leahkaplan96-blog

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I definitely agree that androcentrism plays a role in the military. I’ve known multiple people who have gone into the marines and came back after boot-camp with whole new attitudes and beliefs about basically everything. As the podcast stated, women can’t jump out of an airplane with 100 pounds on their backs. As much as women hate to admit it, we aren’t built like men, and I know that I could never handle anything like that. The propaganda ads show the gender inequality within the military. Even though those ads were clearly used years ago, those ideas are still present even today.

Conclusion

After an incredible past century of American history I am proud of where minorities are today. Women have come from from being the inferior gender to equal soldiers on the battlefield. Through thorough training and practice, women can make incredible soldiers who will get their tasks done. Their careers can span from being helpful nurses to elite officers leading troops. The military has given the opportunity to make women soldiers and they have turned that opportunity into great success. Women are still barred from most Special Operations but in the near future women will accomplish everything men can and more.

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I really liked how you emphasized the importance of hating the addiction, not the user. That is something I’ve never thought of, and the post that’s states, “Love the addict. Hate the addiction” spoke volumes in my mind. I watched the TedTalk you included and, like she stated in the beginning, it was similar to every other addict’s story, but the difference was her family stuck by her and she went through recovery to learn from her mistakes and get better. She recovered enough to have a TedTalk! Your Tumblr is very well thought out and I love the idea behind it. I’ve recently been seeing a lot of posts on Facebook and Twitter about how addiction is a disease. I think more people need to think of it as one and hopefully a major change can be made. I hope you get to live your dream of opening your own rehab and working with people who have been affected by addiction. They definitely could use someone like you!

Final Thoughts

I personally believe that our strategy for helping individuals that are drug addicted is unacceptable. The number of beds in rehabs are extremely limited, and unbelievably expensive; especially when these individuals do not have insurance. As a psychology major my dream is to work with women and children that have been affected by addiction. Throughout the research process for this project, I got to thinking of potential solutions to the poverty and social inequality that results from substance addiction. I personally believe it all starts with education. In order to eliminate the social stigmas, we should teach people from a young age that addiction is a disease, not a weakness. Seeing the individual who is addicted to drugs, as an actual person outside of their addiction is extremely important. The addiction and the person are two separate entities. We must have empathy and understand that there is always an underlying issue going on that is too painful for the addict to deal with sober. This could be mental, physical, and/or sexual abuse, a death of a family member or friend, bullying, or a serious illness such as cancer, etc. Once people see addiction as a disease, I believe there would be more a push to funnel more money into rehabs, making them more affordable. My dream is to one day open a rehab for women, but it wouldn’t be just a regular rehab; there would be a separate daycare in the same building. That way, women do not have to leave their children while getting clean, which can be a massive deterrent when seeking treatment. During the day as the women are in counseling and meetings, the children would be in the daycare center. There would be hired staff, as well as a large volunteer community. Depending on the women’s individual progress in recovery, some of the women would have a sleeping area in their room for their child. For the mother’s who are not far enough in their recovery to look after their children, there would be a separate room for the child with a staff member overnight. It is not a secret drug addiction holds a massive social stigma. Addicts are often viewed as second class citizens. Many people believe they are not worthy of having a roof over their head, food in their stomach, or a decent quality of life for their child. The children are often the victims of the cruel social stigma which is so unfair. This social stigma can be explained through the theories of Stratification, The Uses of the Underclass in America, and The Critical Race Theory. These individuals are being discriminated against for having a disease. Would you discriminate against someone with cancer? No. Things need to turn around because the way it’s going is beyond unacceptable. That is why I feel so passionately about going into this field to help these individuals.

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What Makes a Woman?

In 1851, black feminist, Sojourner Truth, argued that the image of a woman must be reconsidered. A Women’s Rights Conference was held in Akron, Ohio, where she took her stand. Even though she was too a woman, many white women told her to sit down, as they feared she’d distract from the true purpose of the conference, women’s suffrage, to emancipation. If this was a women’s rights conference, then why did other women not want her to speak on their behalf? Crenshaw states that these feminist theories claimed to reflect all women’s hopes and experiences, but they don’t recognize black women. Sojourner Truth asked, “Ain’t I a woman?” How can these arguments be made when they’re not relevant to the needs and experiences of black women? “Not only are women of color overlooked, but their exclusion is reinforced when white women speak for us and as women” (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 154). These claims ignore a whole race that must be included in order to make the arguments valid.

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Women of Color

“Women of color” is described as black, Asian, and Hispanic. The women in these categories make up 20% of the US population, yet Emily Peck, author of Black Women are Leaning In and Getting Nowhere, says that they are still being sidelined within the workplace. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns claims that this issue is due to “invisibility”.  When someone thinks of a woman with power, they often picture a white woman, for example, Hillary Clinton. When picturing a black leader, a man comes to mind, rather than a woman. “Because black women are not seen as typical of the categories ‘black’ or ‘woman’, people’s brains fail to include them in both categories,” says Purdie-Vaughns. They don’t come to mind when the words “black” and “woman” are alone. If 55% of companies claim that racial diversity is significantly important, then why don’t they hire people of many different races? Gender diversity seems to be a much more important goal within companies, as 78% make it a top priority. Theories of social inequality help us understand the gender/racial wage gap when we compare the wealth, incomes, education, and experiences of these different genders and races. In this blog, I will be discussing the gender wage gap, and how it affects minority women when compared to white men and women.

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Sheryl Sandberg

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Black Women’s Lack of Wealth

Wealth can be used as an indicator of economic well-being because, as Tyson Brown states in The Intersection and Accumulation of Racial and Gender Inequality: Black Women’s Wealth Trajectories, it grasps the costs of the accumulation of assets across and within generations. He explains the different ways in which wealth can be used, such as paying for a higher education (Brown, 2011, p.240). The way wealth is accumulated is due to resources such as the achievement of higher levels of education, white-collar jobs, and a higher income. Black people have a small wealth accumulation because they lack the proper education, preparation, skills, and wages to invest and save. Historical discrimination must be recognized, as it leads to the intergenerational transfer of the lack of assets. This is part of the reason that current generations don’t have much wealth. Structural discrimination also plays a large role in determining the opportunities that black people have. Present-day discrimination affects black people’s accumulation of wealth, as well. Brown mentions that there is evidence that black people and other minorities face economic discrimination in the workplace (Brown, 2011, p. 243). Moving more into the wage gap, black people (both men and women) have a lower chance to be hired, have to look for jobs longer, often have less work experience, and make lower salaries than white people (Brown, 2011, p. 244). Research has shown that black people possess less wealth than white people, and men possess more than women. Black women face obstacles to opportunities because of their race and their sex. Research has found that black women have the highest rates of poverty. A 2010 study revealed that the gender gap for wealth is the largest among black people and black women who are widowed, divorced, or never married have the least amount of wealth of every race-gender group. This study found that at least half of black women have zero or negative liquid assets throughout the middle of their lives to retirement. Due to this fact, it can be assumed that these women lack the savings they may need for unplanned expenses such as medical bills.

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Women vs. Women

In Employment Gains and Wage Declines, authors Becky Pettit and Stephanie Ewert take us back to the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and explain how the wage gap between black and white women expanded. One explanation for this proposes that the decline in the wages of black women results from racial differences in employment since 1980. The increasing inequality within the labor market suggests that black women are disadvantaged by their location within the structure of the economy. Public policy changes in the 1990s pushed welfare recipients (who were mainly black) to work in the labor force. The authors use the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act as an example of something that forces people on welfare to work. They states reasons why the implementation of this act would not change the racial structure in the workforce. People who receive welfare often face many barriers to stable employment. Studies suggest that Hispanic and black welfare recipients are disadvantaged when searching for jobs. The completion of education between white and black women in the 1980s and 1990s is another reason for the growth in the wage gap. It is explained in the article that black women were less likely than white women to graduate from high school or attend college. This research doesn’t necessarily measure how shifts in unemployment may influence the wage gap, as Pettit and Ewert claim it is tough to bring existing accounts of racial inequality in women’s employment with historical trends of women’s employment.

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Women’s Work < Men’s Work

Work that is done mainly by women is rewarded less than work done by men. This was researched in many occupations in different work corporations. In Individuals, Jobs, and Labor Markets: The Devaluation of Women’s Work, Philip Cohen and Matt Huffman discuss that although the tendency to degrade women’s work may come as a norm, the means behind it are often local. Previous research hasn’t looked far into whether it is accustomed by the local labor market. If this is true, then it may help to understand how gender inequality is structured and reproduced as often as it is. The authors suggest that if the majority of the wage gap is because of the gender composition of jobs, it means that gender inequality exists because of the segregation of workers in jobs with different average salaries. On the other hand, within-job inequality reveals processes that help particular groups within jobs, which also contributes to the wage gap (Cohen, Huffman, 2003). The point that interests me the most about this article, is that the gender composition of occupations has an effect on the average pay levels these workers maintain. Kanter’s theory of tokenism is used as an example, suggesting that large concentrations of women can help decrease gender inequality. Although there is the fact that men working in female-dominated occupations are still being treated and evaluated better than women. Gender segregation at the local labor market level has proven that women earn less than men. Labor markets with more gender equality are proven to have normal expectations, a better balance of power, and could result in better earnings and jobs for all women (Cohen, Huffman, 2003).

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Penalties For Starting a Family?

There has been a huge increase within mothers in the workforce over the past few decades. Only 20% of married women with children under the age of six worked. When Marriage and the Motherhood Wage Penalty Among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites was written by Rebecca Glauber, in 2007, mothers made 5% less than women with no children. This interests me, as families are expected to raise the next generation of workers. If that is what society needs, then why are mothers, the women raising and teaching these soon-to-be workers, getting paid less? Glauber looks at whether marriage increases the wage penalty for all women or for a select group of women. She found that African American married mothers spend more time at work than married white and Hispanic mothers (Glauber, 2007, p. 951). White people aren’t often looked at as a minority, but this study shows that white women pay a greater motherhood wage penalty than African Americans (Glauber, 2007, p. 952). Marriage tends to increase the amount of time women spend on domestic labor, and decrease the amount of time men spend on domestic labor. Fathers are simply in the workforce, while mothers are busy being housewives.

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