This course will take a broad approach to gender, placing it dialogue with race and ethnicity, class, nation, and space, as we think through the complex dynamic between gender and labor from a variety of perspectives. We will explore workers’ lived experiences of gender regimes while critically examining how gender ‘matters’ within the workplace.

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1. Gain an understanding of how the categorization and social construction of sex and gender impacts women’s work opportunities and experiences;
2. Study how sociological theories are applied to aspects of women’s work experiences such as the gender pay gap, sex segregation and gender discrimination;
3. Understand the impact of gender on paid work and unpaid work within families;
4. Identify mechanisms of inequality, discrimination, segregation, oppression and resistance in regards to women’s work;
5. Gain an understanding of how intersectionality in regards to the social organization of work, most prominently in regards to how gendered work is also a racialized and classed experience;
6. Apply theoretical understandings of gender and society to explain contemporary work issues.