Reference no: EM132432331

Data Trends

• It's often difficult to understand fact from fiction with the prolific use of personal and anecdotal data in the media. Rather than rely on our limited experiences, let's use data to tell the story for us. Use Bureau of Labor Statistics to identify a trend in the labor market for women, minorities, and/or immigrants. Analyze the trend within a framework of sociological theory.

Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. How do your findings differ or align with your personal experiences?
2. What advantages do you see to using a source like the BLS for data to help understand trends?
3. What are the benefits to connecting the trend to a sociological framework?

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Diversity in the Workplace: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation

• One with our modern notion of work pertains to how we define work. Generally, the definitional bias is toward paid employment outside the home. By that definition, a great majority of the world's work goes unrecognized. Schools rely heavily on volunteers, yet that is not paid and thus, not considered to be work. Domestic labor, primarily performed by women, is often not categorized as work because it is often unpaid. When the "what do you do" question comes up, too many women in our society respond by stating "I'm just a housewife or a mom." Such a response clearly shows that these women have bought into the notion that work implies receiving a wage and it is somehow not what our culture defines as work.
• Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung used the phrase "women hold up half the sky" to promote the equality of women as part of the overall vision of human equality under Chinese communism. Despite this belief, which has been globally adopted, women are not rewarded or acknowledged for most of the work they do. "Across countries, women make up a disproportionate share of the illiterate, the poor, the displaced, the elderly, the underpaid, the underemployed, and the underrepresented"