Chapter 8

Question 1

What is bona fide occupational requirement (BFOR)?

Answer 1

A true requirement of a job meriting a possibly discriminatory effect. For example, to work in a warehouse, one might have to meet height and strength requirements that have the effect of discriminating against many women, some ethnic groups, and disabled people. If the requirement is a BFOR, the discrimination is legal.

Question 2

What is deviance neutralization?

Answer 2

Rationalization strategies are engaged in minimizing the extent to which one deviates from a real or perceived norm. For example, a woman who worries about how her income affects her husband’s self-esteem might claim that his work pays less but is higher-level than hers or might minimize her earnings.

Question 3

What is emotional labour?

Answer 3

As Arlie Hochschild identified, workplace tasks’ performance is primarily aimed at displaying agreeable emotion (pleasantness, friendliness) and producing emotional states (comfort, ease) in others. While emotional labour is required in many workplaces, female-dominated jobs (secretarial work, flight attendance, service) carry the heaviest.

Question 4

What is employment equity?

Answer 4

A term coined in the 1980s by Justice Rosalie Abella to describe a process of planning for full workplace integration of Canada’s four equity-seeking groups (women, Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, and visible minorities). Employment equity distinguishes itself from US-style affirmative action.

Question 5

What is equality?

Answer 5

same-ness of treatment and freedom from discrimination in the form of denial of rights that others enjoy.

Question 6

What is equity?

Answer 6

Fairness of treatment may mean that different individuals are treated differently to ensure that they can participate fully in society.

Question 7

What is meant by family wage?

Answer 7

A term developed in the nineteenth century to describe a wage sufficient to allow a male breadwinner to support a wife and children.

Question 8

What are family-friendly workplace policies?

Answer 8

Policies and workplace cultural changes that reduce conflict between workers’ employment and their family responsibilities. Examples include child care, support for breastfeeding mothers, provisions for eldercare, flexible working arrangements such as job sharing or teleworking, leave provisions, and employee assistance programs.

Question 9

What is meant by a glass ceiling ?

Answer 9

Barriers (often informal, unconscious, or invisible) to the advancement of a qualified person within a given organization solely based on that person’s sex or minority status.

Question 10

What is meant by glass cellar?

Answer 10

Warren Farrell’s term for the clustering of male workers within hazardous occupations.

Question 11

What is meant by a glass escalator?

Answer 11

The phenomenon whereby men in female-dominated occupations experience preferential hiring and promotion.

Question 12

What is horizontal segregation?

Answer 12

Segregation within occupations in different fields that are roughly similar in terms of education and skill, for example, secretarial work and truck driving.

Question 13

What is hostile-environment sexual harassment?

Answer 13

The creation of a threatening and hostile atmosphere aimed at making women (or others) feel unwelcome, unsafe, and compromised.

Question 14

What is labour force participation?

Answer 14

The condition of either being employed or being unemployed but seeking work. The labour force participation rate is usually measured as a percentage of the population between 16 and 65.

Question 15

What is the Meiorin test?

Answer 15

A stringent and multi-part test that employers can apply to ascertain whether a potentially discriminatory requirement is a BFOR

Question 16

What is mommy track?

Answer 16

The phenomenon whereby mothers might retain paid employment while giving up the possibility of career advancement they might have enjoyed had they not had children and remained on the “fast track.”

Question 17

What is pay equity?

Answer 17

A theory and body of legislation and policy comprising two main concepts: the notion of equal pay for the same work and the idea of equal pay for work of equal value. Increasingly, pay equity means simply the latter.

Question 18

What is pin money?

Answer 18

Dating back to the seventeenth century, a term still used to describe small amounts of money that can be used by women for discretionary or frivolous spending.

Question 19

What is precarious employment?

Answer 19

Work that does not conform with the typical understanding of a stable, full-time job in which one works full-time on the employer’s premises with some degree of job security (sometimes called contingent or non-standard employment).

Question 20

What is quid pro quo sexual harassment?

Answer 20

A form of sexual harassment legally recognized in the US; the offer of benefit in exchange for sexual favours, or the threat of retribution if sexual fa-vours are not received.

Question 21

What is meant by sticky floor?

Answer 21

The phenomenon is linked to the glass ceiling that traps women and minorities at the lower levels of organizations, regardless of their qualifications for advancement.

Question 22

What is tokenism?

Answer 22

The phenomenon that makes women and minorities highly visible within previously unintegrated organizations. Because they are always regarded as representing a group, tokens experience various difficulties and frustrations, and their hiring and promotion may not change the workplace significantly for others.

Question 23

What is vertical segregation?

Answer 23

Segregation associated with differences of education, experience, and skill within the same field, for example, legal