. The review concludes with a conceptual map that illustrates how these theories can inform and guide practice.     

Psychological Theories and Low-Wage Work

Low-wage work is a modern social problem, affecting millions of individuals, families, and communities. The field of psychology is a critical starting point for examining the relationship between low-wage work and mental health. This literature review aims to identify psychological theories related to low-wage work. Psychological theories related to work and employment are explored, as is emerging research on the necessity of a paradigm shift from the dichotomous categories of “employed” and “unemployed,” which allows for the conceptualization of employment as a continuum. This research focuses on underemployment and may contribute to the development of theory directly relating to low-wage work.     

Low-Wage Work: A Synthesis of Major Social Science Concepts

Low-wage work is a defining feature in the lives of low-income families, who are challenged to achieve self-sufficiency through employment. This article offers a synthesis of theoretical concepts at the micro (individual), mezzo (group and community) and macro (social and political) levels to aid in understanding the human behavior and social environmental dimensions of low-wage work. The article concludes with a case vignette designed to illustrate the role that theory can play in informing social work practice.     

Political Theories of Low-Wage Work

This article explores the concept of low-wage work in America as presented in the political science literature with the goal of developing a theoretical framework. Based on traditional political theory, contemporary political perspectives, and public opinion, a modern political conceptualization of low-wage work represents a balance between policies that promote work as virtuous and those that present it as a form of social control. This balance is informed by historical notions of work, contemporary issues of racism, the economic realities of single mothers, and public perceptions of welfare and income support measures, such as the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.     

Theories of Low-Wage Work: Findings from an Analysis of Textbooks on Human Behavior and the Social Environment

This is a review of 14 of the most commonly used textbooks on human behavior and the social environment as regards their content relating to low-wage work. The textbooks are divided into three categories, analyzed, and compared. Particular attention is paid to theoretical perspectives on low-wage work. In most of the textbooks, the content on low-wage work is scattered, with few textbooks providing theoretical grounding on this issue. However, several of the textbooks did provide theoretical lenses that could be applied to low-wage work. The review concludes with a discussion of how theoretical views could be incorporated better into each of the three categories.     

Economic Theories of Low-Wage Work

This article examines economic theories of the low-wage labor market to increase understanding of economic inequality and poverty in the United States, particularly related to the labor market. On the one hand, neoclassical, labor monopsony, and Harris-Todaro models explain how minimum wage policies are related to supply and demand of labor, human capital, employment, and unemployment. On the other hand, the efficiency wage model, the dual labor market theory, and technology development and globalization account for the causes of the wage differentials. This article includes a conceptual map that illustrates the interrelationships between these economic theories of low-wage work.     

Theories of Aging and Social Work Practice with Sensitivity to Diversity

Abstract

Aging experiences are multidimensional, and social workers need to know theoretical perspectives on aging which are useful in understanding the diversity of experiences of individuals in later adulthood. This article describes and discusses four theoretical perspectives on aging which are not usually presented in Human Behavior and the Social Environment textbooks but which contribute to understanding of diversity in later adulthood: Atchley's continuity theory; Fisher's age-independent periods; Stoller and Gibson's perspectives on gender, race and ethnicity, class, and the life course; and Friend's theory of successful aging of gay men and lesbian women.     

Revanchist Masculinity: Gender Attitudes in Sex Work Management

Pimps, or male managers of female sex workers, are commonly represented in popular culture as hypermasculine and as a ubiquitous part of sex work. However, there is little empirical scholarship on pimps or the construction of their masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this article demonstrates how pimps produce a “revanchist masculinity” that seeks to reclaim power from women and establish status over other men. Pimps are suspicious of sex workers’ motives and deny them decision‐making power and profit sharing—processes that highlight how work practices can structure gender identity construction.     

Intersections on the Class Escalator: Gender,Race, and Occupational Segregation in Paid Care Work

As U.S. manufacturing and production industries have declined, the growth of the care sector has increasingly become an important source of jobs for workers without a college degree. Often requiring some form of postsecondary credentialing, many care occupations can provide better wages, job stability, and possible upward mobility for less educated workers. However, employment patterns in paid care work are both gendered and racialized: women and workers of color are overrepresented in care occupations with fewer entry barriers, benefits, and lower pay. Although these patterns are well documented, the mechanisms producing them are less well understood. Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), this study evaluates the explanatory power of neoclassical economic, status attainment, and social closure theories of occupational segregation for black women’s and men’s greater hazard or “risk” of entering care occupations, relative to white workers. Net of individual and closure mechanisms, significant residual effects suggest labor market discrimination remains a primary explanation for the over-representation of black workers in less credentialed care jobs with fewer benefits.     

Do Traditional Fathers Always Work More? Gender Ideology,Race, and Parenthood

Research has shown that men who express traditional gender ideologies spend more time in paid work when they become fathers, whereas men who express egalitarian ideologies spend less time in paid work. This study extends previous research by examining racial differences among men. We drew on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 23,261) and found that fatherhood was associated with an increase in married White men's time spent in paid work. The increase was more than twice as strong for traditional White men than for egalitarian White men. In contrast, both egalitarian and traditional African American men did not work more when they became fathers. These findings suggest that African American men may express gender traditionalism but adopt more egalitarian work–family arrangements. This study also presents evidence of an interaction among race, class, and gender ideology that shapes fathers' time spent in paid work.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

Gender Differences in Restricting Work Efforts Because of Family Responsibilities

In egalitarian families, we might expect that men and women similarly prioritize work and family obligations. Yet, prior research examining gender differences in work‐family priorities often use measures that imperfectly reflect those priorities. Drawing two samples of full‐time married workers from the 1992 National Study of the Changing Workforce, this article analyzed the determinants of placing restrictions on work efforts (reducing work hours, refusing to travel, etc.) for the sake of family life. Results showed that women imposed more job trade‐offs in response to husband’s work efforts, whereas men’s work restrictions were largely unresponsive to familial characteristics. In conclusion, prioritizing work and family obligations is governed more by gender traditionalism than by egalitarianism.     

In the Face of Conflict: Work‐Life Conflict and Desired Work Hour Adjustments

This study helps integrate the work‐life and work hours literatures by examining competing predictions about the relationship between work‐life conflict and the desire for paid work. Using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N =2,178), I find that work‐life conflict makes women want to decrease the number of hours they work whether the conflict originates at home or at work. Men only want to decrease their hours when work‐life conflict originates at work, and some men facing frequent conflict actually want to increase their hours. I also find that having children does not increase the likelihood of wanting to work fewer hours but having a higher income does.     

The founding of the Gender,Work and Organization journal: Reflections 25 years on

This article reflects on the founding of the journal some twenty five years ago. It identifies five major themes related to gender equality that were rapidly developing at the time of the launch and demonstrates how the first two volumes of the journal contributed to these developing debates. It concludes by reflecting how recent events such as the #metoo movement have had the beneficial effect of quelling any ideas that gender equality issues have been solved and argues that the GWO journal is well placed to build on this renewed interest to take these debates forward into the next twenty five years.     

Anthropological Takes on (Im)Mobility

In this introduction, we outline the general conceptual framework that ties the various contributions to this special issue together. We argue for the importance of anthropology to “take on” mobility and discuss the advantages of the ethnographic approach in doing so. What is the analytical purchase of mobility as one of the root metaphors in contemporary anthropological theorizing? What are the (dis)advantages of looking at the current human condition through the lens of mobility? There is a great risk that the fast-growing field of mobility studies neglects different interpretations of what is going on, or that only patterns that fit the mobilities paradigm will be considered, or that only extremes of (hyper)mobility or (im)mobility will be given attention. The ethnographic sensibilities of fieldworkers who learn about mobility while studying other processes and issues, and who can situate movement in the multiple contexts between which people move, can both extend the utility of the mobilities approach, and insist on attention to other dynamics that might not be considered if the focus is first and last on (im)mobility as such. In this special issue, we do not want to discuss human mobility as a brute fact but rather analyze how mobilities, as sociocultural constructs, are experienced and imagined.     

Masculinity and Class in the Context of Dirty Work

Through an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ (refuse collection and street cleaning), this article explores how masculinity and class intersect — how, in a mutually constitutive sense, they produce attitudes and practices, strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by shifting relations of privilege and power. We find resistance to class subordination through adherence to traditional forms of masculinity and through esteem‐enhancing social comparison (e.g., with women; with migrant workers). Men also mobilized powerful nostalgic themes around the loss of traditional jobs as well as trade union power. We argue that displays of masculine resilience in the face of devaluation are less indicative of a culture of masculine dominance but more an expression of vulnerability and social dislocation, serving both as a source of resistance whilst simultaneously reinforcing anchors of social disadvantage that characterize forms of dirty work. We suggest that combining social comparison with intersectionality can potentially highlight how categories of difference are strategically deployed in response to varied and unequally valued social positionalities.     

Gender Logic and (Un)doing Gender at Work

Doing gender is a popular concept in studies on work and organizations that is used to show how gender is constructed through interactions in organizations. Recently researchers have also started looking at how gender can be undone. This article elucidates two understandings of doing gender based on ethnomethodological and poststructural and discursive approaches and shows how these theoretical approaches lead to diverging ways of undoing gender. These two approaches are critically explored by drawing on qualitative research with information communication technology workers. The article thereby examines how gender might be undone within both ethnomethodological and poststructural and discursive traditions. It makes a contribution towards understanding (un)doing gender approaches at work by highlighting the implications for research on gender, work and organization.     

Diversity Regimes in Worker Cooperatives: Workplace Inequality under Conditions of Worker Control

Two major shifts in contemporary work organizations—“employee participation” and “diversity management”—have typically been studied in isolation from one another. Building on theoretical work by Acker (2006a,b), we ask how the interaction of these two constructs has affected the pursuit of workplace democracy at two worker cooperatives in Northern California. Using qualitative methods, we find that distinct “diversity regimes” have emerged at these establishments, substantially affecting the configurations of inequality that evolved. We distinguish two types of diversity regimes—“utilitarian” and “communitarian”—which operate either to obscure the workings of inequality or to foster attention to their presence. Our results suggest that how sociodemographic differences are managed has material consequences for the development of egalitarian structures at work.     

Work and Family Role Strain Among University Employees

This paper analyzes the determinants of work and family role strain among university employees with data from a survey of faculty and staff of a public university in the Western U.S. The results indicate that difficulties caring for children and elderly dependents are the primary causes of work and family role strain in the family domain, while dissatisfaction with resources and perceived unfair criticism are primary in the work domain. The predictors of work and family role strain are similar for faculty and staff, and for men and women, with one exception: Having a supportive spouse or partner reduces work and family role strain much more for women than it does for men. Implications for university personnel policy are discussed.     

Doing Gender Well and Differently in Dirty Work: The Case of Exotic Dancing

This article explores how a group of exotic dancers do gender and manage the stigma associated with their work and identities. We draw upon stigma management strategies from the dirty work literature and illuminate the doing of gender in these strategies. We also contribute to the debate that gender can be done well and differently through simultaneous, multiple enactments of femininity and masculinity. We consider the experiences of 21 exotic dancers working in a chain of UK exotic dancing clubs and conclude that in order to be good at their job, exotic dancers are expected to do gender well, that is, perform exaggerated expressions of femininity. However, we also theorize that for some dirty workers, specifically exotic dancers as sex workers, doing gender well will not be enough to reposition bad girls (bad, dirty work) into good girls (good, clean work). Finally, we propose that doing gender well will have different consequences in different types of work, thereby extending our findings to other dirty work occupations and organizations in general.