EMPLOYEE AWARENESS OF FAMILY LEAVE BENEFITS: The Effects of Family, Work, and Gender

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was intended to help employees meet short-term family demands, such as caring for children and elderly parents, without losing their jobs. However, recent evidence suggests that few women and even fewer men employees avail themselves of family leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. This paper examines the organizational, worker status, and salience/need factors associated with knowledge of family leave benefits. We study employees covered by the FMLA using the 1996 panel of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to ascertain what work and family factors influence knowledge of leave benefits. Overall, 91 percent of employed FMLA-eligible women report they have access to unpaid family leave, compared to 72 percent of men. Logistic regression analyses demonstrate that work situations more than family situations affect knowledge of family leave benefits and that gender shapes the impact of some work and family factors on awareness. Furthermore, work and family situations do not explain away the considerable gender difference in knowledge of family leave.     

Gender and Clinical Pharmacy: The Career of an Occupational Ideology*

Cet article étudie le concept selon lequel, dans une profession en mutation, la pharmacie en l'occurrence, les femmes sont les principales personnes à transmettre les valeurs liées à la pharmacie clinique - une idéologic professionnelle prétendument instaurée afin de redonner sa place à la pharmacie dans la hiérarchie des professions. Si on constate la force des convictions des membres de la profession à l'endroit de la pharmacie clinique, on observe également que les femmes ne sont pas les premières à les dèfendre. Ni la socialisation des rapports entre les sexes ni une formation particulière en pharmacie n'ont rendu les femmes mieux disposées que les hommes à l'egard de la pharmacie clinique. Les divergences - et elles sont très importantes - au sein de la profession au sujet de la pharmacie clinique se font sentir selon les différents cadres de travail des pharmaciens et selon l'année d'obtention de leur permis d'exercice. Ce sont plus les lieux de travail que les rapports entre les sexes qui permettent de prévoir les attitudes à l'égard de la pharmacie clinique. Il semble done peu probable que le fait d'équilibrer le nombre d'hommes et de femmes dans un milieu de travail soit de nature à le faire évoluer. Quelle que soit, au départ, la conception des pharmaciennes à l'égard de leur profession, elle influe peu sur leur rapport à la pharmacie clinique. This paper explores the idea that in a changing profession, women are the principal value carriers of clinical pharmacy—an occupational ideology professedly developed to restore pharmacy's precarious standing in the occupational hierarchy. While the investigation uncovers considerable evidence for the vitality of clinical pharmacy beliefs among practitioners, women were not at the forefront of this trend. Neither general gender socialization nor specific pharmacy training has rendered females more sympathetic to clinical pharmacy than males. Differences within the pharmacy community regarding clinical pharmacy—and they are quite considerable— emanate from the varied work settings that practitioners occupy and their year of licensure. Attitudes to clinical pharmacy are better predicted by workplace than by gender. On the basis of our findings, it seems unlikely that balancing the number of men and women in an occupation or work organization will, in and of itself, change it. Whatever distinctive prior orientations to work that female pharmacists may hold, they have little impact upon how they think about clinical pharmacy.     

Employee Work Attitudes: The Subtle Influence of Gender

Using the construct of job satisfaction, this study examined work attitudes of 286 females and 416 males employed in 27 female-owned and 29 male-owned small businesses in three industries: construction, manufacturing, and distribution. Job satisfaction scores (dependent variables) were analyzed with regard to the interaction of owner employee gender. Demographic and job-related variables were also considered. The gender-moderated results are discussed in terms of methodological implications for conducting research regarding work attitudes.     

The Influence of Gender Roles on Political Socialization:

This paper reports on an experimental study investigating the relationship between gender role stereotyping and political learning among Mexican-American children. In addition to the pre-test and post-test administered to the entire sample, 15 of the children were exposed to a treatment emphasizing a flexible definition of the female role. The children did stereotype behavior assigning some activities to men and others to women. Further, this stereotyping affected their attitudes toward female political participation. Comparison of pre-test and post-test suggests that the treatment had some effect on gender role attitudes, particularly concerning the female role. In addition, on several questions there appeared to be an interaction between gender and the experimental treatment, sugguesting possible differences between the political socialization of boys and girls.     

Rescaling Gender Relations: The Influence of European Directives on the German Gender Regime

During the 1960s–1990s, a gradual yet definite shift inthe organization of gender politics in the European Union (EU)and member states has become apparent. This shift began withthe implementation of the early gender directives of the 1970sand has since evolved to include a partial "rescaling" of policy-makingfrom national to transnational spaces and a gradual redefinitionof gender regimes and policies at the national level. As a result,gender policy cannot be viewed as either predominantly transnationalor national but arises through interaction of multiple and coexistingpolicy spaces. In this article, I use a multiscalar analysisto highlight this complex interaction. I draw on (West) Germanyas a specific case study to offer a historical analysis of theimplementation of the early European gender directives and themanner in which these developments have contributed to the redirectionof the German gender regime and the emergence of a new "hybridregime."     

Occupational Aspirations,Gender, and Educational Attainment

While in the past women had lower educational attainment than men, women in recent years have caught up to and passed men in educational attainment. Lower occupational aspirations for women compared to men contributed to lower educational attainment in the past. In this article, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to consider whether occupational aspirations still act to lower educational attainment for women compared to men or whether occupational aspirations are currently an advantage for young women. We find that occupational aspirations are an advantage for women for high school graduation but not for college graduation.     

Paternal Involvement with Children: The Influence of Gender Ideologies

Although prior social science research has established the ability of gender ideologies to influence the domestic division of labor, it has neglected to disentangle their potentially unique influence on paternal involvement with children. Past research examining the influence of gender ideology on parenting behaviors does not acknowledge potential differences that may result from accounting for each parent's gender ideology. Using both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 1,088), I assess the effect of both mother's and father's gender ideology on two measures of paternal involvement. Whereas egalitarian fathers demonstrate greater involvement than traditional fathers, mother's gender ideology failed to predict paternal involvement. Egalitarian mothers do not appear to negotiate greater father involvement successfully.     

The Skinny on Success: Body Mass, Gender and Occupational Standing Across the Life Course

Several studies have analyzed the impact of obesity on occupational standing. This study extends previous research by estimating the influence of body mass on occupational attainment over three decades of the career using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. In a series of covariance structure analyses, we considered three mechanisms that may alter the career trajectories of heavy individuals: (1. employment-based discrimination, (2. educational attainment, and (3. marriage market processes. Unlike previous studies, we found limited evidence that employment-based discrimination impaired the career trajectories of either men or women. Instead, we found that heavy women received less post-secondary schooling than their thinner peers, which in turn adversely affected their occupational standing at each point in their careers.     

Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: A Study of Women and Work in Fishing Communities

Based on data from in-depth interviews and field work in rural fishing communities, this article examines how the process of gender construction works to keep women from being fisher[men]. A number of common explanations for occupational sex segregation are considered to explain why women do not fish, including biology, gender role socialization, cultural traditions, and discrimination. The article then presents a complementary explanation, the social construction of gender. In fishing communities, where man is defined as a fisherman, women maintain boundaries between themselves and fishing as they construct gender. They define their work as not fishing, even when they work on fishing boats. The consequence is that women do not aim to work or succeed in one of the few and most lucrative industries in a rural community. When examined from this perspective, occupational segregation appears to be more difficult to eliminate than prevailing explanations suggest.     

The Gender Gap in Physical and Life Sciences: Masculinity,Femininity, Occupational Values,and Chilly Climate

Abstract

Although women have advanced considerably in science achievement, course taking, degrees earned, and professional positions held over the past four decades, most of this growth in female representation within the sciences has been confined to the life sciences while women's representation in physical, engineering, and mathematical (PEM) sciences remains recalcitrantly low. Many studies of this problem emphasize that life sciences are more compatible with stereotypical feminine personality characteristics, while PEM sciences are associated with traits understood to be culturally masculine. Operationalizing masculine and feminine personality traits with the Bem Sex Role Inventory, we test a series of hypotheses addressing the extent to which masculine and feminine personality characteristics explain why female STEM majors are less likely to be enrolled in a PEM science major compared to a life science major with a sample of 425 STEM majors drawn from a large, public, STEM-oriented university.     

Parent‐Adolescent Involvement: The Relative Influence of Parent Gender and Residence

The 1995 wave of the Add Health study is used to investigate the relative influence of parent gender and residence on patterns of parental involvement with adolescents. Adolescent reports (N =17,330) of shared activities, shared communication, and relationship quality with both biological parents are utilized. A multidimensional scaling analysis reveals that parent gender explains most of the variance in parent‐adolescent involvement, with residential status playing a secondary yet a fundamental role in accounting for these patterns. Resident mothers who do not live with adolescents’ biological fathers engage in the broadest range of activities with their children. Unpartnered resident fathers display patterns of parenting that are as similar to mothers as they are to other fathers.     

Gender,Work, and Intimate Violence: Men's Occupational Violence Spillover and Compensatory Violence

Researchers have rarely studied the effects of occupations on intimate violence, only occasionally distinguishing between blue‐collar and white‐collar work, and generally finding higher rates of reported abuse in the former group. This research incorporates ideas from feminist, work‐family, and power or resource theories to examine the potential effects of occupations on men's violence toward wives and cohabiting female partners. Data from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) were analyzed using logistic regression techniques. Hypotheses related to occupational spillover and compensation were tested with results suggesting that men in physically violent, female‐dominated, professional specialty, and dangerous occupations are more likely to use violence against female partners, net of other commonly hypothesized predictors. The findings suggest that more detailed occupational data should be collected in future intimate violence research.     

高校中同伴影响力的性别差异

对高校中同伴影响力的现状进行调查的结果显示出复合性。使用来自中国大学的数据,我们没有发现证据证明同伴之间有较强的影响力。使用同样的数据我们发现女性会受同伴的影响,而男性不会,这一研究结果与社会心理学中女性更容易受同伴的影响的理论是一致的。     

Division of Household Labor and Social Judgments in Israel: The Influence of Gender and Education

The study investigated how men and women with high and low levels of education perceive male and female targets who participate or do not participate in household chores. It was found that individuals liked both men and women who participated in the household chores more and wanted to engage in activities with them more than with the low‐participating targets. The participating man was perceived as more popular than the low‐participating man and was perceived as more feminine but not less masculine. In addition, although participants with both high and low levels of education preferred the participating man, the more educated participants preferred him more, attributed more masculinity to him, and expressed willingness to befriend him and engage in activities with him more than those with a lower level of education. It seems, then, that whereas in the 1990s both highly and less educated individuals perceive a male target who participates in household chores more favorably, this preference is more pronounced among the more educated individuals.