Gender in the Workplace

Professor Nancy Marshall

email: nmarshall@wellesley.edu

Office: Founders 417B

Office hours: M, Th 12noon-2pm, or by appointment.

My research site

Class meets Fridays, 12:45-3:25pm

Location: Green Hall 330

Distribution: Social and Behavioral Analysis

Pre-requisite: One course in WGST, ECON or SOC, or by permission of the instructor

WGST219 Google Group

This course explores the experiences of workers in the changing U.S. workplace. The course will address key issues related to gender, race and class in the workplace, with a focus on: the social organization of work—the nature of work, division of labor, social inequality—and its consequences; and gendered organizations and processes of gender discrimination, including sexual harassment.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will have a clearer understanding of:

The ways in which gender, race, and social class structure experiences and opportunities in the U.S. workplace;
The impact of the global economy on workers’ experiences in the U.S. and in other countries;
The ways that people have responded to and resisted inequalities;
How to read, digest, and understand scholarship and data on the workplace;
How to conduct independent research on workplace issues.

The specific skills that students will use and develop in order to achieve these intellectual goals are:

Reading critically a variety of media—from book chapters, journal articles, blogs and websites.
Producing assignments in different forms including reading responses, presentations and papers that require the students to reflect on readings, classroom activities, and their lived experience.
Integrating knowledge from different disciplines in order to develop a new understanding of issues in the workplace.
Participating in in-class discussions to further explore issues raised in the assigned reading.
Using online and library sources, as well as interviews, to conduct independent research.

Course Philosophy: To support student learning, this course uses “active learning” methods, also known as classroom-based experiential learning. Active learning is student-centered, which means that students take an active role in making connections among facts and ideas from different sources, problem-solving, and reflecting on their own learning. My role is to provide structure to this learning, facilitate discussions and answer questions. I rarely lecture, other than to provide a framework for an activity or discussion. Instead, we will utilize multiple modern instructional approaches, which also help students gain useful career skills, such as reading groups, games, case studies, and discussions.

Course Structure: Most weeks, the class will follow this format: We will begin with reading groups to discuss the assigned readings for the day, followed by whole class discussion. Then we'll do an active learning activity and related discussion. Some weeks, we’ll reverse the order. All classes will end with 10 minutes for a “Connection 10” reflection. I’ll explain all of this in class in more detail.

Course Expectations: Students are expected to complete the assigned readings, as well as their prep for reading groups, prior to the week’s class. During class, students are expected to be engaged in activities and discussions, and to take responsibility for their learning. Expectations for assignments are included with each assignment.

In return, you can expect that I will come to class prepared for the day’s activities and discussions. I am also available outside of class. During office hours, I invite you to come in without an appointment to talk about the course, or about anything else of interest to you. If you can’t come during office hours, email me and we will find a time to talk. Email is the best way to reach me. I regularly check my email most days until 4pm, and then again in the evenings before 10pm. On the weekends, I check my email two to three times during the day.

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