Social Work

Term Paper Instruction: “Who has advantages in my intended career?”

In this course, we learn about the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship, and other forms of social inequality and learned how it shapes our individual life chances. This assignment examines occupation and work to see how intersectionality may manifest itself in the area of work and economy. For this assignment, you will look ahead toward your professional future, and understand if there are structural patterns of advantages and disadvantages for different social groups in this occupation. In addition, it will give you an opportunity to consider how policies and practices in the real world can shape your future life course. Approximately 5-7 pages are expected with 1” margins and size 12 fonts. Suggested sources for your research: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (www.bls.gov); Census Bureau (data.census.gov); Pew Research Cener (pewresearch.org); textbook, journal articles, and other scholarly sources. Any statistics and data used in the paper must be followed by citation of the source and the year.

Here is the format of the paper you need to write.

Introduction: Your occupational aspiration (1/2-1 page)

Describe what career path you aspire and why you wish to pursue this occupation. Describe what you expect to accomplish in this career, approximately how much you think you will be able to earn, and what may be potential challenges for you in pursuing this career.

Emprical Information about this occupation (2-3 page)

Do internet research to find out some statistics and data about your future occupation, as required below. This section must include empirical data on the following. Sources of the statistics and the year of the statistics must be clearly cited. Below a) through e) need not have subheadings, but they need to be clearly separated paragraphs, each with a thesis statement.

a. Some basic information of the career, such as which occupational groups or sectors this profession belong to in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s categorization, entry level educational requirement, entry level salary range, job growth rates, total percentage of workers in this occupation, and so on.

b. Gender and race distribution (i.e., What percent of workers in this profession are women and men, respectively? What percent of workers are white, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and other?). Based on the statistics, discuss whether the gender distribution suggest occupational gender segregation.

c. Median earnings (specify if it’s weekly, monthly, or yearly) in this occupation by gender and race. Based on the data you found, discuss whether there is a earnings gap in this occupation by gender and/or by race. How much were the differences? How do those differences in this occupation compare to overall average gender gaps and racial gaps?

d. You may include any statistics/data other than the above, which you think are indications of group advantages and disadvantages in this profession. (For example, if this career requires lots of travels, relocation, or unconventional work hours, or have no consideration for family-work balance, it may have impact on workers with family care responsibilities (e.g., women, single parents, etc.)). In other words, you may find data on various aspects of the job requirements not mentioned above, and think further about if they may incur disadvantage/advantage for certain groups of workers.

e. Drawing on what you have learned this semester regarding gender and work, discuss what are possible explanations for any gaps that you found (i.e., theoretical thinking). What factors may explain gender and/or race segregation, if any? What factors may explain why certain groups earn less than other groups while working in the same profession. This section is the most important part of the assignment and you need to make sure you provide clear, detailed, plausible, and accurate explanations based on the textbook and other class material. Cite sources to support your claim.

Discussions and Reflections: Who would have advantages and disdvantages in my intended career? (2-3 pages)

In this section, first, summarize your position on whether or not certain types of workers seem to have advantages in this profession. Support your position/claim by referring to the data/evidence you gathered above (I will look for consistency between your argument and evidence) Second, summarize (based on e) above) what you think are reasons/explanations for such unequal patterns. Discuss in particular whether these seem “structural” advantages/disadvantages for different groups, meaning whether the causes of the gaps in advantages/disadvantages are rooted in some patterned ways of segregation, inequalities in society, history of persistent discrimination, biases in the belief system, etc. that go beyond different individual qualifications. Third, discuss if there are any biased policies, or a lack of necessary affirmative policies, which sustain or even exacerbate the gaps. And finally, discuss how your own positionality (your social location in relation to inequality based on gender, sexuality, class, race, citizenship) may influence your career experience in the future (e.g., Do you have advantages and disadvantages? What kinds of policies are you likely to support to make your profession more equitably accessible to all groups? If this means giving up your own advantage, are you willing to support such policies?)

References : A list of all the sources cited in the paper.