Christine L Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 81660 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christine L Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christine L |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS C L |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3740-6138 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 85 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1493 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 81 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Perceived Importance of Types and Characteristics of Support to Informal Caregivers among Spouse Caregivers of Persons with Dementia in Sweden: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire-Based Study
Informal caregivers play a crucial role in the care of individuals with dementia, and their caregiving may significantly impact their own health and well-being. This cross-sectional survey study focuses on the perceived importance of various types and characteristics of formal support in a convenience sample of caregivers aged 65 years or older (N = 175) caring for a spouse with dementia. Participants completed a questionnaire containing 17 items…
Still a Man's World: Men Who Do Women's Work
Social Inequality in High Tech: How Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Structure the World's Most Powerful Industry
The high-tech industry is the world's most powerful and profitable industry, and it is almost entirely dominated by white, Asian American, and Asian men. This article reviews research on social inequality in the high-tech industry, focusing on gender and race/ethnicity. It begins with a discussion of alternative ways of defining the sector and an overview of its history and employment demographics. Next is an analysis of gendered and racialized p…
Feminist Sociology and the Future of Work: A Tribute to Joan Acker and the AJS Special Issue on Women
Precarious Professionals: Layoffs and Gender Inequality in the Oil and Gas Industry
As mass layoffs, downsizing, and corporate restructuring have become standard organizational practices, professional work is becoming less stable. We examine the effects of this turbulence on gender inequality through a case study of layoffs in the oil and gas industry. Using a longitudinal survey that followed a cohort of recently hired scientists and engineers at a multinational oil and gas company from 2012–2016, we find that a major reduction…
Negative Impact and Positive Value of Caregiving in Spouse Carers of Persons with Dementia in Sweden
(1) Background: Spouse carers of persons with dementia (PwD) are particularly vulnerable to negative outcomes of care, yet research rarely focuses on their caregiving situation. This study explores factors associated with the positive value and negative impact of caregiving in spouse carers of PwD in Sweden. (2) Methods: The study was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey, with a convenience sample of spouse carers of PwD ( n = 163). The q…
Jessie Bernard, Feminism, and “Her” Marriage to Luther Bernard
This essay is part of a special section entitled “Legacies of Sociology’s Past.” My work addresses the contributions of Jessie Bernard
Life Support: The Problems of Working for a Living
For most Americans, paid work is their primary means of support. A small percentage of Americans are wealthy enough that they do not need a job, but most people rely on their paychecks for survival. The coronavirus pandemic starkly reveals the limitations of this dependence. In this address, I draw attention to three "problems of working for a living": lack of access to jobs, poor job quality, and inequality in the workplace. I will argue that ad…
Où placer la ligne rouge ? La qualification du harcèlement sexuel dans les restaurants
Comme plusieurs travaux l’ont montré, les salariées sont majoritairement exposées au harcèlement sexuel et souffrent des répercussions négatives qu’il engendre ; pourtant, seule une minorité de ces femmes qualifie ces expériences vécues de « harcèlement sexuel ». Dans le cadre d’une enquête sur l’identification du harcèlement sexuel, des entretiens approfondis avec dix-huit serveuses et serveurs ont été menés dans des restaurants d’Austin, au Tex…
The Politics of Value: Three Movements to Change How We Think about the Economy
Child Support Queens and Disappointing Dads: Gender and Child Support Compliance
Despite increased spending on child support enforcement in the United States over the past 30 years, child support collections remain around 40 percent. Child support is a gendered phenomenon, typically involving a transfer of funds from noncustodial fathers to custodial mothers in most cases. We argue that new norms of separated fatherhood and motherhood may contribute to low rates of child support compliance. An analysis of 21 in-depth intervie…
The Gendered Discourse of Work-Family Balance in the Oil and Gas Industry
U.S. corporations have been slow to adopt family-friendly workplace accommodations, despite decades of research demonstrating their value. Some hope that the millennial generation will spur corporate change because, compared with older generations of workers, young people purportedly strive for more balanced lifestyles and gender equality in their relationships. This study examines the experiences of early career scientists and engineers employed…
Gender and Work
Over the past 30 years, the US labor market has undergone fundamental structural changes. In the past, loyal and hardworking employees could expect to spend their entire careers working for a single employer. But starting in the 1980s, globalization, deregulation, and the decline of unions transformed this standard employment contract between workers and employers. Today, employment has become more precarious, unstable, and insecure. This essay r…
Crossing Over: Interdisciplinary Research on “Men who do Women’s Work”
Gender In/equality in Worker‐owned Businesses
Gender scholars have developed a significant body of scholarship on the reproduction of gender inequality in work organizations. However, the vast majority of that research has been conducted in non‐profit organizations or in employer‐owned businesses. In this article, we review the existing literature on gender in worker‐owned businesses. We begin by defining three distinctly different types of worker‐owned businesses: companies with employee st…
Consuming for the Social Good: Marketing, Consumer Citizenship, and the Possibilities of Ethical Consumption
Can consumers be socially responsible? Can the interests of consumers, corporations, and the overall society be reconciled? Traditionally, sociologists have conceptualized consumerism as enhancing individual wellbeing at the expense of moral citizenship. Yet throughout US history, popular discourse has linked consumption to the social good. Business schools currently expound this belief in their 'principles of marketing' courses. Popular textbook…
Corporate Diversity Programs and Gender Inequality in the Oil and Gas Industry
Since the 1980s, major U.S. corporations have embraced diversity as a management strategy to increase the number of women in top jobs. Diversity management programs include targeted recruitment, hiring, and promotions policies; mentoring programs; affinity groups; and diversity training. Few of these programs have proven effective in achieving gender diversity in the corporate world, despite their widespread popularity. To explore the reasons for…
The Happy Marriage of Capitalism and Feminism
Sheryl Sandberg was not a feminist when she was attending college in the 1980s. She and her friends thought that feminists were angry, man-hating, humorless, and irrelevant. She has since come to the realization that men run the world, and she has launched a new feminist movement called ‘‘Lean In’’ to change that. Women lead only 17 of the 195 independent countries and 21 of the Fortune 500 companies; getting more women into these top offices is …
The Glass Escalator, Revisited: Gender Inequality in Neoliberal Times, SWS Feminist Lecturer
When women work in male-dominated professions, they encounter a 'glass ceiling' that prevents their ascension into the top jobs. Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of the 'glass escalator,' my term for the advantages that men receive in the so-called women's professions (nursing, teaching, librarianship, and social work), including the assumption that they are better suited than women for leadership positions. In this article, I revisit m…
Acculturation and Health Status Among Hispanic American Elders
PURPOSE: Hispanic Americans are at risk for health-related problems. Disparities in diseases such as diabetes and obesity, poor access to health services, and lack of health insurance have placed Hispanic Americans at a disadvantage. Sociocultural factors such as acculturation and its relationship to health require further investigation. The primary purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between acculturation and health in Hispani…
Gender, Work, and Enlightenment
Gendered Organizations in the New Economy
Gender scholars draw on the 'theory of gendered organizations' to explain persistent gender inequality in the workplace. This theory argues that gender inequality is built into work organizations in which jobs are characterized by long-term security, standardized career ladders and job descriptions, and management controlled evaluations. Over the past few decades, this basic organizational logic has been transformed. In the so-called new economy,…
From Organizational Sexuality to Queer Organizations: Research on Homosexuality and the Workplace
Organization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the ‘sexuality in organizations’ perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers’ sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to invest…
Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women's Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World
Looking Good and Sounding Right: Aesthetic Labor and Social Inequality in the Retail Industry
Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu's theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor pract…
The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the 'Female' Professions
Journal Article The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions Get access Christine L. Williams Christine L. Williams University of Texas at Austin Correspondence to: Williams, Department of Sociology, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1088. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1 August 1992, Pages 253–267, https://doi.org…
Looking Good and Sounding Right: Aesthetic Labor and Social Inequality in the Retail Industry
Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu's theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor pract…
Gendered Organizations in the New Economy
Gender scholars draw on the 'theory of gendered organizations' to explain persistent gender inequality in the workplace. This theory argues that gender inequality is built into work organizations in which jobs are characterized by long-term security, standardized career ladders and job descriptions, and management controlled evaluations. Over the past few decades, this basic organizational logic has been transformed. In the so-called new economy,…
Sexuality in the Workplace: Organizational Control, Sexual Harassment, and the Pursuit of Pleasure
Flirting, bantering, and other sexual interactions are commonplace in work organizations. Not all of these interactions constitute harassment or assault; consensual sexual relationships, defined as those reflecting positive and autonomous expressions of workers' sexual desire, are also prevalent in the workplace and are the focus of this paper. We begin by reviewing research on the distinction between sexual harassment and sexual consent. Next we…
The Glass Escalator, Revisited: Gender Inequality in Neoliberal Times, SWS Feminist Lecturer
When women work in male-dominated professions, they encounter a 'glass ceiling' that prevents their ascension into the top jobs. Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of the 'glass escalator,' my term for the advantages that men receive in the so-called women's professions (nursing, teaching, librarianship, and social work), including the assumption that they are better suited than women for leadership positions. In this article, I revisit m…
The Importance of Researcher's Gender in the in-Depth Interview: Evidence from Two Case Studies of Male Nurses
Sociologists who use in-depth interview methods have become sensitized to the ways that race-ethnicity and class can form barriers to rapport with respondents, but the question of gender has been largely unexamined. This article compares data from two independently conducted in-depth interview studies of male nurses: one by a female researcher and one by a male researcher. Observed differences in how the men in the samples framed their responses …
Corporate Diversity Programs and Gender Inequality in the Oil and Gas Industry
Since the 1980s, major U.S. corporations have embraced diversity as a management strategy to increase the number of women in top jobs. Diversity management programs include targeted recruitment, hiring, and promotions policies; mentoring programs; affinity groups; and diversity training. Few of these programs have proven effective in achieving gender diversity in the corporate world, despite their widespread popularity. To explore the reasons for…
Boundary Lines: Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants
Research has shown that a majority of employed women experience sexual harassment and suffer negative repercussions because of it; yet only a minority of these women label their experiences 'sexual harassment.' To investigate how people identify sexual harassment, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 waitpeople in restaurants in Austin, Texas. Most respondents worked in highly sexualized work environments. Respondents labeled sexual advance…
Makeup at Work: Negotiating Appearance Rules in the Workplace
This study seeks to understand women's use of makeup in the workplace. The authors analyze 20 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of women who work in a variety of settings to examine the appearance rules that women confront at work and how these rules reproduce assumptions about sexuality and gender. The authors found that appropriate makeup use is strongly associated with assumptions about health, heterosexuality, and credibility in the wo…
Male god imagery and female submission: Lessons from a southern baptist ladies' bible class
Mothers in 'Good' and 'Bad' Part-time Jobs: Different Problems, Same Results
Part-time work schedules are a popular option for many women struggling to reconcile the competing demands of employment and motherhood. They are controversial among feminists because they are associated with job penalties that promote gender inequality. Previous research on this topic has focused on issues confronting women workers in professional and managerial jobs. In this article, we compare and contrast the experiences of women in professio…
The gay-friendly closet
The Locker Room and the Dorm Room: Workplace Norms and the Boundaries of Sexual Harassment in Magazine Editing
Workers in a variety of occupations are subjected to unwanted sexual behaviors, but many do not label their experiences as sexual harassment because they are institutionalized requirements of their jobs. Yet, even in highly sexualized occupations, boundary lines are drawn between acceptable and unacceptable, harassing behavior. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, we explore how the editorial staff at two magazines make these …
No Retribution for Being Gay: Inequality in Gay-Friendly Workplaces
Sociological studies suggest that there is social change occurring in the acceptance of lesbians and gay men in the workplace. Compared to prior decades, there are more businesses that welcome, value, and even privilege nonheterosexual sexual identities and relationships. Few studies have analyzed workers' experiences in these types of work contexts. In this article, we explore the experiences of “out” LGB women and men who work for organizations…
Social Inequality in High Tech: How Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Structure the World's Most Powerful Industry
The high-tech industry is the world's most powerful and profitable industry, and it is almost entirely dominated by white, Asian American, and Asian men. This article reviews research on social inequality in the high-tech industry, focusing on gender and race/ethnicity. It begins with a discussion of alternative ways of defining the sector and an overview of its history and employment demographics. Next is an analysis of gendered and racialized p…
Part-Time Work and the Gender Division of Labor
Divorced Fathers: Parental Role Strain and Psychological Distress
Previous studies show that divorced men exhibit high rates of psychological distress, alcohol abuse, and mortality. Using data from a recent national survey, we consider the possibility that these problems reflect strains associated with being a divorced father. The results show that divorced fathers report substantially higher levels of parental role strain than do married fathers. The data further indicate that the estimated effects of divorce …
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue: Military Policy and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity
This paper presents a description and analysis of military policy excluding lesbians and gay men. First, we discuss the current policy, review its official rationale, and outline the various criticisms that have been made against it. Next, we suggest an alternative framework for the policy's persistence. Drawing on work in feminist theory, we argue that the military's restrictions on the service of lesbians and gay men reflects an institutional a…
Preventing 3 Million Premature Deaths and Helping 5 Million Smokers Quit: A National Action Plan for Tobacco Cessation
In August 2002, the Subcommittee on Cessation of the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health (ICSH) was charged with developing recommendations to substantially increase rates of tobacco cessation in the United States. The subcommittee’s report, A National Action Plan for Tobacco Cessation, outlines 10 recommendations for reducing premature morbidity and mortality by helping millions of Americans stop using tobacco. The plan includes both evi…
In the Company of Men: Male Dominance and Sexual Harassment
Life Support: The Problems of Working for a Living
For most Americans, paid work is their primary means of support. A small percentage of Americans are wealthy enough that they do not need a job, but most people rely on their paychecks for survival. The coronavirus pandemic starkly reveals the limitations of this dependence. In this address, I draw attention to three "problems of working for a living": lack of access to jobs, poor job quality, and inequality in the workplace. I will argue that ad…
From Organizational Sexuality to Queer Organizations: Research on Homosexuality and the Workplace
Organization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the ‘sexuality in organizations’ perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers’ sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to invest…
Crossing Over: Interdisciplinary Research on “Men who do Women’s Work”
Not Just Bodies: Strategies for Desexualizing the Physical Examination of Patients
Health care professionals use strategies during the physical examination to stay in control of their feelings, the behaviors of their patients, and to avoid allegations of sexual misconduct. To investigate how health care practitioners desexualize physical exams, the authors conducted 70 in-depth interviews with physicians and nurses. Three desexualizing strategies were general ones, used by both male and female health care providers, and were em…
The Happy Marriage of Capitalism and Feminism
Sheryl Sandberg was not a feminist when she was attending college in the 1980s. She and her friends thought that feminists were angry, man-hating, humorless, and irrelevant. She has since come to the realization that men run the world, and she has launched a new feminist movement called ‘‘Lean In’’ to change that. Women lead only 17 of the 195 independent countries and 21 of the Fortune 500 companies; getting more women into these top offices is …
Validation of students' self-reported cigarette smoking status with plasma cotinine levels
Plasma cotinine levels were measured in 137 students (ages 14 to 17 years), as an independent validation of self-reported cigarette smoking status. Ninety-five per cent of the students who reported daily cigarette smoking had detectable cotinine levels. In contract, only 2 per cent of students who reported that they never smoke cigarettes had detectable levels of plasma cotinine. Results suggest that adolescents can report accurately on their smo…
Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Non-traditional Occupations
Nurses and marines epitomize accepted definitions of femininity and masculinity. Using ethnographic research and provocative in-depth interviews, Christine Williams argues that our popular stereotypes of individuals in nontraditional occupations—male nurses and female marines for example—are entirely unfounded. This new perspective helps to account for the stubborn resilience of occupational stratification in the face of affirmative action and ot…
Arms and the Enlisted Woman
Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950
Recruiting for Uncle Sam: Citizenship and Military Manpower Policy. David R. Segal
Gender Differences at Work: Women and Men in Nontraditional Occupations
Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus
This book on gang rape in fraternities tells explicitly about sexual practices on university campuses. The evidence shows how gang rape occurs with regularity in fraternities, in athletic dorms, and in other exclusively male enclaves. Male bonding, pornography, what culture teaches adolescents about sex, and the will be boys attitude of authorities all contribute, according to the author, to an atmosphere which leads to sexual harassment, to date…
From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytic Feminism
The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the 'Female' Professions
Journal Article The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions Get access Christine L. Williams Christine L. Williams University of Texas at Austin Correspondence to: Williams, Department of Sociology, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1088. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 39, Issue 3, 1 August 1992, Pages 253–267, https://doi.org…
Doing “Women's Work”: Men in Nontraditional Occupations
Revolutions in Knowledge: Feminism in the Social Sciences
Changing perspectives in philosophy, Virginia Held feminism and psychology, Mary Brown Parlee feminism and sociology (A) - the search for a feminist/womanist methodology in sociology, Susan Farrell feminism and sociology (B) - race, class and Afro-American women, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes anthropology - feminist methodologies for the science of men?, Rayna Rapp politics and revision - the feminist project to change the boundaries of American politic…
The Importance of Researcher's Gender in the in-Depth Interview: Evidence from Two Case Studies of Male Nurses
Sociologists who use in-depth interview methods have become sensitized to the ways that race-ethnicity and class can form barriers to rapport with respondents, but the question of gender has been largely unexamined. This article compares data from two independently conducted in-depth interview studies of male nurses: one by a female researcher and one by a male researcher. Observed differences in how the men in the samples framed their responses …
Divorced Fathers: Parental Role Strain and Psychological Distress
Previous studies show that divorced men exhibit high rates of psychological distress, alcohol abuse, and mortality. Using data from a recent national survey, we consider the possibility that these problems reflect strains associated with being a divorced father. The results show that divorced fathers report substantially higher levels of parental role strain than do married fathers. The data further indicate that the estimated effects of divorce …
"Doing "Women's Work: Men in Nontraditional Occupations
Militarized masculinity
Boundary Lines: Labeling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants
Research has shown that a majority of employed women experience sexual harassment and suffer negative repercussions because of it; yet only a minority of these women label their experiences 'sexual harassment.' To investigate how people identify sexual harassment, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 waitpeople in restaurants in Austin, Texas. Most respondents worked in highly sexualized work environments. Respondents labeled sexual advance…
The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality.Sandra Lipsitz Bem
Still a Man’s World: Men Who Do “Women’s Work”
Still a Man's World: "Men Who Do "Women's Work
Four Sociological Traditions
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue: Military Policy and the Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity
This paper presents a description and analysis of military policy excluding lesbians and gay men. First, we discuss the current policy, review its official rationale, and outline the various criticisms that have been made against it. Next, we suggest an alternative framework for the policy's persistence. Drawing on work in feminist theory, we argue that the military's restrictions on the service of lesbians and gay men reflects an institutional a…
Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond
Body Politics: Disease, Desire, and the Family
Disease, war and the family the politics of the Gay Plague - AIDS as United States ideology fatal abstraction - the death and sinister afterlife of the American family not in our name - women, war, AIDS the meaning of property - real estate, class position and the ideology of home ownership homelessness and post-structuralist theory orphan's dreams - panic wars and the postmodern drugs, hysteria, pain - a short history of the parasite cafe James …
"Doing "Women's Work: Men in Nontraditional Occupations
Male god imagery and female submission: Lessons from a southern baptist ladies' bible class
Sociology (67 works) · Psychology (46 works) · Gender Studies (45 works) · Political science (45 works) · Law (27 works) · Gender Studies (26 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Engineering (20 works) · Medicine (20 works) · Economics (19 works)