Using data from 80 in-depth qualitative interviews with women randomly sampled from New York City, I ask: how do women develop expectations about their future workforce participation? Using an intersectional approach, I find that women’s expectations about workforce participation stem from gendered, classed, and raced ideas of who works full-time. Socioeconomic status, race, gender, and sexuality influenced early expectations about work and the process through which these expectations developed. Women from white and Latino working-class families were evenly divided in their (...) expectations about their future workforce participation, while the vast majority of white, Asian, African American, and Latina middle-class women expected to work continually as adults. Unlike their working-class white and Hispanic peers, all of the working-class Black respondents developed expectations that they would work continuously as adults. The intersections of race, class, and gender play a central role in shaping women’s expectations about their participation in paid work. (shrink)

Despite broader changes in the health care industry and gender dynamics in the United States, men continue to be a minority in the traditionally female occupation of nursing. As a caring profession, nursing emphasizes empathy, emotional engagement, and helping others—behaviors and skills characterized as antithetical to hegemonic notions of a tough, detached, and independent masculine self. The current study examines how nursing and related organizations “mobilize masculinities” in their efforts to recruit men to nursing. Analyzing recruitment materials, I assess the (...) mobilization and construction of masculinities in the context of textual, spoken, and visual content. Results reveal how organizations simultaneously mobilize aspects of hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinities through ideological gendering practices. I identify three distinct types of mediated mobilization: full hegemonic co-option, partial hegemonic co-option, and alternative construction of masculinities. Empirically, the study illustrates the content of nursing recruitment material aimed at men and the ongoing contradictions endemic to men’s entry into caring professions. Complementing existing structural and interactional approaches, the study advances theory on how the mobilization of masculinities operates as an ideological gendering practice at the organizational level. (shrink)

Drawing on findings from an original national survey experiment, we unpack Americans’ views on the employment of mothers and fathers with young children. This study provides a fuller account of contemporary attitudes than is available from surveys such as the General Social Survey. After seeing vignettes that vary the circumstances in which married mothers, single mothers, and married fathers make decisions about paid work and caregiving, the respondents’ views swing from strong support to deep skepticism about a parent’s work participation, (...) depending on the parent’s specific job conditions and family circumstances. When a mother, whether married or single, is satisfied with her job and her family depends on her income, respondents overwhelmingly support the option to work. Conversely, when a father is dissatisfied with his job and the family does not depend on his income, respondents generally support the option to stay home. These findings provide insight regarding the “gender stall” thesis by showing that Americans’ views depend heavily on the circumstances they believe parents are facing. This more nuanced view highlights the importance of social context in the allocation of paid work and caregiving for both mothers and fathers. (shrink)

This article suggests that looking at the ways in which subjects relate to and internalise gender norms is a fruitful way to explore socially constructed differences between masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Throughout this article, I am in dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity as I focus on practices of subject formation that I denote as ‘logics’ of subject formation. I propose several key ways to distinguish a feminine logic of subject formation from a masculine logic of (...) subjectivity. I suggest that femininity is a multiplicitous, self-proliferating strategy that forecloses truth as a means for achieving selfhood. Alternatively, I postulate that masculinity tends to masquerade as an (oftentimes failed) achievement that is singular and self-consolidating and that generates truth as a means for realising selfhood. In order to contextualise these distinctions between masculinity and femininity, I look to the recent influx of American women into masculine-marked domains such as the workforce, politics and sports without a corresponding entrance of men into feminine-marked domains. Known as the stalled gender revolution, these shifts, I argue, have created the context for the gendered divergences in subjectivity I suggest here. Focusing on examples of women in sports to illustrate these distinctions, I provide a detailed characterisation of femininity as a logic of subject formation. As such, I argue that this approach to gender may provide relevant insights to understanding gender practice, agency and resistance, particularly with respect to Butler’s formulation of gender performativity and subversion. I conclude by providing some preliminary thoughts on how to re-envision agency and subversion in light of the proposed framework. (shrink)

Stay-at-home fathers challenge norms related to masculinity and gendered divisions of parenting roles. We conduct a content analysis of 94 print news articles about at-home fathers published 1987–2016 in the United States, identifying key themes and comparing results with our earlier research on news depictions of at-home mothers. We also analyze national trends in fathers staying home using Current Population Survey data to understand contexts in which articles were published. Articles were family-centric and disproportionately focused on economic elites, emphasizing their (...) “choice” to stay home, but economic reasons for fathers staying home were described more commonly than in portrayals of mothers. Stigmatization experiences were pervasive in articles, appearing more commonly when staying home was reported as discretionary, but less commonly when staying home resulted from involuntary unemployment in recent periods. Portrayals reflect, reinforce, contribute to, and challenge father-as-provider norms, mirroring changes in masculinity norms over time and revealing cultural ambivalence toward at-home fathers. (shrink)

Using a multimethod approach, this article examines the link between class and masculinities by comparing the way two groups—professional men and working-class men —practice fatherhood. First, the authors show that these two groups practice different types of masculinity as they engage in different kinds of fatherhood. Physicians emphasize “public fatherhood,” which entails attendance at public events but little involvement in the daily care of their children. In contrast, EMTs are not only involved in their children's public events but also emphasize (...) “private fatherhood,” which entails involvement in their daily care. Second, the authors suggest that these differing types of involvement can be explained by the contrasting employment conditions of each group as well the gender order of their families, especially the divergent labor market positions of spouses and the division of parenting. The authors conclude by arguing that these working-class fathers are “undoing gender” while professional fathers reproduce the conventional gender order. (shrink)