Occupational Segregation

I work at a dual-diagnosis drug treatment facility. It is a 60 day in-patient treatment center where the clients are court-committed. This means that they have committed (usually) some sort of drug related crime and in order to reduce their jail or prison time, they have agreed to attend drug rehabilitation.

Many of the clients have been through treatment a couple of times and some even have gone through treatment 20 times. This particular treatment facility that I work at receives the "worst of the worst" drug offenders, in that this is their last resort. They usually have been kicked out of other treatment facilities and they all have some sort of personality (like anti social) or psychological (like schizophrenia) disorder in addition to their substance abuse problem. If they do not get their drug habit under control, they will end up back in jail or dead. Since this place opened (2 years ago), 19 former clients have died soon after leaving because they could not kick their habit.

Most of the client's problems are so serious that the local state run mental institutions will not even admit them. Our treatment facility is 'dumping ground' for the system when they don't know what to do with someone. Some of these clients are the people that you see on the street corner talking to themselves with a paper bag covered bottle of whiskey or a pocket full of pills. The women all have been sexually assaulted and most have regularly traded sex for drugs. The men have assorted assault charges, including domestic violence, and have been in jail 20+ times. The majority of the clients have Hepatitis C and/or HIV.

It is important to understand the clientele in order to understand who is hired to work here. I applied here because of my social science degree, wanting to get some experience in a social service occupation. My background is working with people with mental and physical disabilities. I am not a street smart individual and I had, prior to working here, no experience with the criminal or drug world. It has been an incredibly enlightening experience, one that has taught more about myself than any other job that I have ever had. However, because of the nature of the work, and the kind of people that are hired, it is place that has high turn over. It is exceptionally stressful. The pay is a dollar over minimum wage for the regular residential treatment specialist, which is a job that is sort of comparable to a security guard/officer. This is my job.

Most of the people who work with me are felons in recovery. There is an equal amount of men and women. I am not sure if this position is considered professional or service in that it requires some level of expertise, (it is not low skill and requires a tremendous capacity to deal with all kinds of people), but it does not require formal education. The facility I work at is definitely a pink-collar organization, although I think that most of the men I work with would have a big issue with this description being that they pride themselves on their toughness and manly strength.

There are two African Americans, both male, that work here. Everyone else is white. The director is gay. Most of our clients are Native American, Latino, African American, and, to a lesser extent, White. Because of the nature of the field and the kinds of people I work with, my place of employment is an excellent example of the worst in gender assumptions and discrimination.

The breakdown is as follows:

PROFESSIONAL:

Facility Director-1 man

HR Director- 1 woman

Clinical Services Manager (Masters in Mental Health) - 1 man

Residential Treatment Manager (my boss) (BA in Social Work) - 1 man

Counselor/Case Managers (CDP -2 year degree only) - 5 women

Doctors- 2 men

Nurse- 1 woman

CLERICAL

1 woman

SERVICE

Residential Treatment Specialist (my job) - 7 men, 8 women

Health Service workers- 1 man, 4 women

Residential Treatment Coordinator - 2 men

Kitchen workers - 2 women, 1 man

Building/janitorial - 1 man, 1 woman

All of the positions of authority and supervision in this facility are occupied by men. "Although employers today cannot directly refuse to hire or promote applicants because of race or gender, a great deal of discrimination still occurs" (Crawford & Unger 376). This is definitely true where I work. However, the interesting thing about this is that the men are all very open about it and admit that this is on purpose. My boss actually told me that he moved up faster in this field (social service) because he is a man. He said that organizations jump at hiring men in this field because it is so overrun by women. This appalled me. I can't believe he was so nonchalant about it. He was hired before finishing his 4 year degree, with very few years of experience behind him. Actually, his situation upon being hired was not much different than mine is currently. I, however, have no indication that I am even considered for such a position.

I definitely fit in with the "nearly 60% of all employed women [who] work in service, clerical, administrative support, technician, and sales fields." It is also true for me, like most women, that I am not "in the higher paying managerial and professional occupations...
I have worked here for 6 months and not once have I ever felt threatened or worried about my safety. In the two years that this place has been opened there has been only one episode of violence perpetrated by a client and it was a woman who threw a glass at female employee. This is not to say that it is not possible that a male client wouldn't try something. However, this warped reasoning as to why this requires men in charge is beyond me. Interestingly, there have been multiple sex harassment charges by female clients as well as female employees about male employees. Some of the men have been fired, some are still employed.

There is a great deal of job dissatisfaction for the women at my place of employment. In my opinion, it is because supervisors are overvaluing certain characteristics in employees and undervaluing others. And for some reason, the supervisors attach the valued characteristics to men and not women. They consider men to be strong leaders, in charge, and to present a serious 'don't mess with me' attitude. Women, on the other hand, are more nurturing and nice; therefore, they cannot do the 'tough' parts of the job, like keeping people in line. "Because caring fits into a feminine stereotype, it is often seen as a natural by-product of being female rather than an aspect of job competence. This contributes to the devaluation of women's work: If women perform certain functions "naturally", the reasoning goes, virtually any woman can do them, and the woman who does so deserves no special recognition"(Crawford & Unger, 369).

I, and the women I work with, can, if we HAVE to, can be firm, strict, and disciplinarian (most of them are mothers after all), but most of us choose not to be this way ALL the time, because it creates a hostile work environment. We are able to exhibit the characteristics that our supervisors feel are intrinsic to men, we only just do so when it is necessary.

I have put in my two weeks at this job, not because I cannot do the job, but because I cannot work with the men. My style of working is completely ridiculed. There is the assumption that bullying and shows of strength is the best way to deal with the clients. I wholeheartedly disagree and, as a result, my approach has been made fun of and perceived as weak and ineffective, and my promotional capability is nil. This is true for all of the women at the facility. "The jobs where women are clustered tend to be relatively low in pay and status, with little job security and few opportunities for career advancement" (Crawford & Unger 367). There is nowhere for the women to go, because they are perceived, simply because they are women, to not possess the necessary skills to deal with the clientele.

Employees stay at this job because it pays overtime and there is ALWAYS overtime to work. So, for a job that requires very little education, it can definitely pay like a job that does. The women with children can work swing or graveyard, so that their children are home with a spouse or babysitter when they are at work and they can be home with their children during the day.

After working a few months, I came to realize (and even heard this spoken by a few of the men) that the women should be doing the paperwork and the performing the extraneous details of the jobs, while the men do the 'real work'. The supervisors overvalue men, physical strength, and toughness, and undervalue compassion, mediating abilities, listening, and high work ethic. Even the men who exhibit the latter characteristics are treated rudely, made fun of, and are undervalued as well.

I definitely feel that my skills are not utilized here, simply because I am a woman. It affected my job performance, my interest and belief in myself and my goals, and it seriously made me reconsider my interest in the social service field. "When women ... are underemployed, there is loss both to individuals and to society. Underemployment leads to poor job attitudes and lowered psychological well-being. Individuals may come to believe that the job they are "stuck" in is all they deserve, and their work motivation declines" (Feldman, 1996; Kanter 1977 in Crawford & Unger 373). The women are certainly experiencing the affects of not being as valued as their male counterparts and this, I think, is why most, if not all, of the women are unhappy and stressed at this job.

In summary, the place of work that I evaluated is the 60 day in patient drug treatment facility where I work. It is run by a for-profit social service business and can definitely be considered a pink collar organization. Because of the nature of the clientele, being convicted criminals with drug history, it is a lock down facility. Therefore, much of the employment status of an individual is dependant on his/her sex. A man is highly valued because he is seen as possessing, automatically, the skills that they feel are required to do the job. Whether or not he is White or African American seems to have no bearing on his employment status, although out of 40 people, only 2 are not white.

Additionally, women and men are horizontally segregated in that the majority of the women in the organization do not fill any managerial or supervisory role. It is vertically segregated in that women fill the jobs that they are perceived to be able to do based on their sex, namely Human Resources, Clerical, Cooking, and paperwork. The men fill the supervisory roles because they are perceived as being innately capable of running the show because they are men.

Analyzing my workplace saddened me. I realized how much farther women have to go in order to reach equal status. I have no doubt in my mind that I could do the jobs that are given to men. I realize that the ideas that we have a society about how women and men are innately are wrong and misguided. We are limiting women and what they can do because we are expecting women to be a certain way-nurturing, caring, concerned-yet, we do not value these attributes. Because society has a limited view of what men and women can do, there is very little opportunity for either sex to move outside of those limitations. Discrimination still exists-even when and where we don't think it does. Whenever we assume women and men have certain abilities innate to only their sex, we are discriminating. As things are now, at my workplace and other places I am sure, women are not valued simply because they are women. It has been a very disheartening realization, but one that I will take with me wherever I go to work. Maybe someplace I can help change-for the better.

Reference:

Crawford, M., Unger, R., (2004). Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology. New York: NY: McGraw-Hill.