Tag Archives: women

Valentine’s Day and Fossil Fuels

Posted in Climate change, Gender, Teaching, Visual communications by

If you’ve ever been to a workshop on how to write an op-ed, you’ll know that the leaders spend a lot of time talking about the need for your piece to have a “hook.” This usually means finding a way to link what you want to say to some kind of timely news event. Most of these are fairly straightforward. On Mother’s Day, you publish your op-ed about the need for state-sponsored maternity leave. On Valentine’s Day, you write about worker abuses and pesticide poisoning in the international cut-flower industry. Or, for another Valentine’s Day idea, you write about fossil fuels.

Wait, what? How do fossil fuels go together with Valentine’s Day? Well, watch “Breaking Up With Fossil Fuels is Hard to Do” for an example of a masterful, if somewhat unexpected, media “hook.”

 

 

Then, use it in your classrooms!

  • For media studies classes, use it as an example of a media “hook,” as described above. Or use it after showing this video first. Then use both videos to analyze framing, strategic political communication, and how political actors respond to the messages of their opponents.
  • For environmental studies, social movements, or politics classes, use the video above and this video as a way to get students interested in the politics of climate change. Both videos tell simplified, politicized stories. What truth is there in both videos? What are the the different plans that already exist for lowering our use of fossil fuels? What political forces oppose these plans? How likely are the plans to succeed in the contemporary political moment? What would it take for them to succeed?
  • For gender classes, watch the first video and ask students, “How is gender being used in this vide? What does it mean that the “fossil fuels” character is female? That the narrator is female? That the story is tied to Valentine’s Day and breaking up? What stereotypes about women are being used to help make the point that we shouldn’t “Break up with fossil fuels?”

Thank you to Jean Boucher and Milton Takei for sharing these videos on the environmental sociology listserve of the American Sociological Association. Happy teaching!

On Becoming a Public Sociologist: Amplifying Women’s Voices in the Quest for Environmental Justice

Posted in Environmental justice, Gender, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Research & writing, San Joaquin Valley, Voices from the Valley by

60853_9781452242026I received my free copy of the recently published Sociologists in Action on Inequalities: Race, Class and Gender in the mail this week, and turned immediately to the short essay I contributed. My piece, “On Becoming a Public Sociologist: Amplifying Women’s Voices in the Quest for Environmental Justice” describes my process of becoming a public sociologist through the Voices from the Valley multi-media project on environmental justice activism in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley. The chapter is meant to show undergrads some of where sociology might take them. It was a fun project, and I’m looking forward to reading the other contributions in the book.

 

 

Here’s the full citation for my piece:

  • Perkins, Tracy. 2015. “On Becoming a Public Sociologist: Amplifying Women’s Voices in the Quest for Environmental Justice.” Pp. 88-92 in Sociologists in Action on Inequalities: Race, Class and Gender edited by S. K. White, J. M. White and K. O. Korgen. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

 

And here’s a citation to the scholarly article that grew out of the same set of interviews that formed the basis of Voices from the Valley:

  • Perkins, Tracy. 2012. “Women’s Pathways Into Activism: Rethinking the Women’s Environmental Justice Narrative in California’s San Joaquin Valley.” Organization & Environment, 25(1):76-94.

 

 

Teaching “Women and Work” through Music Videos

Posted in Gender, Teaching by

When I taught “Women and Work” this winter, I had a great time experimenting with regular use of music videos. I played one just before class as students were coming in each day. I selected some of the songs myself (with help from the Sociologists for Women in Society listserve – thanks!), and others were suggested by students as part of an extra credit assignment (see more on the logic of incorporating student-generated content into the classroom in my post on the subject here). After the song finished, the person who proposed using it said a few words about why s/he chose it. Then, we might have a brief class discussion about the song and/or refer back to it for more analysis later in the class. Some of the songs expressed feminist ideals, some the opposite of that, and many were in ambiguous middle ground.

I found that playing songs as students are coming in had a number of benefits. First, it made it easier to start class on time with little disruption from late or chatty students. As they arrive they focus on watching the video and by the time  it ends they are quiet and ready to start class. Also, for the first half of the quarter or so, students also seemed to be arriving earlier than usual so as not to miss the song. Second, it gave us a fun way to expand the reach of our reading beyond the classroom and out into the pop culture in which they are immersed in day-to-day life.

See the complete syllabus, including the extra-credit assignment, here.

Here’s what we listened to, listed with my reading assignments so you can see how the songs relate to the class content.

UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION

January 7th                        

  • SONG: 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton
  • Corbett, Christianne & Catherine Hill. 2012. “Graduating to a Pay Gap: The Earnings of Women and Men One Year After College Graduation.” Washington, D.C.: AAUW.

January 9th               

  • SONG: Gonna Be an Engineer by Peggy Seeger
  • Amott, Teresa and Julie Matthaei. 2001. “Race, Class, Gender, and Women’s Works.” Pp. 234-242 in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 4th ed., edited by M. L. Andersen and P. H. Collins. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
  • Padavic, Irene & Barbara Reskin. 2002. Women and Men at Work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Ch. 3: “An Overview of Sex Inequality at Work”

UNIT 2: KEY CONCEPTS

January 14th                     Progress and Virtue

  • SONG: If You See(k) Amy by Brittany Spears
  • Faludi, Susan. 1991. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown Publishers.  Ch. 3: Backlashes Then and Now.
  • Boryczka, Jocelyn M. 2012. Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue and Vice in Backlash Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Introduction: Moral Guardians but Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue and Vice in the Western Political Imaginary

January 16th                     Wages and Work

  • SONG: She Works Hard for the Money by Donna Summers
  • Kessler-Harris, Alice. 2001. “The Wage Conceived: Value and Need as Measures of a Woman’s Worth.” Pp. 239-252 in Feminist Frontiers, 5th ed., edited by L. Richardson, V. Taylor and N. Whittier. New York: McGraw Hill.
  • Sacks, N. E. and C. Marrone. 2004. Gender and Work in Today’s World: A Reader. Cambridge: Westview Press. Ehrenreich: “Nickel and Dimed: Selling in Minnesota”

January 21st                     Gendered Organizations

  • ADVERTISEMENT: Virgin Atlantic – 25 Years, Still Red Hot (thanks Meeno Kohli!)
  • Acker, Joan. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations,” Gender & Society 4(2):139-158.
  • Schilt, Kristen. 2006. “Just One of the Guys? How Transmen Make Gender Visible at Work.” Gender & Society 20(4):465-490.

January 23rd                     Structure and Choice

  • TRAILER: The Wolf of Wall Street
  • England, Paula. 2010. “The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled.” Gender & Society 24:149-166.
  • Reskin, Barbara F., & Michelle L. Maroto. 2011. “What Trends? Whose Choices?: Comment on England.” Gender & Society 25:81-87.

UNIT 3: WOMEN’S WORK THROUGHOUT US HISTORY

January 28th                     Historical Overview

  • SONG: Rosie the Riveter by The Four Vagabonds
  • Coleman, Margaret S. 2000. “Undercounted and Underpaid Heroines: The Path to Equal Opportunity in Employment During the Twentieth Century.” WorkingUSA 3(5):37-65.
  • Padavic, Irene & Barbara Reskin. 2002. Women and Men at Work. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Ch. 2: Gendered Work in Time and Place

January 30th                     Racialized Experiences over Time

  • SONG: Strange Fruit by Billy Holiday
  • Ammott, Teresa & Julie Matthaei. 1996. Race, Gender and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States. Boston, MA: South End Press. “Climbing Gold Mountain: Asian American Women” and “We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible: African-American Women”

UNIT 4: THE DAILY EXPERIENCE OF WORK

February 4th                      Race, Class and Gender at Work

  • SONG: El Picket Sign by El Teatro Campesino (on the Rolas de Aztlan: Songs of the Chicano Movement cd)
  • García-Lopez, Gladys & Denise A. Segura. 2008. “’They are testing you all the time’: Negotiating Dual Femininities among Chicana Attorneys.” Feminist Studies 34(1/2):229-258.
  • Castaneda, Xochitl & Patricia Zavella. 2003. “Changing Constructions of Sexuality and Risk: Migrant Mexican Women Farmworkers in California.” The Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8(2):126-151.

February 6th                                  Sexualized Workplaces

  • SONG: I’m ‘n Luv Wit A Stripper by T-Pain
  • Jefreys, Sheila. 2009. Keeping Women Down and Out: The Strip Club Boom and the Reinforcement of Male Dominance. Signs 34(1):151-173.
  • Zinn, Maxin Baca, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael A. Messner, eds. 2011. Gender Through the Prism of Difference. New York: Oxford University Press. Patti A. Guiffre and Christine L. Williams: “Boundary Lines: Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants”

February 11th                                  Emotional Labor

  • SONG: Run the World (Girls) by Beyoncé
  • Wharton, Amy S. 2009. “The Sociology of Emotional Labor.” Annual Review of Sociology. 35:147-165.
  • Lois: “Peaks and Valleys: The Gendered Emotional Culture of Rescue Workers”

UNIT 5: FAMILY LIFE AND WORK

February 13th                                  Parenting and Work

February 18th                                  Outsourcing Family Work

  • SONG: Sadie’s Servant Room Blues by Hattie Burleson
  • Duffy, Mignon. 2007. “Doing the Dirty Work: Gender, Race, and Reproductive Labor in Historical Perspective.” Gender and Society 21:313-336.
  • Sacks, N. E. and C. Marrone. 2004. Gender and Work in Today’s World: A Reader. Cambridge: Westview Press. Hondagneu-Sotelo: “Domestica: Maid in L.A.”

UNIT 6:  WOMEN MAKING CHANGE 

February 20th                                  Women and Activism

  • SONG: Girls Lie Too by Terri Clark
  • Wallace, Aubrey. 1993. Eco-Heroes: Twelve Tales of Environmental Victory. San Francisco, CA: Mercury House. “Mrs. Gibbs Goes to Washington.”
  • Perkins, Tracy. 2012. “Women’s Pathways Into Activism: Rethinking the Women’s Environmental Justice Narrative in California’s San Joaquin Valley.” Organization & Environment 25(1):76-94.

February 25th                                  Women and the Labor Movement

  • SONG: We Were There by Bev Grant and the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus
  • Boris, Eileen and Annelise Orleck. 2011. “Feminism and the Labor Movement: A Century of Collaboration and Conflict.” New Labor Forum 20(1):33-41.

March 4th                                              Case Study: Facebook’s Cheryl Sandberg

  • Sandberg, Cheryl. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Chapters 1-6

March 6th                                              Case Study: Facebook’s Cheryl Sandberg

UNIT 7: STUDENT-LED LEARNING 

March 11th                                              Student Presentations

March 13th                                               Student Presentations

March 19th                                              Student Presentations