Media Illustration - Sara Weeldreyer

Sara Weeldreyer

Gender Comm.

Media Illustration
P. 207 - End of Chapter

Due: 3/12/12

Gender Performance in the Workplace

            Any person that partakes in any form of society knows that women are paid less and promoted less often than men in the workforce. Because this is so well known, I decided that it wasn’t the most interesting concept to cover for my media illustration from my section of chapter 9. Instead, I thought the most significant concept to cover would be the idea that the workplace is not gender neutral, and in fact, masculine.

            As stated in the chapter, scholars started to see that how organizations are structured produced gender differences instead of individual features of men and women. The following quotes from the book explain this concept exceedingly well. “It is the man’s body, its sexuality, minimal responsibility in procreation, and conventional control of emotions that pervades work and organizational processes (Acker, 1990). “Women’s bodies are ruled out of order, or sexualized and objectified, in work organizations” (Martin, 2003). “Despite the clear evidence of gender and related inequalities in work organizations a vision of the abstract worker persists – a bodiless, sexless, emotionless worker who does not procreate. This sex- and gender-neutral worker is not actually neutral but instead is a man” (DeFrancisco &Palczewski, 2007). The technique that ender is completed in organizations resumes the restriction of women as how men and women socially construct one another at work affects their work experiences. This tends to damage the identities and confidence of women workers.

            Although intersectionality is extremely important, especially in workplace settings, I’m only going to focus on the concept of gender for this specific assignment even though the clip I am going to share shows more than just gender discrimination. Thinking about gender discrimination and a media example, without a doubt, I knew The Office would have an example for sure because they have examples of every type of workplace “no-no.”

*Clip* (The Office - "Basketball" episode - (5:30-8:30)

Discussion Questions:

-       Do you think gender discrimination still occurs in the workplace? Why or why not? If so, how do you think it is performed?

-       How do you think these inequalities can be eliminated? What changes would need to take place?