Idealizing Labor, Producing Inequality: Maintaining Race, Gender, & Class Divisions through Work
Edited Book Call for Submissions

Editors: Enobong Hannah Branch and Melissa Wooten, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Project Overview
In formal organizations, the sorting of workers into jobs is assumed to be a bureaucratic process based on merit. Workers are placed throughout the organization in positions that correspond to their skills, interests, and abilities. Ascriptive characteristics, such as race and gender, are not necessarily thought to be predictors of occupational placement but clear racial and gender divisions are evident in occupational outcomes. Feminist scholars have theorized about gendered organizations, the concept of “the ideal worker,” the penalties for women in female dominated occupations, and the “glass escalator” for men that point to the myriad of ways in which gender directly shapes occupational opportunity. But the literature on gendered occupations, focuses primarily on the consequences of gender for occupational opportunity but not how the gendering of occupations came to be or how it is maintained. What is needed is attention to who has done the boundary work, how have they done the work and what tools have they used to do the work, historically and contemporarily, to create gendered occupations as we know them. When examining this boundary work, it is important to examine how gender is used in conjunction with other identities, such as race, immigrant status, etc. to further construct the ideal laborer and to what end. Continue reading “Call for Abstracts: Edited Book on Maintaining Race, Gender, & Class Divisions through Work” →