Relationships with waitresses: Gendered social distance in restaurant hierarchies

This paper explores the use of gendered social distance mechanisms by higher status male coworkers and employers as they participate with waitresses in ongoing restaurant activities. Formal and informal gendered interactional techniques, such as degrading uniforms and terms of address, skewed ideas about skill differences, and sexual harassment, are used by men as they attempt to gain or sustain power thereby reinforcing the sexual division of labor. Sometimes they are successful, other times they are not, as when women resist or fight back.The analysis is derived from participant observation in two New Jersey restaurants. Formal and informal interviews were also conducted with fifty servers employed in a wide variety of restaurants.     

IN SEARCH OF WORKING-CLASS IDEOLOGY: A TEST OF TWO PERSPECTIVES*

This article begins as a test of two types of explanation of working-class consciousness. The first focuses upon structural factors. The second identifies nonwork variables as the critical determinant of workers' consciousness. Based on information collected from manual workers in two plants in Edmonton, Canada, the present research finds that neither perspective emerges as a significant determinant of worker ideology. The second part of the article addresses this issue and offers an explanation of the failure to account for much of the variation in workers' ideological thinking.     

Inequities in health outcomes and access to health care in South Africa: a comparison between persons with and without disabilities

Health is a fundamental human right and if health care is to be universal and equitable it should not be less accessible to some sectors of society than to others. The objective of this study was to compare health outcomes and access to health care between persons living with disabilities and their non-disabled counterparts. The research was based on secondary data analysis of wave 1 of the National Income Dynamic Survey. Results from the study indicated that people with disabilities reported a higher incidence of communicable and non-communicable diseases, lower access to medical insurance and greater use of public health care than their non-disabled counterparts. In conclusion, the findings highlight the inequities in health outcomes and access to health services for people with disabilities and emphasise the need for disability-friendly health care policies that reduce barriers to accessing health care.