Cisgendered Organizations: Trans Women and Inequality in the Workplace

This article responds to calls to better understand how intersecting “inequality regimes” operate in organizations. Through in‐depth interviews with 25 white trans women about their workplace experiences, my analyses highlight how trans women navigate relational practices that are simultaneously gendered and cisgendered—that is, practices that maintain cultural connections between sex and gender and maintain gender as immutable. Findings demarcate three distinct mechanisms by which cisgenderism, a system that devalues women and trans people, operates and strengthens hierarchical privileges at work: (1) double‐bind constraints; (2) fluid biases of cissexism and sexism; and (3) group practices of privilege and subordination. In the first regard, analyses reveal unique double binds that trans women face—binds that dictate contradictory feminine and masculine ideal worker expectations but also expectations of gender authenticity. Second, I find that trans women often hover between two subordinate statuses (i.e., gender and transgender status) in a given workday, a fact that prods a more fluid conception of cisgenderism. Finally, this study highlights how cis men collectively mobilize through group practices to repair cisgender system breaches. All three dimensions are critical for understanding the production of workplace inequality between not only trans women and cis men, but all feminine‐identified workers.     

Workplace racial composition, perceived discrimination, and organizational attachment

Prior research has devoted considerable attention to the relationship between the racial and ethnic composition of jobs and various indicators of organizational attachment. Fewer studies, however, examine how workplace racial composition affects individuals’ experiences of racial discrimination or how these experiences impact workers’ organizational attachment. To address this lacuna, we first examine the effects of workplace racial composition on perceived racial and ethnic discrimination. Next, we examine whether perceived racial discrimination mediates the association between racial composition and organizational attachment observed in prior studies. Finally, we explore whether these relationships are similar (symmetric) or different (non-symmetric) for non-Whites and Whites. The analyses indicate: (1) working with predominately same-race coworkers tends to diminish perceptions of racial discrimination, (2) perceived racial discrimination mediates some of the effects of racial/ethnic composition on organizational attachment, and (3) some non-symmetric effects between non-Whites and Whites are found. We conclude with implications for future research.     

从交往异化到雇佣劳动批判——赫斯哲学补论

在1844年以前,赫斯将"资产阶级社会"称为"金钱贵族制",并把费尔巴哈对宗教批判的人本主义异化史观直接运用到对现实资产阶级社会的批判中来,提出了所谓货币是人的交往类本质的异化的观点。在他看来,正是这个颠倒的金钱世界,造成了更加普遍的剥削和奴隶制。而在后来的研究中,赫斯开始关注现实中的劳动,但并未用哲学人本主义的逻辑来描述资产阶级社会中的劳动状态,而是使用了比较准确和实证的概念:雇佣劳动和奴隶劳动。     

Fringe benefits and income inequality

In this paper, we analyze the distribution of fringe benefits among workers and underline its implications for income inequality. To this end, we develop a positional approach to inequality based on the concept of rent as a potential link between positions and their rewards. We hypothesize that workers extract rent in the form of benefits in industries with worker leverage (in the form of unioniziation, internal labor market, and public employment) or share rent with firms in highly profitable industries that endure for efficiency wage reasons. On the basis of a unique dataset from Israel, we test these hypotheses by estimating the probabilities of obtaining benefits according to industries’ structural features while controlling for cross-industrial differences in workers’ demographic and human capital characteristics. The analyses reveal that benefits are determined by structural factors, representing a separate dimension of the rewards attached to positions, different from earnings. We further stress the importance of incorporating fringe benefits into inequality research, given that benefits together with earnings stratify workers and evidently signify structured positions in the economy.     

A New Kuznetsian Dynamic: The Knowledge Economy and Income Inequality in the United States, 1917–2008

The rise of the knowledge economy resulted in higher levels of income inequality in the United States and forced many to question the Kuznets Inverted‐U hypothesis. However, this study argues that the establishment of a knowledge economy does not negate the importance of employment shifts for income inequality. Instead, the expansion of knowledge employment alters the major sectors that are responsible for the overall distribution of income. To this end, this article presents the key argument that the current service–knowledge transition impacts income inequality trends, of today, in a way that is similar to the agricultural–industrial transition, of the past. According to the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity regressions, the agricultural–industrial transition returns stronger associations with income inequality in the United States before 1950. The agricultural–industrial transition's impact diminishes thereafter as the service–knowledge transition shares a more robust association with income inequality after 1980.     

Economics,psychotherapy and politics

The paper explores the application of ideas derived from psychotherapy to questions of economic and social policy. It is argued that disputes concerning human nature underlie many debates on economic theory. Class is reviewed from internal and emotional perspectives. Psychological obstacles to the achievement of economic inequality are explored and ways of overcoming them critically discussed. Particular attention is paid to the operation of economic sadism in the behaviour of individuals and societies. A range of possible gender differences in relation to money is reviewed. Inherited wealth is explored from the perspective of ‘therapy thinking’. The paper proposes that we reconsider what is deemed to be realistic and what is deemed to be (hopelessly) idealistic in thinking about economics. The paper concludes by proposing a deeper discussion of the problematic of sacrifice in connection with sustainable economics.     

Human Rights Matter

This article serves as a response to all those who commented on my original essay “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and, Yes, from American Sociology.”     

Brexit,Global Cities,and the Future of World Order

The emergence and role of global cities provide a rubric by which we can understand Brexit and illuminate the present tensions between those who favor open economic policies and those who favor closed economic policies. Economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, and social exclusion at the regional level are now driving a fresh interrogation of the relatively open world order that requires global cities—sites densely populated with institutions necessary for orchestrating global economic activity. While questions about the legitimacy of economic openness may undermine the economic output, political power, and cultural influence of global cities, those same cities may, if they harness economic output for broader regional benefits, demonstrate the potential of an alternative and newly legitimate open world order.     

Atos Healthcare withdraws from the Work Capability Assessment: a comment

In March 2014 Atos Healthcare withdrew a year early from its contract to provide the UK’s health assessment – the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – that is supposed to sort disabled people into administrative categories according to their adjudged capability to do paid work. This move was welcomed by political elites, with, for example, UK Coalition Government Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning using it to criticise previous Labour governments for the contractual arrangements they put in place – although while the Coalition may have been concerned with the contractual arrangements soon after being formed, it extended the contract for five years. For the UK disability movement, the withdrawal of Atos Healthcare early from the WCA contract was a victory and, at least in part, a consequence of disabled activists’ resistance to the Employment and Support Allowance generally, and the WCA in particular.     

Unpacking Within‐Household Gender Differences in Partners' Subjective Benefits From Household Income

The authors examine how contributions to household resources, indicated by employment status, influence satisfaction with household income (SWHI) for members of male/female couples. They take changes in SWHI, which may differ within couples, to indicate changes in perceived benefits from their common household income, benefits that can go beyond individual consumption. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey for 2,396 couples from 1996 to 2007, three gender effects are identified. First, men predominate in making the type of contribution that most positively influences SWHI, namely, full‐time employment. Second, the effect of contributions depends on the gender of the contributor, with men's employment being more influential than women's. Third, within couples, making the more influential contribution, as men tend to do, leads to relatively greater SWHI. The authors conclude that gender asymmetry in contributions made to household resources is one way in which gender inequalities invade and inhabit households.