invisible mechanisms

A detailed Summary of invisible mechanisms

The "glass escalator" is the term the author uses to define an invisible phenomenon she sees propelling men in women's fields of work. Williams is certain that men are pushed ahead when in predominately female jobs and slightly skews her research data because of this slant. Although she jumps to her conclusions at times, overall Williams comes up with satisfactory findings based on thorough research techniques that men and women are not equally represented in certain professions because of discrimination.

A saving grace of Williams paper is that she states on the first page: "Although there are many possible reasons for the continuing preponderance of women in these fields (nurses, elementary teachers, librarians and social workers), the focus of this paper is discrimination." (Pg. 295) She states that men are pressured to move out of traditionally female held positions to higher status, and usually higher paying, jobs simply because they are male. She also says that men are given this positions on a much more frequent basis not based on merit, but because they are male. The problem with this opinion of the author is that the interviews

Lastly I have problems with Williams findings involving nepotism on the bottom on page 301. She says that a male nurse who only received marginal grades on performance was given a prestigious position in the emergency room by virtue of being friends with the physician in charge. Nepotism is a sex neutral mechanism as far I am concerned, and females have been advanced as well as males in lieu of any actual competence but sheerly on connections in many professions. The author seems to be stretching every interview to get as many examples as she can to back up her theory.

In one area the author seems to have actually swayed her subjects opinion by an extremely non-objective line of questioning. "The more I think about it, through our discussion, I'm sure that's a large part of why I wound up in administration . . . in fact, I don't know if I fully answered a question that you asked a little while ago about how being male contributed to my advancing in the field." (Pg. 299) The man here goes on to say that because he is male he feels he competed for the job more fiercely than would a women. Since when is being ambitious a male trait? There are female judges on the supreme court and Hillary Clinton among other women (Elizabeth Dole) strive extremely fervently in the political arena for more prestigious jobs. My point of skewing the data the author is collecting can be found in the quote above "being male contributed to my advancing in the field," Williams phrases the question in such a way as to insinuate that being male is in itself a method of advancing in a field.

William's very next example is of a librarian who works in children's collections receiving

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Approximate Word count = 1130
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science