notes from june 4th lecture on class, race and gender

Nature: human genetics
Nurture: influences on human development arising from prenatal, parental, extended family, and peer experiences, and extending to education, media, marketing, race, gender and socio-economic status.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sibling-correlation-422.png

Trait A shows a high sibling correlation, but little heritability (e.g. language acquisition)

Trait B shows a high heritability since correlation of trait rises sharply with degree of genetic similarity. (e.g. height)

Trait C shows low heritability, but also low correlations generally; this means Trait C has a high nonshared environmental variance e2. (E.g. interest in sports)


Montreal study of immigrant women
What is deskilling?
Deskilling of jobs: skills required to perform a task are eliminated by the introduction of technologies
Deskilling of workers (de-professionalization): ignoring abilities and qualifications of workers and employing them to do tasks that require little or no skill

The study participants and methods:
• qualitative methodology based on a survey of 44 women and many resource persons.
o Women in relationship with men
o The women had to have obtained a university degree from their country of origin,
 two-thirds of the participants had degrees in the pure and applied or health sciences
 one-third had degrees in the social sciences, literature, administration, etc.
o had been in Canada for several years,
o had held at least one job in Montreal
o spoke French well.
o Two-thirds were visible minorities from Africa, West Asia, Latin America and Haiti
o One third was from Eastern Europe


Results
• Group 1 (43% of participants): immigrant women with a job that did not require a post-secondary diploma and, in some cases, not even a high school diploma.
o Experienced stable or declining career paths
o Worked in precarious jobs at poverty level


• Group 2 (25% of participants): immigrant women with qualified jobs requiring a lower level of post-secondary education than the education received prior to immigration.
o stable or ascending path, during which time
o most women had redirected their careers to moderately well-qualified well-paid jobs


• Group 3 (32% of participants): immigrant women with a job that corresponded to the education they received prior to immigrating
o quickly left precarious jobs
o in the medium term, they will probably reach a level comparable to non-immigrant women.

Explanation of Results• Career priorities of spouses
o Group 1, the husband's career is given priority; in Group 3 spouses emphasized careers equally

• the presence and age of any children
o The immigrant women in Group 1 had more children aged five years old or younger; Group 3 mostly included women who had no children.

• access to child care services
o Problems obtaining child care in many ways hampers the career path of immigrants in Group 1.

• sharing of domestic duties
o Sharing of domestic duties between spouses is still very unequal in all three groups.

• Obstacles which prevent immigrants from landing professional jobs:
o the lack of a Quebec professional network
o Foreign diplomas are ignored by or seen as counterproductive
o Not having Quebec career experience

What causes de-professionalization – nature or nurture?