Inequality Regimes

Question 1

What are the criticisms of ‘doing difference’?

Answer 1

• social structure
• power
• social change

Question 2

what are inequality regimes?

Answer 2

• all organizations have inequality regimes, defined as loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations

Question 3

what is inequality in organizations?

Answer 3

• Acker defines inequality in organizations as systematic disparities between participants in power and control over goals, resources and outcomes; workplace decisions such as how to organize work; opportunities for promotion and interesting work; security in employment and benefits; pay and other monetary rewards; respect; and pleasures in work and work relations
• There are elements of all of these different things in our immediate world, we take these things as concrete, we build systems of inequality and believe this is how the world works

Question 4

what are the components of inequality regimes?

Answer 4

The bases of inequality
- class
- gender
- race (ethnicity)
- sexuality
Shape and degree of inequality
- steepness of hierarchy
- patterns of segregation by race and gender
- wage differences
- power
Organizing processes that produce inequality
- organizing the general requirements of wok
- organizing hierarchies
-recruitment and hiring
- wage setting and supervisory practices
- informal interactions while ‘doing the work’
control and compliance
- direct controls
- unobtrusive or indirect controls
- internalized control

Question 5

can inequality regimes change?

Answer 5

• successful change projects seem to have had a number of common characteristics
• change efforts that target a limited set of inequality producing mechanisms seem to be the most stressful
• successful efforts appear to have combined social movement and legislative support outside the organization with active support from insiders
• successful efforts often involve coercion or threat of loss

Question 6

define intersectionality?

Answer 6

• the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantages; a theoretical approach based on such a premise
• the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism and classism) combine, overlap or interact especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups

Question 7

what is intersectionality?

Answer 7

• an intersectional approach conceives of categories not as distinct but as always permeated by other categories, fluid and changing always in the process of creating and being created by dynamics of power
• especially important in the emphasis on how power permeates these categories