Merit and Gender, RaceEthnicity, Sexuality and Class

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Merit and Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Sexuality and
Class
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• What is Merit?
• What does meritocracy mean?
• What makes it difficult to actually create a
  meritocratic society?

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• Main Argument Arguments that use merit to
  justify inequality deny social aspects that
  differently affect peoples chances to success.

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• People who argue against remedying discrimination
  claim they only want peoples MERIT to speak for
  their work.
• But is merit always clear?
• We are NOT neutral people without any
  assumptions. We are social beings with
  expectations, norms and values formed by society.
  We dont leave those behind when we enter the
  workplace.

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Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work

• Success in the workplace is built upon the
  non-reproductive workers

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Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work

• Studies about initial job assessment
• Surveys find that if someones name does not
  sound white they are less likely to be hired,
  even if the white person has a criminal record.
• Women are often placed in dead-end jobs, even
  when applications are same for men and women.
  This affects entire job future.

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Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work

• Studies show that contract workers are more
  likely to be given full employment if they are
  men vs. women.
• Managers tend to attribute womens success to
  hard work and mens success to their ability

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Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work

• Jobs are often defined as male or female even
  if there arent any real gender requirements for
  the job.
• Ie. secretaries are considered female and
  unskilled because? In reality, secretaries often
  how to know how to do the bosses jobs too so they
  can do their own jobs well.

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Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work

• Mens physical strength is rewarded highly, even
  though theyre born with it. However, skills
  attributed to womens biology are not rewarded
  highly..
• Men claim they could not work for a female boss
  because they dont like taking orders from women.
  This clearly disrupts our notions of merit.What
  else?

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Merit?

• What other factors might influence how people
  interpret merit?
• We dont want to deny that merit should be used,
  but it often is not.
• How can we inform managers that other factors
  besides merit influence how they evaluate workers?