The Sad Demise, Glorious Triumph, and Mysterious Disappearance of the Gayborhood?*

Cross-posted at Social (In)Queery

This post is part of a series of posts I’ve written on sexuality and space, specifically addressing issues of where LGBT populations live and why.  See “Can Living in the City Make you Gay?” and “Why More Lesbians (Might) Live in Rural Communities than Gay Men” for the first two in the series.

The gayborhood is a relatively new cultural phenomenon.  While groups of gay men and lesbians have sought living spaces organized around sexual identity for a long time, neighborhoods actively recognized as “gayborhoods” by others is something arguably more recent.  Indeed, as Amin Ghaziani writes, “It’s quixotic to think that gay neighborhoods have always been around and will never change” (here).  Sociological research on gayborhoods asks a few different kinds of questions: How and why do gay neighborhoods emerge?  What kinds of factors shape their growth and endurance?  What kinds of processes and forces threaten their existence?

A variety of social forces account for the emergence of gayborhoods.  Ghaziani discusses the pivotal role that World War II played in their emergence.  As men and women came home–some after being dishonorably discharged from service (as a result of their sexuality)–they settled in port cities like San Francisco.  But, gayborhoods were also emerging prior to WWII as well.  Yet, these early, largely urban, gay enclaves were distinguished by their unpublicized nature.  They were spaces to which people with same-sex desires could go to locate one another.  Ghaziani remarks, however, that the post-WWII U.S. was marked by a shift toward the development of increasingly formalized urban gay districts in some of the larger U.S. cities.

“Are You Man Enough to Be a Nurse?” Campaign Posters

By: Tristan Bridges and Sarah Mosseri

Cross-posted at The Fifth Floor

Beliefs about inherent differences between men and women are pervasive.  Thinking about men and women in opposition to one another is a belief system, and one in which our culture puts a great deal of stock.  Gender differences are promoted by popular culture and are subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) reproduced through our basic institutions such as the family, education, and the military. So-called “natural differences” are also called upon to justify and reinforce gendered divisions of labor by suggesting that women and men are somehow naturally suited to different kinds of work.

As with most socially constructed distinctions, the notion of “separate but equal” does not apply here.  The prototypical “feminine” work is care work (e.g., teacher, nurse, social worker, flight attendant), and professions organized around “care” account for a huge proportion of women’s paid work.  Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos (here) report that roughly one third of the 66,000,000 women in the formal labor force in the early 2000’s could be accounted for by only 10 (of the 503) occupations listed on the U.S. Census!  Not much has changed in more recent history either.

Now recognized as “occupational ghettos”, these female-dominated care professions are associated with a great deal of work, lower levels of cultural status and prestige, and often less pay as well.  As a phenomenon, occupational segregation may well account for the majority of the gender wage gap.  According to Maria Charles and David Grusky (here), occupational segregation persists less because we think of men as better and more deserving of the higher status and higher paying jobs and more because of our collective investment in the idea that men and women are simply naturally suited to different sorts of work.

Nursing is one example of this.  An area of care work, nursing is a female-dominated occupation that has suffered from the effects of gendered devaluation—an issue that has made it difficult to recruit men into the field. As Paula England argues, “Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have little incentive to take on female activities or jobs” (here).

Intending to challenge the femininity of nursing and to directly target men for recruitment into the field, the Oregon Center for Nursing (OCN) launched the “Are You Man Enough To Be A Nurse” campaign.

Beyond Dollars and Cents—A Cultural Supplement to the “Breadwinner Moms” Debate

Heterosexual married women with children are out-earning their husbands in record numbers. Philip Cohen calculated that about 23% of such couples are those in which women earn more income than their husbands. This may sound like a small proportion. Yet, as Cohen notes, “it’s an increase from 4% half a century ago.” So, before I question the debate, I just want to note that some significant shifts in gender relations and household earnings have taken place, likely exacerbated in recent years by the toll of the recent recession.

Yet, discussions of “breadwinner moms” are also part of the so-called “end of men” debate, wherein men are seen as being out-earned, out-educated, and out-done by women in all of the formerly male historical preserves. Framing women as “the richer sex” or transitions as somehow evidence of “the end of men” is premature and inaccurate.* Though women’s wages have increased in recent years while men’s have declined, focusing solely on these two facts fails to take into account where men’s and women’s wages started. The wage gap has reduced, but most estimates find that the gender wage gap is still somewhere between 77 and 81 cents on the dollar. Women’s salaries, on average, have remained lower than men’s (despite the closing gap from both directions). Beyond this, women remain disproportionately more likely to be poor. Coontz presents this as – at best – “a convergence of economic fortunes” rather than something like “female ascendance” (here).

Although it’s premature to claim that women are somehow replacing men atop the economic food chain, as I said before, some significant changes have occurred. A recent Pew Report on Breadwinner Moms documents that in just over 40% of households with children under the age of 18, women are either the sole or primary breadwinners. Including single mothers in this category might seem a bit unfair as these women are sole breadwinners by default. But, Philip Cohen compares married heterosexual households with children under 18 (here) to discuss the trend. Cohen’s big critique–and I agree with him–is how we’re classifying “breadwinner moms” and what this classification conceals. The way it’s measured classifies any woman in a heterosexual couple who out-earns her husband by $1 a year as a “breadwinner mom.” This stretches the meaning of breadwinner just a bit. As Cohen documents, in about 38% of married couples in which wives out-earn their husbands, they’re only bringing in between 50 and 60% of the household income. That is, for women, the most common way that they occupy the status of “breadwinner.” And if we add in those couples in which wives are earning 50-70% of the income, that accounts for about 62% of “breadwinner moms.” Cohen suggests that the vast majority of this shift in household earnings is better understood as “breadsharing” than “breadwinning.” Conversely, the most common way men occupy the breadwinner status remains earning 100% of the household income.

So, the discussion of “breadwinner moms” as 23% of heterosexual, married couple households with children under 18 conceals the fact that while this number does show considerable change, breadwinner moms and breadwinner dads exhibit remarkable differences–not least of which is the relative amount of bread they are “winning.”

So, what’s missing? I was struck by another thought that’s a bit more challenging to make sense of with quantitative data: how are husbands and wives making sense of their two incomes in these dual-earner families in which women are earning more than their husbands, but not by leaps and bounds? Do these women understand themselves as “breadwinner moms”? Do they benefit in some measurable way from this status?