« Le plafond de verre dans tous ses éclats ». La féminisation des professions supérieures au xx siècle

The metaphor of the glass ceiling helps one to focus on the often invisible barriers qualified women have to deal with, in order to access to the highest professional positions. This article presents the set of contributions, which clarifies the evolution of this phenomenon in various professions and in various countries. It gives one a more dynamic and less linear view on the top job feminization throughout the 20th century.     

Destins professionnels des femmes ingénieures. Des retournements inattendus

In the late 1970s, a major change in techniques and a modification of the job structure opened the way for women to become engineers in the computer sciences. At the time, working conditions and policies for managing careers allowed them to benefit from ascending mobility, while still investing in family life. Given its strong growth, information technology soon became the main branch of the French economy with openings for women engineers. The downturn in employment during the 1990s and its management through “psychology-based” training arrangements restored the sexual division of labor, as women were forced out of “noble” positions in engineering and design or even out of the branch itself. These two recent trends — a feminization and then “defeminization” of reputedly “masculine” jobs — are analyzed.     

Les apories de la solidarité familiale Contribution à la sociologie des configurations de justice entre les familles et l’État, dans le cas français

Despite its many meanings, “solidarity” has once again become current in French to describe macro as well as microsocial relations. Social relations in and outside the family have not always been understood as instances of solidarity. But is this solidarity the same as the one established by the welfare state? Forms of family solidarity that have risen in esteem over the past two decades are “deconstructed”. The conditions for family solidarity are examined; and conceptual paradoxes, described. This approach suggests that family solidarity, as this concept is normally used, mixes together several systems of justice that should be clearly distinguished, especially if we want to put this phrase to a judicious social use.     

Les politiques d'emploi et la transformation des normes : une comparaison européenne

Given the central orientation of the European employment strategy — adapt unemployment compensation systems so as to broaden access to jobs — the effects of policies in this field are examined by focusing on three axes: the impact on unemployment; the action on employment standards, and trends in the social regulation underlying these policies. A comparative view reveals how much national systems have been able to interpret EU objectives in their own way. This does not invalidate the pertinence of a European level of regulation,but it does expose the conditions for clarifying standards for public actions and leading actors to become involved in EU institutions, a source of legitimacy still to be constructed. This comparison of six national cases (Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom) sheds light on the importance of the social compromises that set the framework for job polices. The quality of occupational transitions is related to the ability of actors to jointly regulate employment policy and labor market standards. — Special issue: New patterns of institutions.     

Brèves réflexions sur la reconnaissance d'un « droit à la différence alimentaire » dans le commerce international

We repeatedly hear that the World Trade Organization's rules (modified in 1994 to reinforce the principle of worldwide free trade) tend to inevitably uniformize culture in food, among other things. Whether in the case of bovine growth hormones or genetically modified organisms, WTO rules will ultimately impose a single food model as a universal reference mark. In France, these ideas crop up in talk about malbouffe (bad eating) and calls for a return to democratic choices or for instituting a fundamental “right” to freely choose food habits. Even though such talk has sometimes confused the issues, it has shed light on how the food question is presented in international trade. Increasingly, the issue is to defend national or regional values, or even choices about the type of society. What place do WTO rules reserve for these values ? Under what conditions can such values justify exemptions from free-trade rules and, ultimately, the maintenance of a “right to food differences”? As the European Union is thoroughly changing food legislation in line with its own concepts - the precautionary principle, the plurality and independence of procedures for evaluating foodstuffs, the well-being of animals, etc. - the answers provided to the foregoing questions will be decisive. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Comment décrire ce qu’on ne voit pas ? Le devoir d’hésitation des juges de proximité au travail

How to describe work when much of it cannot be observed? This study of the activities of magistrates in a “natural” situation used an ethnological approach to observe cases from registration to hearings. Special difficulties cropped up during one phase: how to observe the deliberation when the judges, after having heard the parties during the contradictory phase of a penal procedure, adjourn and, among themselves, debate the case, weighing the pros and cons, before delivering a decision? The literature usually considers this “duty to hesitate” as an essential phase. But the judges in this survey sat alone on the court. Hesitations and turnarounds might occur; but doubts, inevitably an essential part of their work, arose during a phase of deliberation with oneself that left little empirically observable evidence and did not necessarily leave memories that these judges could easily bring up. How, then, to describe the “duty of hesitation” when it evaporates as we try to observe it in actual fact? This survey's strategy for responding to this situation is presented.     

La barrière et le plafond de vitrail. Analyser les carrières féminines dans les organisations religieuses

Research conducted mainly in the United States and France on how ordination works like a barrier to the feminization of religious staffs in various Christian and Jewish organizations has brought to light factors for distinguishing several cases: women either gain formal access to religious offices, or informally exercise religious duties, or are barred from religious offices. The second part of this article examines the level in these organizations where this barrier has been lifted, in particular the dissymmetries between men's and women's careers. Emphasis is laid on comparisons with other professions, since similar processes operate underneath the religious sphere's apparent differences, as reflected by the phrase “stained-glass ceiling”.     

Contenir le marché : la transition de la criée à la cotation électronique à la Bourse de Paris

Open outcry was fully replaced at the Paris Bourse by an automated trade execution system (CAC) in the late 1980s. In this article, we focus on the circumstances that made this transition possible. We analyze the diverse compromises (both social and technical) that the officials and engineers in charge of the innovation process constructed in order to stabilize the new market device. They had to carefully inscribe into the new system the interests of the actors at stake: bankers and stockbrokers. This case study contributes to economic sociology by drawing a relation between a technical device and the interests set around the “modernization” of a market.     

Quand la formation ne suffit pas : la préparation des étudiants à l’emploi en Angleterre,en France et en Suède

The proliferation of internships and the rise of professionalisation in higher education are, in France, frequently condemned as evidence of a quest for greater employability, driven by a skills-based approach. A comparative analysis of the methods used to prepare students for employment shows the degree to which the social mechanisms are homogeneous in England (employability) and in Sweden (bildning). In France, the transition from higher education to employment entails a process of pre-professionalisation. This is characterised by the dominant role of professional skills and their incorporation into the structure of initial education itself. Rather than the outcome of a process of commodification, this mechanism of pre-professionalisation is explained by the persistence of an idealized conception of “matching” that still profoundly marks the relations between education and employment in France.     

L’erreur est humaine mais non professionnelle : le bûcheron et l’accident

Conscious of exercising a dangerous trade, lumberjacks in France pay special attention to training new recruits. The ability to notice dangerous work situations is a way to shelter themselves from accusations of occupational misconduct. But exercising control does not suffice to protect from the risks inherent in this job. Lumberjacks are sometimes exposed to dangers that, regardless of their skills, are unforeseeable. Strongly marked by a sense of responsibility, their discourse about the risks related to their line of work forms a system of protection — a defensive trade ideology — that enables them to work while accepting conditions rife with uncertainty. This system and the environment where it takes shape are examined herein.     

Le temps du remue-ménage. Conditions d'emploi et de travail de femmes de chambre

It is now admitted that part-time work is a signal of inequality between the sexes, in both work and family. By focusing on cleavages among women, an analysis is made of how worktime and the company’s position as a subcontractor combine so as to produce inequality among wage-earners by assigning them heterogeneous statuses and thus forcing some of them to cope with precarious working, employment and living conditions. This study of the working and employment conditions of chamber maids in France focuses on those who work part or full-time in cleaning companies under contract with other firms. Inside this rather unskilled group of women, part-time work stresses the differences produced by subcontracting and worsens the inequality between stable, full-time employees and the women subcontracted at part-time who do the same job. These cleavages set off a strike among these part-time workers. Analyzing this labor dispute has shed light on the social relations running through the firm and on invisible issues in work and employment for these women with jobs in the shadows.     

La construction des inégalités hommes-femmes dans l'entreprise. Une analyse de cas dans la métallurgie

Under the 1983 and 2001 laws on equality at the workplace, firms in France must submit to the works council a report “comparing the situations of men and women”. This report lays the groundwork for collective bargaining and remedial actions. Since this comparison is a snapshot at a year's interval from the previous report, it does not shed light on differences in occupational trajectories and opportunities; and it even risks masking the inequality between men and women. In contrast with the legally required report, a longitudinal analysis of data collected during a case study in a large metal-working firm shows that inequality has a long life and might be thriving. The company abides by the law but in an effort, it is hypothesized, not so much to reduce inequality between the sexes as to avoid lawsuits and prosecution.     

Le travail enseignant en lycée professionnel et ses paradoxes

The paradoxes in the work of teaching in French vocational education stem from the “symbolic closure” of these secondary schools. The latter, given the mass enrollment in general secondary schools, receive students marked by their failure in middle school. This has created a distance with the students' social and family environment and with firms, even though the latter are supposed to be the destination where these students are bound. The work of these teachers is strongly marked by “subjective ordeals” related to their subordinate position in the school system, to a concern for keeping peace in the schools and to doubts about integrating students in the world of work. Might the work of these teachers not lead paradoxically to reasserting the “weight of the educational form” by including therein actions that are supposed to help students “mature” and develop an “appropriate school identity”? In this case, the purpose of this work is the academic socialization and rehabilitation of young people as much as their vocational training as such.     

Quand l'expertise se heurte au pouvoir souverain : la nation américaine face à la prolifération nucléaire, 1945-1953

After the Second World War, the applications of nuclear science raise a crucial threat to international security as far as their civil applications can be turned into military devices. Debates about nuclear proliferation offer a fruitful site to analyze the production of an expertise in bio-security. This paper analyzes in particular how experts have envisioned the role of nation-states and sovereign power in relation to policies aimed at ensuring the security of populations against the risk of nuclear annihilation. It explores what conceptions of sovereignty different experts constructed; what disciplines (political science, natural science, law) were mobilized in this debate; what strategies of institutionalization American experts followed; what publics were targeted by these experts (officials, think tanks, academic publics, media). Experts' conceptions of threats and insurances as well as the institutional paths they build to access policy circles explain which of the experts' policies diffused among policy circles. This approach, which focuses on the production of ideas rather than on the diffusion of administrative norms, complements neo-institutionalist studies of the internationalization of scientific modes of regulation.     

Bien-être et souffrance en élevage : conditions de vie au travail des personnes et des animaux

Starting in the 1980s in France, the scientific problems related to the well-being of animals reduced a complicated social critique of industrial systems for raising livestock to a matter of adapting animals to the living conditions imposed by these systems. This swept out of view questions about the working conditions for farmers and wage-earners. However people and animals tend to share living conditions in these systems, conditions that cause suffering. Given the intensified pace of work, as people tend an ever larger number of animals, and the mounting pressure on both people and livestock, affects are repressed, and communication breaks down. Relations to one's self and to others are altered, and the relation to death is “pathologized” at the workplace - thus providing further evidence of a failed relation to life and to others in animal husbandry. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Réguler ou qualifier ? Le cas des boues d'épuration urbaines

The history of urban sewage sludge, a matter of much confusion and mobilization, illustrates the impact of controversies about farming. It also casts light on the significance of new themes and on questions about the French “co-management” model. Above all, it helps us analyze the recourse to new controls that operate outside the sway of public authorities and complete official regulations - in the form either of procedures for labeling quality, which anchor the production and elimination of sludge in a locality, or of procedures that place sludge as an input in the food chain. Such procedures seek to restore confidence and strengthen the commitments made by various parties. They also provide evidence of how farming is changing. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Le temps de l'activité de la caissière : entre logique productive et logique de service

At first sight, the worktime put in by cashiers at checkout counters seems homogeneous, continuous and repetitive. An empirical study of hypermarket cashiers in France shows, on the contrary, that the time spent working is relatively discontinuous and diversified. It is similar to the time on the job put in by semiskilled workers in industry. What characterizes cashiers' work is their having to manage flows of both products and customers. Their worktime can, therefore, be understood as a compromise that comes out of balancing productivity with human relations, a compromise that sometimes causes conflict. By acquiring an “incorporated know-how”, cashiers manage to fill their assignment.     

L’astronomie française à la Belle Époque. Professionnalisation d’une activité scientifique

This article describes the way French astronomy developed in the Belle Époque (ca. 1880-1914). It identifies and accounts for the specificities of a scientific practice, which, up until now, has been misrepresented in the history of science. We show how the practice of astronomy was rationalized by rigid procedures and integrated by a scientific-bureaucratic regime of activity. Established in state observatories (for example, the Paris Observatory), this regime defined astronomy as a professional activity practiced by a group of “workers” of the sky. Finally, the analysis of the regime enables us to shed a light on the process by which the cognitive content of the discipline of astronomy, the institutional framework constituted by the state observatories, and the group of professional astronomers all interacted and were indeed co-constructed.     

Comment confronter mobilité « subjective » et mobilité « objective » ?

The methods for analyzing objective social mobility and subjective mobility as perceived by individuals are reviewed in the case of two surveys: Trois générations by the French Old-Age Fund (CNAV, Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Vieillesse) and Formation qualification professionnelle by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). These two surveys have formulated subjective mobility in quite different ways, but this observation also holds for objective mobility, which, for the purpose of comparison with respondents' subjective evaluations, is defined using specific procedures. A method is proposed for contrasting these two sorts of mobility based on classical mobility tables. When the latter are designed so as to cross three variables (social origins, destinations and average scores of subjective mobility), the spontaneous sociology that can be collectively detected in the assessments made by respondents turns out to be not very different from the scholarly sociology of social categories produced by sociologists. After showing that subjective and objective mobility vary coherently in relation to each other, an additional hypothesis is advanced to account for some discrepancies.     

Conflit de générations ou conflit d'organisation ? Un train peut en cacher un autre…

In a railway marshaling yard, relations between the two principal age-groups (employees in their fifties and young, recent hires) are very tense. Various persons set this down to an obvious generation clash. By observing on-the-job situations, we come to see how these tensions tie in with a reorganization of work that occurred when the yong people were hired. Members of these two groups interpret differently the organization of work and the rationale for cooperation between job stations. The explanation in terms of a “generation clash” overlooks the actual issues in an organizational conflict having to do with changes during the recent reorganization. It thus keeps us from noticing the threats against the personnel's statuses and the social and symbolic hierarchies underlying them.