Unit D Blog #39

I think for the work/life balance aspect of the professional fields of work there must be initiatives set off to get this program into motion. Some incentives could be a good idea, for instance the government could help the aid in the funding of some of these programs as long as the employers are willing to carry through. This would put the employer in charge of the programs but they would be funded initially by government programs. This would make the employee more likely to ask about getting the specific benefits, and set into motion a serious change from within workplaces all over. I believe that this is one way to initiate work/life balance benefits, and perhaps even some extra help for the employee. There are many ways to set off the work/life balance programs that the EEOC has lobbied to create. If the government mandated programs and forced companies to begin assistance programs, this may be seen as kind of a harsh way to solve the issue, but it would be just and fair, and would set off a serious of programs that will bring to light the issues at hand. Once all of these programs have been created the equity between man and woman in the law profession can finally be equal, which we need to instate if we ever hope to have equality in the workplace.

Unit D Blog #38

Jeanine Pirro is the female lawyer which I chose to write about in this blog. I will now show you all her profile as depicted on the the provide website for the blog number.
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Jeanine Pirro is the first woman District Attorney in Westchester County, the first woman Westchester County court judge, the first woman to try a murder case in Westchester County and the first woman in New York State to be named "outstanding prosecutor."

In October 1997, Jeanine Pirro, chair of the New York State Commission on Domestic Violence Fatalities, issued a comprehensive report.

The Commission's detailed recommendations resulted in the passage of legislation to enhance protections and provide safeguards to victims of domestic abuse."

Jeanine Pirro is a very influential lawyer from the state of New York. She is the district attorney of Westchester County and has really been an influential piece in the law profession. She has done extensive and influential work in the issue of domestic violence. Her research has led to legislation being passed and assists victims of domestic violence on a daily basis. Jeanine Pirro's work will be forever remembered and she will be seen as an influential figure in modern law.

Unit D Blog #36

I most certainly believe that corporate America can lure women back into the workforce. It is quite a shame that women have not been getting the equal treatment that their male counterparts in the workforce. All of our blogs thus far have pretty much shown that there is a lot of work to be done concerning making everything equal for women. White males especially have had the distinct advantage in corporate industries, making up a large percentage of the total core. It is completely biased that they have received preferred treatment in the industry, as I'm sure everyone can agree that equal treatment of all people would be the best option available. Corporate America has to lure women back in by making up for all of its mistakes in the past concerning women. They need to even out the wages right off the bat, and they also need to allow for the hiring of women to be on the same ratio is that of men. As we have been discussing in this unit so far, these corporations need to implement assistance for those women that care for their children alone, or with a husband that has been laid off. These companies also need to consider the amount of women and people in general that care for sick, elderly, or disabled family members. If they are able to even things out across the board to make the industry fair for all people, then they may have a shot at luring women, who are graduating college as well as attending college on a higher levels than males, back into the workforce in which women have been shunned and disadvantaged with since the start. Corporations need to realize that women are just as smart as men, and as college numbers show, more educated as a majority. They will realize after they study these factors that their biases have been negative the whole time, and that women deserve just as much of a shot as men do in the professional world.

Unit D Blog #35

The EEOC's document about "Best Practice" in regards to employees dealing with caregiver/work and family balance. I think that this document is a very important piece of information to say the least. We can easily see that balance of family and work is an issue that many Americans have to deal with. The majority of the people that deal with this issue however is women, and as the article more specifically stated, women of color. This is a major issue, because the article also shows how many mothers are left to work and provide for their kids entirely on their own individual income. Since this issue is so prevalent in today's society, some form of assistance should be provided for these women. The EEOC asks for employers to do more than merely the bare minimum when it came for assisting the employees who have a busier home life, such as a person who cares for a disabled family member, spouse, etc. I think this article should go a long way in getting some employers to think critically about the situation in which many of their employees have to handle at home. The article also goes into detail about how the current economic state of the country has been especially tough on the industries such as construction, and as the article stated, investment banking. This means that women are providing much of the financial support for many families in situations such as this. I believe that with more of a push on a hot button issue such as this, serious change could be made, but it all starts with employers, and their willingness to support this proposition. We can only hope that these companies and businesses will be considerate to these mothers and others in care giving situations.

Unit D Blog #33

Woman have made many advances in the law industry since joining the professional workforce. While there has been much progress made, there is also still room for much improvement. We will take a little time in this blog to discuss the advancement of women in the field of law. Yes, woman have began to take many positions of power in the United States within big time corporations and law firms. Woman have also began to make more money than they have in the past, although these are hardly things to brag about considering our country is based off of everybody being "equal." There are signs of good news however, as a second woman has received a spot on the Supreme Court, making the ratio of women to men the highest it has ever been within that court system. This is in fact a good sign because it gives women everywhere the understanding that if they work hard, they can actually achieve the highest goals, which in the fact may have seemed a little impossible in the past. It is completely biased and unfair that women have not had equal access to fair wages and positions in comparison to men. This being said, the progress that has been made is remarkable, no matter how much of a double edged sword this statement may be. It is hard to be proud of something that should not be something that we aspire to, but rather something that we have had all along. But since this is not the case, we must enjoy the progress that we have seen women make up to this point, and realize that we take for granted some of the opportunities that we have today, no matter how unfair that may be.

Unit D Blog #32

I feel that parenting and a career as a lawyer for men and women can have a few different outcomes in terms of their careers. Obviously a woman's career can be hurt simply with the amount of maternity leave and time spent with the infant. This is unjust and we can all agree with that point by now. Men are traditionally, and this is pushed hard through media influence, supposed to be the ones that are making the money for the children in the family. Men are the breadwinners, the supporters, and the hard workers. These things are not as true as the media has portrayed them to be, but in the public eye this is really how they believe that things work. Because this mentality is so prevalent in our society, men are often chastised for taking time off work, especially being a lawyer, to spend time with their families. Co workers would look at this as something that a woman should be doing for the family, taking time off, and they would look down upon a male coworker for wanting this. Society today is trying to rid itself of these extreme gender biases that we are forced to deal with, and as time goes on it would seem that there should be no difference whether the man or the woman is the one who makes more money, spends more time at work, helps out around the house, takes time off when the kids are sick, etc. These gender lines should become more and more invisible as our society adapts to a system where there is no roles set out for each gender. More and more families have began to adopt this mentality and this is leading to a new way in which things are beginning to happen in the United States. These days, more and more men can be seen taking time off work to be with the kids, cooking and cleaning at home, among other things across gender lines. At the same time, women can be seen as high powered attorneys, CEO's, and the member of the family that is bringing home the most money at the end of the week. We are making progress, but there is still plenty of progress to be made in our country.

Unit D Blog #31

Many professions come standard with the difficulty of balancing work and family life. This balance is often times seen where certain biases come into play concerning women and what they are supposed to do when they have children and they work as lawyers and such. Jobs have obvious problems with men or women wanting to spend too much time away from the office, because this leads to them not being able to handle all of the cases that they are working on or even sometimes results in the loss of a case or a client because of the lawyers family life. Their are certain ways to attempt to fix this problem so that the employer can be happy with the amount of work that the employee commits too, and also so that the parents of children can be able to spend time with their families. i believe that jobs need to incorporate more work that can be done from home into the work week. This way, instead of spending over 40 and 50 hours a week in the office the employee can be doing this busy work from home, and will give them the opportunity to spend some quality time with their families, which is arguably the most important part of life for somebody who has children to attend to. This option needs to be readily accessible for mothers who are working in the law field. Often times these females are left out in the cold when the issue arises of a family life. The employer will say that the woman has to choose one or the other, family or work, and this is completely unjust. The balancing of home and work life is a very hard balance to maintain, but with a little help and cooperation from the employers, life could be a lot more simple for all of the parties involved.

Unit D Blog #29

I believe that so few minority women stay with law firms because of the cases that they get assigned. These women often face biases and when a case comes in dealing with a person of the same ethnic background of the female lawyer, often times they are stuck working on this case. The bosses of the law firms see the female lawyer and her race and say "Well we just had a case dealing with an African American, lets put her on the case because she is black as well so she can relate with the defendant." Stories from NPR have shown us that women are often scrutinized for their race and this goes a long way in creating a reason for a female lawyer to want to leave the law firm all together and find a job elsewhere. The women in these positions are sick and tired of being genderized and stereotypes into a certain category simply because of the color of their skin. These women want to move past the judgments of their gender and race and be treated in the same way. As of now, these females are subject to racial jokes, among other things that really begin to hurt from their male counterparts. Nobody would want to stay at a job where they face this extreme amount of bias, and these women, like anyone else in the same position, have decided that enough is enough and they have began to move on from these jobs where the treatment is unfair. If we hope to have equality in our work place then we need to fix the unjust aspects of these jobs right away.

Unit D Blog #28

The article that we read on Media Matters shows us ways in which the media and certain interested parties have been criticizing and portraying judge Sonia Sotomayor. These media outlets mentioned in the article seemed to constantly worry about the "temperament" of the Latina judge, playing off the stereotypes of the typical "fiery, aggressive, Latina woman" that is utilized in sitcoms on major networks nearly every day. Strangely enough I have never heard of this concern when speaking about a male judge nominee. This goes to show that men and women are judged differently when applying for a position and this is clearly unjust. The man in the article who seemed to have the biggest problem with the then nominee for Supreme Court position Sotomayor, was even taking quotes that he obtained by interviewing Sotomayor's coworkers and chopped them up to sound like these interviewees were doubting her ability to lead. In fact, her coworker had actually been trying to talk Sotomayor up, praising her for her actions in the court. When all was said and done however the quote was used against her, claiming that she was in fact "not smart." The brainpower of Sonia Sotomayor is not even up for debate, as she has graduated from two Ivy league universities, one at the top of her class. The media will play on every stereotype and bias that it can, with everybody wanting to give their input on the female judge. Sotomayor has since fought through adversity and now sits on the Supreme Court, a place where she has worked exceptionally hard to get to, and a place where she certainly deserves to be.

Unit D Blog #27

The competency gap between women and men in the law field is one that has been existence since the positions were first created. In the modern day we have come a long way in closing in on this gap although there is still an obvious difference. Since men dominate the positions within the law field, women start out at a disadvantage. There are certain aspects within these professions that do damage to the chances that a woman has of being promoted, but most importantly, respected in the workplace. We heard the story on NPR about the employee Ms. Shaffer who is suing GE for hiring in other places rather than within the company when she feels that she was perfectly competent to fill the role. This is an example of how men that dominate the field do not believe that woman are good for leadership roles. Part of this id due to the myth that woman are better caregivers than leaders, and woman are constantly associated with being "motherly" among various other adjectives that describe how one would enjoy being responsible for a child and so on. Woman in these fields are often faced with the bad situation of whether to act stone cold in their workplace and try to move up within the company or to have children and start/care for a family of their own. Most of the time these woman do not get the option of having both, which is unfair because the burden of carrying a baby is set completely upon the female shoulders. Change needs to be made within the workplace to allow for female professionals to hold positions of power at a rate consistent with their male counterparts, as well as to allow for them to provide for as well as care and create a family of their own. This is the only way that equality can be achieved.

Unit D Blog #25

Using sexualized behavior as a "weapon in the arsenal" seems to be sort of backtracking for females as a whole. We have come all this way to promote equality in the workforce, and not to say that things are even close to equal at this point, but the fact of the matter is many men and women alike would look at this type of action with a negative connotation. This is because when a woman uses her body to get the things in which she desires in the workplace, as well as anywhere else aside from in ones personal life, she is exploiting herself and her fellow women because it is proving the point that all men see from these women in professional workplaces is their body, and as a thing to desire. Women use this practice all the time in episodes like sleeping with a boss to get a promotion, sleeping with a coworker to find out about things going on within a company, and so on. To me the act is trashy. I look at every person, no matter their gender, as an equal human and someone who can converse as well as provide some sort of intellectual feedback. When a woman is using her body merely as bait it seems to set women back as a whole, and this is not right for all of those women who work hard everyday to insure that they are seen as more than just a "pair of breasts" and so on. If the women who use this act truly care about a society where all men AND women are created equally, which we all obviously know that all people are equal anyway, but we are also aware that not all politicians and WASPS within our community believe the same thing. There is a line that is crossed when one exploits them self, although power to a person who can get whatever they desire merely with their physical appearance. Maybe the rest of us are simply jealous.

Unit D Blog #26

Males often times attempt to help women lawyers in the field of law. Since the field of law is primarily male dominated these men often times will reach out to try to help the women in the profession. This role points to the law as a gendered because since the males dominate the workforce, they take on more of a power role by taking these women professionals "under their wing." This makes the job seemingly biased because the men control nearly all of the positions of power. By these men taking control of the women within the job these women are basically kneeling down to the power of the men in the workplace. This whole cycle is very circular, men dominating the work force, women entering into the work force and receiving help from men, and then the women using the knowledge that they gained from the male perspective to carry along with them throughout the rest of their professional lives. This does not leave any opportunity for a woman to leave her mark on a business unless she is able to make the climb up into an upper management position. While this type of mentality and behavior continues to go on at all levels of law professions, it is still not just nor fair. We need to see more women in roles of power, so that this way the workforce will be fair and unbiased, something that this country has yet to reach in all its years of existence. Women need to fight on and make their voices heard so that the ideals of women everywhere can be heard and everybody could learn from this new and unified perspective.

Unit D Blog #24

I was able to meet with and discuss gender expectations and stereotypes with a law student in the masters program at ASU. His name is Matt and he agreed to answer some questions on the aforementioned subject. He told me that throughout his schooling in the justice and law programs up to this point he had noticed that in the media women and men in the field of law are portrayed completely differently and often in a biased manner. I asked him to explain further and he told me that when men are portrayed as "hard-nosed" prosecutors, they are seen in a positive light, like they are a community hero of sorts. He mentioned that when women are portrayed in the media as "hard-nosed" prosecutors they are given almost a "mean" and negative connotation. He accredited this to the medias role in showing women as always "motherly" and caring, and men in the society see women as someone who they can confide in,l or who will comfort them, so when women are out there doing there part in the world of criminal justice, it is seen as negative. I completely agreed with his point and also realized that in the hiring process often times women are viewed as "too soft" to put people behind bars, and often times this limits them from obtaining the positions that they would hope for. These biases and stereotypes are complimented by the modern media, and the same goes for people of lower income as well as often times minorities. The media has a certain way of portraying these groups in a way that makes the white male look higher above the rest. I believe that a change must be made on the "home-front" and that women need to be cleared of these biases that men and the media create.

Unit D Blog #23

Not only are there less women of power in virtually every position around our country, when they do achieve a position of power, they are often scrutinized for their attire. The clothing choices of women in the fields of politics and law are a hot topic, and they are often brought up in the modern media. At any given time you could open up the Internet and on websites such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN, etc. there are headline stories about a certain political figure looking a certain way. I found an article by John McCain's daughter which stated that Hillary Clinton was "viewed as too hard because she didn't pay enough attention to fashion and beauty," and Sarah Palin was viewed as "too soft because she did just the opposite." What you have in this situation is a complete gender bias that is very unfair to women in professional attire. There is no reason that a woman should be judged for her attire any more than a man would be. As long as the attire is professional then there should be no further comment. Women in the field of law also are faced with a decision of whether they want to dress A-sexually as to not "intimidate" their male coworkers, or whether they want to dress in a "nice" manner which some coworkers could think of as sexy. This situation is completely unfair and this is just another situation in where a woman is placed under scrutiny and biased because of their gender.

Unit D Blog #22

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has come into the Supreme Court with many gender expectations and stereotypes after being the first Latina woman ever selected to the honor. Conservative critics from all facets of news organizations have spent most of their time making false and unproven claims about Sotomayor being a "racist." Pat Buchanon, Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and many other notoriously conservative and Republican have been seen publicly bashing Sotomayor with ignorant stereotypes and assumptions. All of these men have questioned whether Sotomayor could perform her job, and by them discussing this on nationally syndicated television, they are obviously trying to get the public to look negatively upon Sotomayor, and even perhaps to associate her name with a negative connotation. On media outlets everywhere there have been comments by right wing males about her being a female. A few of these men made comments such as they doubted whether she could be a true leader because of her gender, and one male guest on a news program even said, "I just hope she won't be making decisions when she is menstruating." Comments such as these tasteless examples affect not only Sotomayor and her supporters, but also young girls all over the United States and world that aspire to be a Supreme Court judge. These men have been socialized by their parents and various other factors to believe that the only person who can handle a position of power correctly is a white male, which is the type of mentality that is brazen with stupidity. If these media outlets continue to negatively approach and chastise the decision to put Sotomayor into a position on the Supreme Court then they continue to make the general public believe that the white male is incapable of condoning anyone into power but themselves, which has been the story of our country since its origin in the 1700's.

Unit C Blog #20

The hostage takeover at the Lewis prison shows many things to be true about Britton's study as well as all of the information about gender in prison we have learned up to this point. Their were many aspects that went right along with the study such as the leadership role shown by Dora Schriro in a situation that required a strong leader. Dora had her doubters when she came into this job but she had already led the Missouri prison system and was very experienced in her leadership roles to that point. She was dealing with a situation in which she had a female officer who was being sexually assaulted and had the potential of being killed. This situation went on for 15 days and the leaders who led the prison before Dora had not accurately mapped out the tower which was supposedly impenetrable. Schriro had to use her knowledge of prisoner behavior in order to understand how these men were going to act as well as what would make these men want to reason and give up their stand off when they literally had nothing better to do than to sit and rot in jail. This is one of the reasons why Ms. Fraley (the hostage) felt so suicidal. She felt that her existence was over, she had been morally beaten down to a level in which she could almost not return from, considered suicide on more than one occasion, and was brutally raped, beaten, sexually abused, among other things until she could begin to reason with the men.

Fraley's story of being stuck up in the tower for 15 days kind of fits like a puzzle piece into Britton's study because Fraley had to use her natural ability to nurture and to reason to show these men that she was a human, ironically the same benefit of the doubt that many corrections officers give to these men as they care for them on a daily basis. Fraley eventually made a connection with her assailants by telling lies to get them to relate to her. This most likely did not come invested in the training that prison guards received but maybe this is exactly what an observing person like Britton is trying to get across. Britton wants us to realize that the gender roles as well as the ways that these prisons are generally gendered make the officers in these type of programs need additional training. While the masculine side of the job, which is a large part of what the training details, came out in this situation, a women in the job more than held her own in a situation where she was no doubt feeling alone and that she would die. The job trains men and women alike in the practices of defending against a violent outbreak, but for a "total institution" like a state prison to allow for a total breach of security in a tower that was built for defense shows that perhaps some of the previous male counterparts to Dora Schriro were not held properly accountable for putting officers at a risk for something as horrible as what Fraley had to go through for 15 days. Britton would want us all to see that some of these inmates need help, and the Association for Female Corrections officers is pushing along with Britton's type of study that some of these men get help, but more importantly to help the correctional officer females from being subject to sexual abuse.

It is hard to say whether Britton's suggestions could have prevented this type of hostile take over or not, but it seems that it could have helped. When situations like these arise it is hard to take the blame and to lay it on one person or thing whether that be on an individual, on a training program, on a director, or anything else for that matter. What we do know is that it would be easy to incorporate some better training for female as well as male officers into the program to become a correctional officer and this additional training could be the difference between life and death, or the difference between a hostile prison takeover or just another day on the job.

Unit C Blog #21

On the website for the Association for Female Correctional Officers the issues in which they believe to be of the utmost importance are listed on the pages for legislation. The women of this organization are working hard to make very clear and sure that they have not only equal rights, but also fair access to the legal system in the instance of an emergency. For example, these women are working to improve and reform the laws about rape at a prison facility. The instance of the rape of a female prison officer at a male prison facility, and perhaps even a female facility is a scary reality that these women must worry about every day. They are undergoing a long and strenuous legal process to ensure that they are safer behind the walls of these prisons than they are now, and some of the things that this law would do would be to put the safety of these women officers at a level unseen currently. This law would put the safety of them to new standards and not allow for them to be in situations in which they could get taken advantage of, hurt, raped, or murdered. One of the most important parts to this new piece of legislation involves the idea of detecting this kind of sexual harassing behavior in the inmates and to be able to work on treatments and/or disciplinary actions to penalize this type of behavior for the inmates. The act of sexual harassment involving the female officers at some of these male prisons is utterly absurd and these women should not have to deal with this type of injustice in their everyday work field. We hope that with the push of new legislation that a safer and more comfortable and restrained workplace can be set into place for the brave women who are officers at our prison facilities.

Unit C Blog #19

When Geena Davis is speaking about the movie Thelma and Louise she really hits the nail on the head about how women are viewed in the media in this country and the kind of impact that these media devices have on the viewers and others within the United States. She talks about how people were surprised to see that their was a movie involving women with guns and that this took the nation, especially the men, by storm. People were writing news articles about this movie saying that it was bad and unnatural for women to be going about entangled in violence and murder suicides. This shows such a steep gap in gendered assumptions as our media shows non stop clips of hyper masculine men with gigantic muscles pulling the triggers on automatic guns and putting an end to entire groups of "bad" men. This type of mentality towards women and dealing with violence does some justice to Britton's case study on prisons and how men feel that women do not belong in the workplace because the men feel that the women will not be able to appropriately handle the violence aspect of a job like a prison guard. Britton suggested that prior to beginning your career path in this industry that the officers be subject to gendered training which would lead to a more humble environment. I believe that Britton has a point because many men come what seems like preset with ideals about what men should be doing as well as what women should be doing and most of this can be attributed to the medias roles in creating roles, essentially, and forcing them to be reflected on in our society. Geena Davis is right when she speaks of her movies and the media and the way that the dominate group, white men, seemed to take sort of a backlash out against the type of media that portrayed women in this way which is just biased to begin with.

Unit C Blog #17

After viewing the video for NBC's Locked Up in North Carolina we can see that many aspects of prison life as well as the life of a correctional officer are similar to Britton's study while other points are a little contrasting. I will attempt to answer all of the questions on the blog assignment while comparing and contrasting the Britton study with the NBC video.

Building relationships with the prisoners can be viewed in two very distinct ways, just as Britton's study showed. The two ways are that either the guards feel as if the prisoners are still human and that they still deserve to be treated as such or they feel as if the prisoners are too pampered and that they do not deserve to have so much access to goods and services. In the NBC video none of the guards expressed their feelings on this situation too clearly, but they seemed to take more of a strict friend approach to the prisoners situations. For example, in the kitchen one guard said that she would be there to talk to the prisoners whenever they needed someone to talk to, but she also said that she would be the first person to lock these ladies up and they were well aware of this. I believe that the officers in the NBC documentary do believe that these women are human and that they deserve to have the rights to do some of the things in which they want to do. For instance the officers let them do cosmetology related tasks such as do hair with curling irons and scissors so obviously there is some trust involved in the relationship between guard and prisoner in this situation.

In Britton's study the role of African American and Latino corrections officers did not differ than that of a Caucasian detention officer. Britton thought that perhaps there might be some sort of difference in the treatment or perhaps even the way the job works for the racial minority because of the high level of minority prisoners in prisons across the United States but this seemed to have little effect on the officers. In the NBC video there seemed to be no correlation between race of inmate, officer, or treatment of either one because of these things. The race in the women's prison in North Carolina differed tremendously with a high percentage of white inmates as well as African American. I do not believe that race, when considering correctional officers, had much to do with the study in either case.

It seemed as if the officers assumptions and perceptions of the inmates seemed to differ by the officer, but I could not see a case in which an officer was particularly hostile toward an inmate for an unidentified reason. I think the assumptions that the officers make is that these inmates are here to serve time, and that these inmates are potentially dangerous. While the officers may want to look and seem like a friend who can help out the inmate, they also have to watch out for themselves because things can go wrong very fast for an officer trying to engage an inmate with either a sexual connection or by bringing them items. The perception that the officers have toward inmates seemed to be to give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove that they do not deserve it by getting into extra trouble with fights etc. The overseer of the North Carolina prison seemed very strict and unwilling to make extra connections with the inmates. She seemed very by the book and for her this is a great thing because if she allows her employees to gain any slack or ground on her by being too friendly with the inmates then her job is at stake.

The forms of social control that were used were primarily isolation tanks in which the inmate is usually miserable and separated from human life 23 hours a day. This is a very demoralizing aspect in the prison for the inmates yet it seems to be one of the most effective because often times the only other people that the inmates can rely on is each other, and with isolation you start a journey of complete loneliness and moral adjustment. I did not see in the video that any of the guards were purposely infantilizing the inmates by nurturing them but I can guarantee that this happens after reading about Britton's study and how the guards, especially female guards, will try to nurture the inmates in a motherly type of way.

Blog #18

In Britton's study the correctional officer prison guard job is viewed primarily as a masculine type job, at least as far as the training and perception are concerned. We learned that this job is viewed as so masculine mostly because of the training process. The training process for a prison guard consists of mostly hands on training regarding the ways in which to handle a violent outbreak. It is this training mechanism that promotes the idea of a masculine, violent workplace into the minds of many of the people whom apply. Many people were noted as leaving after the training sessions. The women stated that they left because of the chances of getting hurt or being involved in a violent episode. The men were less likely to admit quitting because of this but it seemed to be the same case none the less. This type of training seems to deter many from joining this career simply because most of these people do not want to be exposed to a job in which their life could potentially be on the line. This seems like a tactic to give the career path of a prison guard more of a manly and masculine outlook, though the job very seldom resorts to violence. Many say that the role of a prison guard can be seen more like the role of a caretaker in which the guard feels obligated to care for these inmates as if they are less than human or as if they require assistance in order to live their life. In men's prisons the prisoners seem to trust in and respect the female guards more than they do the males and many say this could have something to do with the female guards being looked at upon by the prisoners as a motherly or nurturing figure. In female prisons the women seem to disrespect the female officers and rather trust in and respect the male officers because they are looked at as more of an intimidating authority figure. While the training may make the prison guard occupation out to be a gendered career path, it is certainly a position made for both males and females.

Blog #16

Going off of the information learned from Britton's study we can see that the path to becoming a correctional officer differs from person to person and from gender to gender. For women, most often times they were in a clerical position before they were hired on by the prison. Men said for the most part that they were not in office type jobs before they took a job as a correctional officer but many said they were in a field in which they excerted themselves physically in some way. The correctional officer job is not one that children aspire to be as shown by the studies in the PowerPoint and women very rarely said that they wanted to be in that field when they were of age to work. The appealing part about the job is that no previous experiance in that particular field is needed, only a high school diploma or GED is necessary, and, as the lesson described, prisons are often times in rural areas where there are not that many other job opportunities and especially ones that offer a steady salary along with benefits. I believe in this field the pay between white men and women and minority men and women are fairly similar, and this is because they all must pass the exact same test to get into the job. A correctional officer may not be the first choice for many young people in the United States but at the end of the day it provides the employess with neccesary life items. Women and men are both veiwed entirely different by the prisoners depending on whether the prisoner is a man or a women and this comes in handy when hiring both genders for the job.

Unit C Blog #15

Women and men's prisons differ in ways that go right along with the current pop culture stereotypes. In the past women were forced to do work that would be considered very ladylike. They were forced to do things like cooking and cleaning. They had to sew, garden, and prepare meals for others. This is the type of work that they thought that women should be doing. Giving the women jobs like these forced others to follow in the paths of stereotypes and believe the things that they heard and learned about in popular culture as well as the media. Men's prisons were full of manual labor. They were in an "Auburn" system in which they were very militarized and used beatings as a means of punishment. This type of system made prisoners almost slave, but in a military form as they were forced to walk around in tight conformity, never looking each other in the eyes. The women prisons were usually not associated with beatings, however there was a lot of talk of rape going on at these prisons all of the time. Male guards used to rape the female prisoners because there was a lack of judgement and respect related with prisons of the past.

Reformers often tried to fix things in these prisons by comparing the facilities with other state facilities, but serious changes to the systems were not made until the 1900's when ethical laws were set into place about how a prisoner could be treated. Many instances of different treatment for male and female prisoners were scattered throughout the United States. There were also several different types of prison systems depending on the geographic location within the U.S. Now prisons are privatized and ran independently with little interruption for the state. Prisons, as well as most other things, have fallen victim to the capitalist ways and are now seen as a high profit maker. Unfortunately.

Unit C Blog #14

Britton's theory of gendered organization involves the wage gap between working women and men in this country most notably in the same jobs. Britton talks about how this injustice occurs at the level of structure which means that these particular disadvantages for women begin to occur when the job descriptions and titles are created. The jobs are structured to pay men more than women for the same jobs as we were able to learn in the powerpoint. The Power point and the book showed us that women in certain fields such as women lawyers make only 69% of what men lawyers made within the same companies, and women corrections officers made only upwards of 80% of what men corrections officers made. Britton found that this wage gap has existed since jobs wer first created because women have never had equal opportunities to make the same kind of money that men have had. This shows that the level of injustice occuring in everday life is immense, as well as the fact that gendered organization is occuring on a daily basis.

Injustices with the pay of genders from one position to another has been the central theme of the class thus far and for good reason. Britton shows us reasons for her theory on gendered organization but that does not settle the entire case. This type of gendered reasoning is hurting our country because it shows that we still primarily favor the white angolo saxon protestants, or WASPs, and that while we have come a long way from our country's begginings, we still have not come far enough to give equal and fair rights to all genders and races. For a country that is known as the land of the free, plenty of people still struggle everyday to obtain equal pay for doing the same job as the white man.

Unit C Blog #13

Britton's comment on the stereotype of a prison guard in the popular media is a reflection of what people see in movies. A large burly man who would be willing to fight if the need came up. In reality correction officers as well as prison guards are as diverse as can be. A woman may have been considered non traditional in the role of a prison guard in the past but now things have changed. I personally have experienced the diversity of these types of guards firsthand, and the mix of women and men was as close to 50/50 as I have seen. There was nothing really traditional about anything physically involving the officers. There were fat officers, skinny officers, tall ones, short ones, men, women. The mix was fairly even. The reason that the diversity is not so common knowledge is because of the way that the media generalizes and stereotypes the idea of corrections officers to the general public. Like Britton said, when people think of these positions they think what the media has trained them to think, professional wrestling type men with short fuses who can rough up the inmates.

When people think of women in these positions, at least in the past, the media has led them to believe that the women in this field are muscular women with short hair and short fuses as well. Often times they are portrayed as lesbians and very manly. The media needs to do a better job of fairly representing the work force in physical labor fields because they way they represent these things now leads people to believe that these stereotypes should be appreciated, and that certain genders do not belong in certain fields.

Unit C Blog # 12

I believe that this type of segregation in the work force exists because the people in our country have been socialized into thinking that traditionally mean belong in the fields of manual labor and technological things, and women belong in work force such as nursing, child care, secretary and so on. The truth however is that men and women should be able to freely move between jobs and fields of interest without a hassle and with even pay. Who is to say that one gender belongs in a certain field while another does not belong at all. People have so many different passions in life and it is sad that these passions are subjected to scrutiny by people who think with a traditional, in the box type of mentality.

Women gain so many advantages by pursuing careers in non traditional roles because the sky is the limit. The women that follow their own path and decide to take on a career that would otherwise be considered a "mans job" have the advantage of breaking through these gender assignments and just like the video showed, these women are seriously enjoying their jobs in fields like mechanics, aviation and so on. They have the ability to bring another gender's perspective to the table and this proves helpful all around in the job field.

I would say that men do not necessarily "gain" by having women in the workforce economically, but they do however gain the ability to grow socially. What I mean by that is they are able to get new insights and this improves their ability to perform in certain areas of the work force. Our nation and communities as a whole most certainly gain from equal access to jobs in any market because it shows that we are a nation that holds no gender barriers, which is a problem that we are trying to escape from currently.

Women in roles such as police work and fire work certainly make the work force a more diverse place, thus making the jobs that these people perform better all around. The views of women in this job, and qualities that women naturally have helps out the job as a whole. The skills could come in any form and could help out with things such as hostage negotiations or detective work. This is not the limit in any sense however, as seen by the female police woman in the video who is an expert sniper on the SWAT team. Once these gender roles are broken, jobs will be open to finding women that are just as good if not better at men in all the traditional roles men are credited with such as strength, technology etc. Overall, the nation definitely gains from having an equal work force, and there is no arguing that.

Unit B Blog #10

The women in Chaudry's study had to adapt to many forms of survival tactics after welfare did not always come through. When these women did not have enough money to pay for overpriced childcare many times they had to turn to kin care. Kin care works better for some than others, because some families are more willing to help out their "kin" than others. In the book we heard stories about women on welfare providing kin care for other women struggling to get by and in some cases this worked out for the working mothers, but in other cases the kin care providers wanted money to provide the babysitting jobs that these mothers already could not afford. This put these women in a terrible situation, and often a situation in which they had to turn to taking time off work to drive their children from one place to another, perhaps from one cousins house to an elderly grandma in order to keep their children supervised for the length of an entire day.

In many cases the welfare that these working mothers, often single, were obtaining was very unstable to say the least. This forced the mothers to adapt in ways which would often result in putting stress on their work life. The welfare system failed more than a few mothers, as some would obtain jobs that the system would consider to have enough income to no longer require government assistance. As we saw in some of the child care videos however, this did not always mean, in fact it almost never meant that these mothers no longer needed the assistance. The welfare system also had a way of providing about half the time, ironically when the mothers seemed to need it least, and would fail to come through with a payment when the working mothers needed the money most, to pay for child care and other services.

Our current system of government assistance and the poverty line does not take into account many challenges that single mothers or even lower income earning families face. This inconsistency has forced many of these working people to adapt to life without assistance, and while many of these families would not need a handout, our social system has a way of keeping the poor poor, and the rich even richer. It is kind of like the opposite of the American Dream, where hard work pays off in wealth, because for these working class individuals, their strenuous manual labor translated to minimum wage earnings and more struggles for families attempting to raise their kids and put food on the table. Our welfare system could do a lot more in ensuring that these people, and most importantly the children have an equal and fair opportunity to food and shelter. The videos for the Unit as well as various other videos on YouTube and other video streaming websites show effectively how a halfway home or a homeless shelter is almost more dangerous and hard to survive then life on the streets.

We have a serious problem in this country. That problem is our inability to help out the less fortunate and get them off the streets. No person would wish for a life like this and for the land of "freedom and opportunity" to be unable to provide such things as help with rent, childcare, and other amenities is unfair. Not everybody is lucky enough to receive help from family and friends, and a lot of mothers are left stranded with no father to help them with the raising of a child or children every day. This sets the children up for a life of poverty to, as many teens in inner cities and heavy populated areas are forced to drop out of school to obtain minimum wage jobs to help out with bills. This does not even take into consideration ridiculously high health care bills that working class families with no insurance have to deal with.

Chaudry suggests more ways in which our system can help these working class mothers with drop in child care programs, government run child care facilities that women in the working class could utilize, and other options for these mothers. All of these suggestions would go a long way in transforming our system from one that has seemed to lose focus on the poor and struggling individuals and give them a chance to provide for their families in the best way they can. We all need a little help sometimes, and as long as their is even the slight chance that I may require assistance as well one day, I do not mind putting my tax dollars towards programs to help out the less fortunate individuals in this country.

Unit B Blog #7

As far as the readings are concerned the main factor that contributed to Julia's inability to find childcare was the lack of any help or alternate source of income. She was raising kids on her own because the father ran out and was the sole breadwinner for her family. The fact that she received absolutely no childcare did not make things any easier. She was attempting to make something of herself by attending college for an associates degree while working at the same time. The instability in her personal life as well as her inability to find a descent paying job lead to the inconsistencies of her child care. She relied on her family such as her boyfriend when the kids were first born, and when he left that forced her to find another way to acquire childcare. She split time watching the children with her sister who moved into her place for a while. Julia and her sister both worked at a local fast food place but they were not bringing in that much money per week. The arrangement stopped working out and Julia got a new job and began to have her cousin help her out with childcare. This was another change for the small children as they now had been with their third childcare provider in their earliest years. Julia would next begin to use agencies through welfare to obtain childcare, but this would fall through as well because welfare often were late with the payments. Julia struggled because she could not find a job that would pay her a wage to live on, and also because welfare was extremely unstable.

The case study about Julia and Jacquelyn is similar to the video about the family with three children that had a scholarship through United Way for daycare payments. This scholarship would be taken from them when the mother received a raise at work, but the raise at work was not significant enough to replace the scholarship, and the family was no longer able to afford it. They now relied on a substitute teacher who would be called into work fairly often. When she did get called into work the kids would be taken care of by very elderly and dependent grandparents. This created much instability for these children and the family's low paying jobs created more conflict in the situation.

Unit B Blog #11

I was able to find a couple of videos on YouTube through the CBS channel that showed the hardships of working class women. One story in particular was about a family living in Florida. The family consisted of a mother and her two daughters, one who is 16, and the other is younger than that. The mother had taken various pay cuts from her own job just to stay employed, but supporting her two daughters along with her house payment became too much for her to handle, mostly due in part to her ex husband owing them 88,000 dollars in backed up child support. The family's house ended up going into foreclosure, and now the sixteen year old daughter works for minimum wage at a retirement home and gives her mother half of the money she makes every month just to help out with the house payments. The mother was visually upset with the fact that her daughter had to help out with the bills and it showed in the way she spoke. This was a family that was self supportive when the economy was booming, but like many others, they could not maintain the lifestyle they had made for themselves after the market went downhill.

This type of story is all too typical for working class women in the United States. It is deeply unfair that she has to support these children on her own, and that the government can not do anything about the fact that her dead beat ex husband owes almost 100 grand in child support. I am sure that this type of story is mirrored all over the U.S. and it is truly sad. This working mother took pay cuts just to keep food on the table, because if she refused to take a pay cut, there is a huge chance that this family could be living in a homeless shelter. We need more government support for women in this type of situation where every day is a struggle to keep up with the bills that are a staple of modern life. If more resources were readily available to her she would be better able to keep her daughters fed and happy, which is extremely important considering these children are our future. We need to do more for the working class poor, especially the working class poor mothers that support for their children when the men will not.

Unit B Blog #9

While studying the correlation between working poor women and poor children the connection is obvious. If the mother is poor and working a low paying job, the children will be poor also, because the child is basically an extension of yourself. If the mom is working a lot to try to put food on the table, the children often mirror this kind of lifestyle and learn to adapt to the low wages of often time both of the parents, but unfortunately many times the mother is on her own with the children.

The charts on the website showed me that a lot more children than I expected were living in conditions that would be considered impoverished. This is awful because many times the children that grow up in these conditions are never able to get out of them, and they end up repeating almost the same life as their parents did before them.

The videos showed us that there is a lot you can do to attempt to put food on the table, and while it may not be much, places like the salvation army and the shelters that were discussed in the NPR stories do a lot for the poor working class. The videos showed us that without the salvation army many of the children in that Wisconsin community would have gone hungry, and that is something that no person would wish upon a child. These kids are born into the situations, they do not get a choice, and the video about the "food pantry" in Houston, Texas showed us what a great person can do. That lady took in five children that were not her own on a bus drivers salary. She was struggling to feed them all but she never gave up, she never surrendered. Places like the Houston food bank do a lot for communities such as this, because without these places and services available to the working poor, our communities would suffer. Organizations like this make you appreciate the things that can be done to help out a struggling family. I know it gave me a new insight.

Unit B Blog # 8

"Urban poverty" can create tons of problems for poor working mothers, and examples of this can be seen in cities all across the United States. In poor areas there are many things that are involved in the every day struggle of life that many people in middle class and upper class neighborhoods know nothing about. A large problem in lower class areas is the percentage of men in poverty that are doing time in jail. Without the ability to support for their families and pay the bills, men in these areas often take the easy way out, which is to sell drugs or take part in prostitution rings in the most urban areas. Many of the men who make the decision to dabble in acts such as these end up in prison, often time leaving their families alone, and their female counterparts to be the sole provider of support for the entire family. Also, drugs in areas like this are a huge problem for women too. When there seems like no escape is to be found, many women turn to drugs like cocaine and crack cocaine, especially in areas where these drugs are manufactured from stove tops. The money which should be going toward to the children and the living situations is often blown on the streets for hard drugs. Another problem for these mothers is the level of violence in the poorest areas across the country. Kill to win is all too often the case for these types of places, and murder rates soar through the roof in the most urban and poverty stricken places. It seems almost like survival of the fittest, but within our own country, and that is perhaps the most disappointing thing of all.

A poor women living in a mixed income type of environment will obviously have an advantage over the previously mentioned. In cases like this it might be easier to keep children away from the temptations of life on the street, and also it is easier to find people who live in a decent environment to provide things like child care or babysitting while the mother is working. When the overall atmosphere outside is better, for example less guns, drugs, violence, the better off the family is at attempting to maintain a stable life and helps with the ability to provide for their families. I believe that a poor, working women in a mixed income neighborhood has an extreme advantage over a poor, working woman from a more urban and poverty stricken area.

Unit B Blog #6

The cost of child care is something that is a big issue in the United States. Mothers obviously want the best for their children but more often than not they are not able to afford it. They dream of a place where their child can grow mentally and socially, while being taken care of and attended to properly. What they often get is a cheap and pretty much the only affordable option, which often shows itself in the form of license-less or non certified care givers, with the chance of extreme neglect because of the staff numbers. One article mentioned that in California child care centers are inspected only once every five years. This means that once inspection time is complete, a lack of care and/or experience can be displayed. Also in a place like L.A., people are often trying to get the cheapest form of child care that is available, and the sad part is that they may have to sacrifice extremely important things like comfort and attention among other things that are essentially what a child needs in a vulnerable age from 1-5 years old.

When using this cheap and un-preferable type of child care, parents take the risk of effecting the child's proper development. This could mean that without the proper amount of attention or the lack of an atmosphere where the child is able to grow mentally with a learning focus, or socially from adults taking the time to speak with them, there is a lot to lose. Mothers and fathers alike obviously want for their children what will make them happy as well as what will increase their chances of getting out of a situation where poverty is the clearest option, but without even average level child care, often times they are losing the opprotunity for their children to break the cycle and escape this lifestyle. This is a risk that most parents hope they do not have to take.

Unit B Blog #5

I believe that it was easy to see from the videos that the problem of the working poor is a very public problem. In the interviews on the streets of what looked like a very metropolitan city nearly every person that the interviewers spoke too were well aware of the problem of the working poor and the poverty line. It is also strange to see the view of the government and what they view as the poverty line because even the common citizens on the street knew that it is nearly impossible, or at least an everyday struggle, to try to survive off even double of what the government considers the poverty line.

There are certain paths or ways that can be navigated through in life that make it almost impossible to survive. It can be seen in examples all over the United States how people can be born into a life with nearly no chance of escaping, comparable almost to a caste system but with a hint of "American Dream." If one is born into a family of let's say, a single mother, and they cannot afford to stay current with their bills, then children often have to drop out of high school to help with money. When something like this happens the best that child can now do is a GED, and in a market where education is a give in for most jobs, the opportunity to make a living wage can be eliminated and thus we have another family starting down the path of attempting to live below the poverty line. I believe that additional government help is essential for these peoples survival, especially in large cities like New York, L.A., and Chicago.

Unit A Blog #4

I do not think that there are any certain characteristics of a "good family life." It is all in the eyes of the beholder, because if you think that your way of life is good and it makes you happy than who is to tell you that you are wrong and would try to push their views upon you? A family life can be good on a lot of different levels, as long as the children in the family enjoy their life, because childhood cannot be replaced.

A career life and a family life can be successfully mixed as long as both can be mixed. For instance, some jobs will allow for you to talk to your loved ones on the phone, which is great and makes for a pleasant work and family relationship. Other jobs that it is not possible to communicate with your loved ones while on the job can also work out just fine though, as work for the day can be left at work and when you get home the attention shifts to the people who you care for and the people that are considered to be your family. There is no right or wrong way to balance these two lives, and people make it happen all across the world everyday by making certain sacrifices.

A mix of these two can be difficult to achieve if you have a very demanding job, such as one that requires you to constantly be focused on the work place and do work from home. A job that requires travel can also make home life a little more difficult. To me it seems that the idea of the family having a breadwinner is a thing of the past and that today's society allows for a healthy mix of work and family with more couples both attending work regularly. Like I said before though, there is no right or wrong way to attempt to balance these things.

I would say that the only thing that becomes more complex by gender work equality would be the fact that the child or children do not have the constant emotional attachment to say, a stay at home mom, and perhaps they have to spend a lot more time with after school programs or nannies, or babysitters. This definitely shows that there is a change going on but at the same time it is almost necessary in this day and age to have both members of the couple working if they want to have things like a house and if they want to be able to put food on the table for their kids. Other than that i think that this will soon not be considered complex, but rather the norm for families attempting to live in what is considered a middle class, or even lower class way of life, but it is hard to leave a class, even without a caste system.

There are many ways in which an employer can be more open to the needs of their employees when it comes to their family lives. Things like at work day cares, or even the simple ability to contact your loved ones from the place you work makes it easier to do the balance act of work and home at the same time. I'm sure that more jobs will attempt to make changes so that their employees can provide for home too, but in a place like the US where capitalism is the way of life, it is hard for these employers to even want their workers having home life at work because it could effect their job performance. Which is a sacrifice they are not willing to make in most cases.

Support is something that is considered good in most walks of life, it is the thing that keeps you going when you feel like it is time to give up. If every person in this world cared more about each other and was more willing to help without really asking "whats in it for me?" then we could essentially reach a harmony in the world. The balancing of priorities would become that much easier, and the world would be a better place.

Unit A Blog #3

In my personal life I have experienced carework in a way that both of my parents worked for all of the time in my life that I can remember. They utilized things like after school programs and youth camps and such to ensure that they were able to pay the mortgage on our house and put food on the table. They also were able to continue to work by hiring babysitters and things like that, which also led to them being able to have a social life as well. I think that tying in work with your family is very important, but at the same time it is also important to have a social life as well. This is because all people have needs, and some of the needs must be addressed even when facing the busiest of schedules. Carework is so vital to our nation and it would be nice if the government could incorporate more programs other than just leaving all of the camps and programs to the City sectors of the state government. The government could make the overall chemistry of the nation, and especially these mothers, raise significantly and the morale of these anxious groups of young mothers would be lifted at the fact that they can successfully provide for their families, physically, emotionally, and monetarily.

I believe that the term as well as the idea for "women's work" needs to be forgotten about. It exists because of some invisible line drawn in the sand about who's duties are who's, and what a man or a women should or should not have to do around the house. This makes you wonder that if there was no divide between the things that either gender could do around the house, then the topic of the situation as a whole would dissolve. In this day and age people need to take on the responsibility of performing multiple duties in a household in order to keep the stability and happiness of the house raised. We have grown up to think that certain duties should be performed by men, and others by women, and I am a victim to some level of this thinking as well because of the way I grew up. In my family my dad or myself mows the lawn and jobs like this because we would rather do those jobs than some of the other ones around the house and my mother has been vocal about doing things such as the laundry in a way that she would rather do the laundry than mow the lawn for instance. Whether it comes down to personal preference or the way we have always been socialized is up for debate.

Unit A Blog #2

When trying to determine sex segregation and the role that it plays at ASU I try to start with the areas that are a part of my own education. I am a Justice major with an English minor so it seems that most of the teachers that I have had in my most recent years here have been females. I cannot really see many other trends in that sense however, as I have had a healthy mix of male and female professors thus far in my college career. I think that it is obvious that this sex segregation exists in a lot of job fields, for example construction, auto care, among other things for men, and daycare jobs, nannying, and many more fields for women. It is not a given that these specific jobs will be only one or the other, but the trends tend to go in that direction, as explained in one of the videos from this section.

For me it is hard to attempt to visualize the factor of socialization in my own home because I am not accustomed to analyzing myself in the microscope. My father is a mechanic which I guess could be scene a a job that is usually men, but his work life never affected me in a way where i wanted to become exactly that. My mother works in the recreation department for the City of Chandler along with myself, and the mix of men and women in the job environment there is about as diverse as it can be. My home life, to me, doesn't seem to have affected the way i was socialized, and both of my parents provided for the family with jobs of their own. My father made more money I believe but this was he had opportunity to get various certifications for his career and obtain raises. Even with things like work and school, in the places where I am at least, gender roles are not blatantly obvious.

I believe the argument about the wage gap and the rate of job loss is kind of like comparing apples to oranges. They are both able to be tied in with one another, but they should not be looked at side by side. The wage gap is obviously unfair, with women earning less in the same positions that men hold. The idea that men having a higher job loss rate is true, yet irrelevant to the initial argument about the wage difference. In one of the videos a man mentioned that women's wages were increasing faster than that of men, but this is an invalid point, because if two people are equally qualified there should be no difference in the first place. Women should be, and should have always been, making the same amount of money as men, because if they are not, which they still are not, that makes this a patriarchy.

Hello my name is Justin Bayer and I am a senior. My major is Justice Studies with a minor in English. I hope to work in the field of human rights in a global justice organization and to write about these injustices for the interested public. I also would like for my job to eventually pay for me to get my masters degree.

I took this class because it is an upper division course that I need for graduation. If I do gain anything from this course I would hope that it would be a new outlook because that is the best part, in my opinion, of taking a justice course.

I am very interested in many aspects of justice, mostly focusing on the enormous amount of current inequalities that this planet has. I do not know of a perfect world, or how one could be created, but it seems to me that mankind is on a crash course for permanent instability if changes are not made.