PP for October 17: workplace identities

1. Workplace identities
October 17th: Who Are We?

2. 10th: transitions
Tensions: Role of “parent” versus “advisor/critic”
Coping with difficult relatives
“Do-over”: repeat past roles
Attempt to fix past problems
Versus “letting go” to define new
identities/relationships

3. values: what’s IMportant?
New roles/identities: Larger meaning/significance of
life
List three things that are most important to you now--
things that you value in life

4. Work experiences
What are your prior work experiences--in your job,
your family, organization, or community?
What roles did you assume in this work? How did you
learn to adopt these roles?
What was satisfying/rewarding about those
experiences and/or roles?
What was challenging about those experiences and/or
roles?

5. Status and work
Gendered construction of work
“Women’s work”: “Pink-collar jobs”
Female versus male pay (.81)
Varies by occupation and region
Women CEO’s: 3.2% of Fortune 500 companies
Your experience as a woman/man??

8. Male vs. female education
Women: Higher college attendance/graduation in
shorter time period
Varies by race and class

10. Romney’s appointment of women
First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14
women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a
reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before,
those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn't
care about -- and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not
really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about --
budget, business development, etc. -- went to women.
Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level
appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney
administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to
27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising
when Deval Patrick took office.)

11. Waitress’s work
Mike Rose’s mother as waitress
“...how central that work was to her sense of self
and engagement with the world”
“Both waitress and management work by the clock.”
“The basic goal, then, is to manage irregularity
and create an economy of movement.”
“...the mix of strategies and processes: imagistic,
spatial, verbal, and the role of emotion.”

12. Vigilant attention
...attending in transit to requests, empty cups, plates
moved to the edge of the table.”
“Mindfulness”: “...who ordered what and when and
knows how long a specific item should take to
prepare given the time of day.”
“She organizes takes by type or location...what tasks
can be grouped and executed with the least effort.”

13. “Emotional labor”
“‘Even if they’re rude to you, you still smile and just
go on, because that’s your living.’”
Gendered identities: “servant, mother, daughter,
friend, or sexual object.”
“how difficult it is...to capture the complex meaning
work has in the lives of people like Rose Emily Rose.”
Always learning: “your ability that makes everything
work right; you are instrumental in creating their
satisfaction.”

14. Competencies
What activities constituted your role in your job?
What did you become good at doing in your job?
How did you learn these competencies?
How were you recognized for your competencies?

15. Negotiating work versus non-work demands
Job and family demands: conflicts in roles??
How did you negotiate conflicts?
How did you distinguish “family” versus “job”
time?
Job and family: positive transfer?

16. Identification: Negotiating competing worlds
workplace school
peer group family/co
mmunity

17. Representation as Re-present
n Media do not simply reflect/mirror “reality”
n Media create or re-present a new reality
n DisneyWorld as an artificial reality
n “Reality” shows as a television “reality” drama
n Media “mediate” how we construct our lives
n Adolescent females in “Merchants of Cool” who are
preparing to be “supermodels”
n Fashion magazine models mediate how they define
their identities

18. Stereotyping: Fixes/limits
Meaning
n Stereotypes limits meanings assigned to groups
n Shapes perceptions of that group
n Leaves out/over-generalizes meaning
n “Scientists as nerds”/ “Native Americans as alcoholics”
n Contesting stereotypes by increasing diversity of images that open
up new possibilities of identity
n “Where do images come from?”
n “Who produces images?”
n “How is meaning closed down in representation?”
n “Who is silenced in the production of images?”

19. Construction of Femininity
n Social practices: nurturer/helper roles: teaching, nursing,
mother
n “Beauty industry”: appearance, slimness, or attractiveness
as central to identity
n Identity constructed through heterosexual relationships
n Romance novel: legitimacy of nurturer as transforming
traditional male hero

20. Representation of Class
n People’s desire to be perceived as “middle class” by
adopting class markers of dress, language, social
practices
http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/
n Representations of “working-class”: categorized serving
to demonize people

21. Exhibits: Magazine ad images:
Representations
n Categories: each table: race, class, gender, age,
region or place (suburban vs. urban),
entertainment, etc.
n Identity patterns: create subcategories, including
interactions across categories
n Reflect on how images influence your identity
construction
n Reflect on limitations of categories