(FEM2c) Gender at Work, Gendered Work III : Gender Division of Labour

Gender intersects with other axes of identity to create particular experiences of working life. Women, girls, and marginalized groups earn less, have fewer opportunities for employment, education and training, and contend with poverty, health challenges, discriminatory norms, policies and practices that do not adequately consider the needs of diverse women or mothers. Their work is often sorted, segregated, and routinely devalued and devalorised. Acknowledging ongoing and persistent gender inequalities in workplaces and the labour market, this session invited papers that explore and consider the material conditions of gender and work under capitalist patriarchy. We also invited scholars to consider the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated, reified, or transformed intersecting inequalities. Tags: Equality and Inequality, Feminism, Work And Professions

Organizers: Sonia D'Angelo, York University, Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, Saint Mary’s University, Ronnie Joy Leah, Athabasca University; Chairs: Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, Saint Mary’s University, Ronnie Joy Leah, Athabasca University

Presentations

Ethan Shapiro, University of Toronto; Emma Jennings-Fitz-Gerald, University of Toronto

Explaining Gender Segregation in Craft Brewing: A Multi-Level Investigation of Market Inequality

The Canadian craft beer industry has recently faced a reckoning over gender-based harassment and segregation. Previous research on craft beer contextualizes this reckoning within the industry’s gendered occupational structure: craft brewery owners and operators are almost universally men whose work is often publicly valorised. In contrast, women typically occupy low-status positions in the industry, such as service and hospitality roles. While craft brewers insist that “good beer” should be for everyone, the class, racialized, and gendered resources required to enter this industry limit the product’s universality. The current research aims to clarify the processes through which existing gender inequalities shape (and are reproduced by) gendered experiences in the craft brewing industry. Drawing on 70 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with craft brewery owners (N=35, already collected) and workers (N=35, to be collected), the current research confirms that craft breweries are gendered organizations in which occupational positions and cultural conceptions of ideal workers privilege male market entrants and restrict female ones. These interviews show that women’s disadvantage in the craft beer industry is reproduced through a horizontally segregated organizational structure and the cultural valorization of men’s work. Following the feminist emphasis on the maintenance of gender inequality at the level of everyday experience (hooks, 2000), I conduct a multi-level investigation of niche formation that clarifies the role of gendered social stratification in cultural industries. I ask, (1) how do industry-level gender inequalities enable and constrain entry into emergent markets? and (2) how do people make sense of these inequalities at the individual level to construct feasible market action? To answer these questions, I seek to provide an account of the emergence of the craft beer sector – a prototypical example of a highly gendered lifestyle market. This study enhances current industry efforts to address exclusion and discrimination in the craft beer sector (Canadian Craft Brewers, 2020). First, it identifies key structural barriers to entry for women in the craft beer industry, and second, it highlights the agentic processes through which female entrants navigate and potentially alter unequal opportunity structures. Thus, the current research aims not only to advance sociological theories of market emergence, but to serve as a resource for empirically grounded diversity and inclusion practices in the craft brewing industry.

Michelle Nadon Bélanger, University of Toronto; Emma Jennings-Fitz-Gerald, University of Toronto

(Hegemonically) masculinized organizations: Better bridging theory in the sociology of gender and work

Gendered organizations theory has contributed valuable insights to our understanding of how certain workers’ experiences are privileged in the workplace, including the concepts of masculinized occupational logic (Britton 1997) and the masculine worker ideal (Acker 1990). While current literature in the sociology of gender and work bears the implicit understanding that worker ideal centered in masculinized workplaces is hegemonicall y masculine, gendered organization theory’s assumption of a masculine hegemon has not been made explicit nor been granted a systematic definition. Pairing a literature review with original data on how workers identify and strategically adapt to masculinized occupational contexts through gender performance, this paper aims to clearly articulate how we may better understand the ways in which the masculinity that is centered in such contexts is hegemonic. Specifically, this paper posits that masculinized workplaces clearly subordinate identities that do not align with a dominant masculine ideal, even rewarding gendered ‘others’ who perform their gender in a manner that adheres to their position as a dominated group. While my original data stems from research with musicians working in the heavily masculinized field of jazz music, accounts of masculinized workplaces across a wide variety of occupations also show that workers who stand as gendered ‘others’ (e.g., women, gender-diverse individuals, and/or men who identify as gay and/or trans) engage either in a) relational femininity or b) ‘compensatory’ masculinity, which work to mitigate or otherwise circumvent gender disadvantage without confronting dynamics of gender inequality. This outcome is generated on the basis that such gender reify women, gender-diverse, and gay and/or trans workers’ position as gender subordinates, which mirrors existing gender dynamics of masculinized workplaces by continuing to centering hegemonic masculinity. I explore my own data on the jazz industry as a case study to corroborate this argument, presenting the specific dimensions along which women musicians perform relational femininity and gender-diverse musicians engage in compensatory masculine behaviors to ‘be one of the boys’. This includes considering the specific ways in which core features of the jazz industry—an entrepreneurial structure, ambiguous workplace valuation, and occupational gender segregation—demonstrate traces of gender hegemony. In doing so, I provide an example of how we might better integrate theoretical discourses on gendered organizations and hegemonic masculinity.

Emily Hammond, University of Toronto

Negotiating the Fragmented Workplace: Gender Pathways to Risk Management in the Gig Economy

While gig work is not new, factors associated with the changing nature of work such as technological advancements, the erosion of the standard employment relationship, worker interest in flexible work and consumer desires to purchase goods and services online, have facilitated its increase by making it appealing and accessible to both workers and employers. Although there are benefits associated with the gig economy, such as schedule flexibility, low barriers to entry and feelings of having control over income, there are also noteworthy risks that worker’s must navigate; my focus here. These risks include getting hit by cars, physical assault, harassment, and sexual violence. In the absence of a boss or direct point of contact, a lack of workplace community and oftentimes insufficient or no training, workers must find ways to navigate these risks independently. They do so through in-depth information gathering to prepare for their work, turning to one another to fill gaps in their knowledge, seeking community for emotional support and taking preventative safety measures such as telling friends their whereabouts and using personal protective equipment including helmets and bike lights. These strategies invoke gendered norms in how risk is conceptualized and managed by workers. Drawing on data gathered from semi-structured qualitative interviews with ten women student sex workers, and ten men food delivery workers in Canada, this research illuminates the range of gendered work available for workers in the gig economy and how gendered work involves different emotional burdens and risks. While gig work comes in a variety of forms, both sex work and food delivery are gendered fields of employment. The available literature indicates that most student sex workers identify as women, many of whom are seeking men-identified clients. Likewise, although there is a lack of comprehensive data on the demographics of the North American platform-based food delivery workforce, many studies indicate that most workers are men. My analysis of sex workers alongside food delivery workers provides a compelling comparison case to analyze how gender norms are reinscribed in gig work for a few reasons. First, the rise of gig economy work has generated an outpouring of new scholarship, but most of it has focused on the experiences of men. As noted by several scholars, including Milkman et al. (2020), “research on gender and the gig economy is particularly sparse” (p.4). Similarly, little research has explored first person accounts of workers’ experiences with risk in gig work. Of the research that does exist, Gregory (2020) suggests that gender could be more deeply explored in relation to risk (p.13). Additionally, scholarship on gig economy work has focused largely on food delivery and ridesharing work. This has limited the analyses that can be gleaned from studying gig economy work in varying forms. This paper provides an original contribution by using gender-centered data to extend research looking at the precarity and associated risks of gig work to show how women experience and navigate these workplace hurdles differently. It is the first of many necessary discussions of the range of gendered work available in the gig economy and how gendered work involves different emotional burdens and risks for workers.

Daniel Amoah, Memorial University

Examining the Gendered Effects of Informal Taxation in the Informal Economy in Ghana through an intersectional lens.

The informal economy is prevalent in many developing countries. The sector is however bedevilled with many challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequities. Recent years have seen debates around the relationships among informal workers and the state, informal taxation, and social protection for informal workers in Ghana. There is growing recognition among researchers and policymakers that despite their informal status, many informal firms still do pay a variety of formal/ informal fees and taxes. Such payments are often not equally distributed among informal workers. This research highlights the effects that these fees and taxes can have on different groups and the urgent need for expanding empirical research on this subject. However, informal taxation is an unexplored area in Ghana despite the country’s high rate of informality. To fill this research gap, this study asks two important research questions. To what degree are tax burdens within the informal economy in Ghana gendered? How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected and possibly worsened the vulnerabilities of various groups in the informal economy in Ghana? This study attempts to bridge this knowledge gap through the intersectionality framework to deepen the knowledge base on this issue, both for the context of Ghana and the wider scholarship on informality, gender, and tax. The particular focus here lies on the gendered effects of informal taxation. The study uses qualitative methods through in-depth semi structured interviews, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and informal observation to examine these experiences in selected urban neighbourhoods - Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), in two of Ghana’s largest cities.

Katharine Dunbar Winsor, Mount Allison University

"There would have to be an amazing amount of trust": Community service providers on working with criminalized mothers, pregnancy, and substance use.

In this paper, I provide an overview of common experiences by community service providers supporting criminalized women in Atlantic Canada. The experiences they often provide support on include trauma, victimization, substance use, and motherhood. Due to their experiences and intersecting identities, criminalized women commonly face multiple forms of stigma and structural barriers in their daily lives. Community service providers commonly work to provide support and system navigation for criminalized women within community-based organizations. In an emotionally laden area of work, service providers support criminalized women as they navigate criminal legal, child protection, and social assistance systems. Further exploration of service providers’ experiences within their work and their understanding of their clients’ substance use, motherhood, and criminalization is warranted. Service providers commonly maintain ongoing professional relationships with clients and, therefore, have the potential to support criminalized women’s health and pregnancy through trauma-informed supports and approaches. Using a theoretical framework for the sociology of emotions, these experiences of community service provision are explored to illustrate their navigation of emotional predicaments within their field (Davis, 2016; Hochschild, 1983). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 women community service providers working with criminalized women in Atlantic Canada. Transcripts were subjected to open and focused coding. Themes illustrate that service providers are an important source of information for criminalized women and that trust built with clients is critical to de-stigmatizing conversations about substance use and pregnancy for criminalized women. Community service providers as prolonged and often trusted individuals in the lives of criminalized women highlight additional pathways for trauma-informed approaches around substance use. Relationship-building and trust are paramount in these relationships. At the same time, trauma-informed education and resources can further support both community service providers and the work they are engaged in.