Merit and Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Sexuality and Class

 What is Merit?  What does meritocracy mean?  What makes it difficult to actually create a meritocratic society?

 Main Argument: Arguments that use merit to justify inequality deny social aspects that differently affect people’s chances to success.

 People who argue against remedying discrimination claim they only want people’s 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 don’t leave those behind when we enter the workplace.

Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work  Success in the workplace is built upon the non-reproductive workers

Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work Studies about initial job assessment:  Surveys find that if someone’s 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.

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 women’s success to hard work and men’s success to their ability

Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work  Jobs are often defined as “male” or “female” even if there aren’t 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.

Evidence How our Assumptions Affect Work  Men’s physical strength is rewarded highly, even though they’re born with it. However, skills attributed to women’s biology are not rewarded highly…..  Men claim they could not work for a female boss because they don’t like taking orders from women. This clearly disrupts our notions of merit….What else?

Merit?  What other factors might influence how people interpret merit? We don’t 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?