Whiteness as Stigma: Essentialist Identity Work by Mixed-Race Women

Historically, in both the social sciences and the general public, racial mixing has been stigmatized. This stigmatization was fueled by whites' desire to protect their racial privileges as well as the belief that hybridization between “pure” and superior white racial stocks and inferior non-white stocks produces an inferior being. While this view has been challenged within the social sciences, the general public's sentiment toward racial mixing remains consistently negative. The low interracial marriage rate, particularly among blacks and whites, points to the lack of popular acceptance of racial mixing. This article reveals an unusual and creative reversal of the racial mixing problem by historically stigmatized mixed-race women. The women in this study reject dominant patterns of stigma by reassigning stigma to their European ancestry. Given this reversal, women articulate and embrace non-white identities. This article explains the reversal of the racial mixing problem as well as the identity work of women as they rearticulate the meaning of race and racial belonging within dominant racial logic. The identification of macro constraints and the illustration of individual agency in the negotiation of identity extends the symbolic interactionist perspective on identity formation.     

Gender Role Identity and Stress in African American Women

Abstract

Womanism is a feminist perspective that has recently been appropriated for social work practice with African American women (Littlefleld, in press). It emphasizes the centrality of gender role in African American women's psychosocial adaptation, and asserts that the archetypal gender role for this group incorporates both nurturing and economic providing functions. This gender role fluidity has been characterized both as a source of strength (Billingsley, 1992; Hill, 1999) and strain (Lewis, 1989; McAdoo, 1985). The present study empirically investigated the relationship between gender role identity and stress in African American women to clarify its adaptive value. The Bem Sex Role Inventory was used to classify subjects into groups based on the degree to which they identified themselves with stereotypically masculine and feminine traits. Women who endorsed high levels of both masculine and feminine traits experienced lower levels of stress than did other women. The findings indicate that gender role identity is a factor in African American women's psychosocial well-being, and that mainstream gender role norms may not be adequate for analyzing the experiences of this group.     

Women, Language and Identity

This paper explores the ways in which women and men use language to mark gender boundaries, and to convey femininity and masculinity in the construction of a gendered identity. The first section of the paper examines evidence that language serves as a gender identity marker not only in the particular phonological variants used more by women than by men, but also in the wider stylistic range evident in women's discourse in some communities. The gender distribution and social meanings associated with particular pragmatic particles and interactional devices provide another indication of the ways in which women and men construct and express femininity and masculinity in interaction. The final section analyses the construction of stereotypical gender identities through conversational interaction, firstly by means of a narrative and secondly through the carefully crafted dialogue of an advertisement. The paper demonstrates the complementary nature of macro-level quantitative studies and qualitative ethnographic analysis in gender research.     

Silence, Its Use and Abuse: A View from Self Psychology

This article seeks to explore the use and abuse of silence in the therapeutic process. A review of its many meanings will be illustrated by brief excerpts from case material, demonstrating that silence is a fertile mode in which the self may be enriched and strengthened. Silence can be understood as the source of quiet growth in which distortions of the self can be reflected upon and then transformed through greater recognition of opportunity and choice. It is the intention of this note to stimulate discussion of silence from the view point of other theories, as well.     

Women,Work and Elder Care:

First introduced in 1984, Family and Medical Leave (FML) legislation would provide some measure of job protection to those who interrupt their employment to provide care for ill or dependent relatives. The original proposals were for 'parental' leave but, as bills and laws evolved, leave to care for an elderly relative began to be included. Opponents of FML object to further regulation of employee benefits and, partly because the groups promoting FML have not found a common and persuasive voice, have been relatively successful in preventing passage or in watering down FML's impact. Comparison of the messages to constituents of two advocacy groups for the elderly, the Older Women's League and the American Association for Retired Persons, illustrates the contradictions and points to the need to come to terms with the conflicts inherent in the ideology of caring.     

Work,Bodies and Boundaries: Talking Sexual Harassment in the New Economy

This article examines sexual harassment in the context of the new economy and highlights the manner in which the changing nature of work — and in particular the acknowledged rise of sexualized ‘body work’ — troubles conventional understandings of what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace and the means to address it. Using data from a small‐scale qualitative study of service workers and professional employees, we explore the ways in which those definitions of sexual harassment now fail to match participants' accounts of their working lives. We examine sexual harassment in the context of the rise of service roles that require forms of increasingly sexualized ‘body work’ from employees, increased demands for workers to ‘self‐manage’, and new flexible modes of employment that blur the boundaries between being ‘on’ and ‘off’ the job. We conclude that these ‘new’ modes of work may provide the conditions for the revival of ‘old’ stories which limit the capacity of individuals to recognize and label behaviours as ‘sexual harassment’.     

Measuring Adoptive Identity: Validation of the Adoptive Identity Work Scale

Guided by Erikson's as well as Grotevant and colleagues’ identity theorizing, three studies were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of the Adoptive Identity Work Scale (AIWS), a self-report measure of the identity work contributing to one's adoptive identity. Adult adoptees were solicited in a series of surveys (study 1: N = 196; study 2: N = 119; study 3: N = 217) to complete existing measures of adoptive identity and well-being as well as the newly formed AIWS. The studies reported here provide concurrent, construct, and predictive validity for the AIWS, consisting of five items measuring reflective exploration and five items measuring preoccupation.     

Mutual Values: Self Psychology, Intersubjectivity, and Social Work

This article explores a representative sample of the values which self psychology, intersubjectivity, and social work have in common. The mutual values chosen for consideration are: (1). The inherent worth of the human being (2). The uniqueness of the individual (3). Beginning where the client is; and (4). The centrality of the relationship in the clinical setting. The focus will be on the theories and methodologies which have emerged from these values in self psychology and intersubjectivity and their utility for clinical social work. The discussion of each value includes a clinical illustration from the author's practice in order to aid in the elucidation of the concepts presented.     

Midwives,Marginality, and Public Identity Work

Because midwifery in the United States is an occupation at the margins of medicine, midwives must frequently negotiate competing identity claims. This article examines the public identity work of a group of midwives by focusing on two important tools they use to accomplish this work: boundary negotiation and impression management. Drawing on data from in‐depth interviews with twenty‐six licensed, nurse, and empirical midwives in the state of Florida, this article illustrates the ways in which midwives frame their identities in relation to history and media representations and manage public identities through boundary negotiation and impression management. I argue that the marginality of this occupation lends itself to competing categories of identity that midwives must negotiate. These categories become salient when midwives confront historical and media representations of childbirth and midwifery as well as the perceptions of the general public, consumers, lawmakers, and medical professionals.     

Engineering Identity: Gender and Professional Identity Negotiation among Women Engineers

This article considers how women in a gendered profession, engineering, construct their professional identity in response to workplace interpersonal interactions that marginalize it. Using data from interviews with women engineers, it also explores how these interactions influence the engineers' sense of self and belonging in engineering. The interpersonal interactions place professional identity on the periphery and can overly validate gender identity. I discuss two types of identity construction strategies employed by the participants in response to these marginalizing interactions: impression management tactics and coping strategies. Although the data demonstrate that participants may be left feeling devalued or ambivalent towards their identity or fit in engineering, some interactions are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. This article also reflects on how the engineers' actions may, in fact, represent forces for change in the gendered culture of engineering.     

Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past 10 years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as conventional wisdom. First, research exploiting methods such as latent class growth analyses reveal that, for most couples, marital satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Second, contrary to predictions of behavioral models of marriage, negative communication between spouses can be difficult to change, does not necessarily lead to more satisfying relationships when it is changed, and does not always predict distress in the first place. Third, dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower income couples, suggesting that influential models of marriage may not generalize to couples living in diverse environments. Thus, the accumulated research of the past 10 years indicates that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complex than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.     

Confronting “Victim” Discourses: The Identity Work of Battered Women

In this article I explore how battered women both draw from and reject victim discourses in their processes of self‐construction and self‐representation. Data gathered from semistructured interviews with forty women who experienced violence from an intimate partner in a heterosexual relationship demonstrate that available “victim” discourses are both enabling and constraining. Four common representations of a victim emerged as most influential to women's identity work: as someone who suffers a harm she cannot control; as someone who deserves sympathy and/or requires some type of action be taken against the victimizer; as someone who is culpable for her experiences; and as someone who is powerless and weak. “Victim empowerment” and “survivor” discourses also played a role in how women understood and made sense of their experiences. In their attempts to construct identities for themselves, battered women become caught between notions of victimization, agency, and responsibility.     

Policy and the Pregnant Body at Work: Strategies of Secrecy,Silence and Supra‐performance

This article considers how women manage their pregnant bodies at work. Through netnographic research and drawing upon feminist discussions of the leaky pregnant body, I examine the experiences of US and UK women who correspond on interactive websites or chat rooms. Drawing upon ‘expert advice’ and the experiences of employed pregnant women in this study, I suggest that the bodily manifestations of pregnancy are taboo in some workplaces. I note how these women did not appear to draw upon policy as a resource for dealing with negative reactions to pregnancy from colleagues and employers. Instead, they tended to adopt strategies of secrecy, silence and supra‐performance in order to try and blend in. In the context of these strategies, I demonstrate how women's attempts to manage and control their bodies are severely compromised during pregnancy, when the body may be leaky and unpredictable.     

Education and Occupations: Reexamining the Conventional Wisdom About Later First Births Among American Mothers

Using biannual Current Population Survey data, this paper reexamines the question of how education and occupations led to the postponement of first births among American mothers in the 1970s through 1990s. Analytical methods in earlier investigations predispose researchers to favor an investment model of education's effects, but an alternative method used in this analysis suggests that college attainment's major effect on age at first birth is primarily the result of years spent childless in college. Mothers-to-be in higher prestige occupations did delay motherhood longer than did those in other occupations. This study extends earlier research by examining whether or not conclusions drawn about all women (with and without children) apply to the majority of women—those who become mothers. The expansion of higher education, higher prestige occupations, and their impact on work and family decisions are discussed.     

Analysing Competence: Gender and Identity at Work

Competence approaches are among the techniques that claim to measure the behaviour, skills, knowledge and understanding crucial to effective managerial performance. It is claimed that competence approaches empower and develop managers while enabling them to meet organizational objectives. Since the bases for the techniques are avowedly scientific, they are said to provide organizations with a gender neutral form of assessment. In this paper we construct a theoretical framework in terms of which these claims can be analysed and assessed. Using this framework, we examine the competence approach as it has been implemented in six organizations in relation to the claim to objectivity.