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The WERN report documents the rise of worker-led collective action in the tech industry. We distinguish two types of activism emerging from tech professionals—demands for greater corporate social responsibility and demands for improved employment rights—and consider the opportunities each affords the larger labor movement. In the second section, we consider how the venture-capital funding model that structures the tech industry presents unique challenges to traditional union-organizing campaigns.

INTRODUCTION: Individuals living in rural communities are at heightened risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), which parallels other persistent place-based health disparities. Identifying multiple potentially modifiable risk factors specific to rural areas that contribute to ADRD is an essential first step in understanding the complex interplay between various barriers and facilitators. METHODS: An interdisciplinary, international group of ADRD researchers convened to address the overarching question of: “What can be done to begin minimizing the rural health disparities that contribute uniquely to ADRD?” In this state of the science appraisal, we explore what is known about the biological, behavioral, sociocultural, and environmental influences on ADRD disparities in rural settings. RESULTS: A range of individual, interpersonal, and community factors were identified, including strengths of rural residents in facilitating healthy aging lifestyle interventions. DISCUSSION: A location dynamics model and ADRD-focused future directions are offered for guiding rural practitioners, researchers, and policymakers in mitigating rural disparities. HIGHLIGHTS: Rural residents face heightened Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) risks and burdens due to health disparities. Defining the unique rural barriers and facilitators to cognitive health yields insight. The strengths and resilience of rural residents can mitigate ADRD-related challenges. A novel “location dynamics” model guides assessment of rural-specific ADRD issues.

For most Americans, paid work is their primary means of support. A small percentage of Americans are wealthy enough that they do not need a job, but most people rely on their paychecks for survival. The coronavirus pandemic starkly reveals the limitations of this dependence. In this address, I draw attention to three “problems of working for a living”: lack of access to jobs, poor job quality, and inequality in the workplace. I will argue that addressing these problems is urgently needed to ensure the well-being of all workers. Going even further, I encourage consideration of alternative forms of life support, including expanding the private and the public safety nets, arguing that our existence should not depend exclusively on working for a living.

In the 1930s, Black, working-class, and immigrant neighborhoods were color coded on maps (i.e., redlining) indicating investment risk, which negatively impacted mortgage attainment/homeownership for these groups and led to long-standing segregation by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Limited studies have investigated the health impacts of redlining, particularly among older adults who tend to stay closer to their residences. This study examines whether older adults in historically redlined neighborhoods report less neighborhood walking and whether associations vary by race/ethnicity and income.The sample included 4,651 individuals aged ≥65 years from the 2017 U.S. National Household Travel Survey. U.S. Census tract‒based redlining scores were 1=best, 2=still desirable, 3=definitely declining, and 4=hazardous. Multivariable negative binomial regression tested the associations between redlining and neighborhood walking/day in the overall sample and with stratification by poverty status (analyzed in 2022).Participants were on average aged 73 years, and 11% were African/American Black, 75% were White, 8% were Hispanic/Latinx, and 6% were of other race/ethnicity. Participants reported a mean of 7.1 neighborhood walking minutes/day (SD=20.6), and 60% lived in definitely declining or hazardous neighborhoods. Individuals in hazardous neighborhoods (versus those in best neighborhoods) reported less neighborhood walking (prevalence ratio=0.64; 95% CI=0.43, 0.97). Among those living in poverty, living in definitely declining and hazardous neighborhoods was associated with less neighborhood walking (prevalence ratio=0.39 [95% CI=0.20, 0.79] and 0.39 [95% CI=0.18, 0.82], respectively).Less neighborhood walking was reported among individuals living in neighborhoods with a historic redlining score of definitely declining or hazardous. Future studies using larger, more diverse cohorts may elucidate whether associations differ by race/ethnicity and geographic location/city.

As mass layoffs, downsizing, and corporate restructuring have become standard organizational practices, professional work is becoming less stable. We examine the effects of this turbulence on gender inequality through a case study of layoffs in the oil and gas industry. Using a longitudinal survey that followed a cohort of recently hired scientists and engineers at a multinational oil and gas company from 2012–2016, we find that a major reduction-in-force during our study resulted in significant gender disparities in firm departures. Results indicate that about seventy percent of the gender gap in departures can be explained by underlying gender differences in the formal layoff criteria and workers’ experiences in the firm prior to layoffs, pointing to formal organizational processes as insidious mechanisms driving inequality. The firm stated that layoffs were determined by performance and skill set, but the actual attributes for surviving layoffs turned out to be more malleable and open to bias. Results suggest that the firm’s performance rating system may provide a pathway through which women’s relational disadvantages became formalized in seemingly bureaucratically neutral ways. Our findings illustrate how increasing insecurity in professional careers may disadvantage women and shed light on the organizational mechanisms that reproduce gender inequality in professional work today.

Jobs have become increasingly insecure since the decline of the standard employment contract, a trend that is expected to continue in the future. Workers in all sectors of the economy, including sc...

As welfare providers struggle to meet the care needs of persons with dementia (PwDs), most of their needs are being met by a family carers, most often a spouse. The situation for spouse carers is unique, e.g., with grief, loneliness and loss of intimacy combining with stress and poor health. Research is needed to develop adequate support for spouse carers based on evidence of what influences negative and positive outcomes of care. The present study investigated psychosocial correlates of spouse carers’ (i) negative impact and (ii) positive value of caring. Data from a cross-sectional survey of 165 spouse carers community-resident in Sweden was analysed in two hierarchical regression models to predict negative impact and positive value of caring. Results found that negative impact and positive value were explained by different variables, significant predictors for negative impact included carer stress, health, and emotional loneliness, and change in intimacy with the care-recipient, while positive value was predicted by mutuality, change in closeness to the care-recipient and quality of support. Negative impact and positive value shared variance of only 17.2%. Thus, negative impact and positive value represent different aspects of the carer situation. Consequently, support needs to target several aspects in carers’ life, aiming to; facilitate for spouses to manage PwD’s impairment, increase emotional support while also strengthening the relationship between carer and PwD to reduce negative impact while increasing positive value.

U.S. corporations have been slow to adopt family-friendly workplace accommodations, despite decades of research demonstrating their value. Some hope that the millennial generation will spur corporate change because, compared with older generations of workers, young people purportedly strive for more balanced lifestyles and gender equality in their relationships. This study examines the experiences of early career scientists and engineers employed by a major oil and gas corporation that has not implemented family-friendly accommodations, asking whether these highly trained workers seek work-family balance and whether they parlay these desires into requests for accommodation from their employer. Interviews reveal a gendered discourse of work-family balance at this firm: mothers and prospective mothers describe intense work-family conflict, but they blame themselves and not their employer. A number of men, in contrast, express satisfaction with their work-family balance, yet their narratives reveal that their achievement of balance depends on a traditional gender division of labor in the home. Some men and women seek alternative forms of balance that do not involve family; if thwarted from pursuing this goal, they are inclined to exit the company. These discourses of balance reflect neoliberal assumptions, reproduce gender inequality, and suggest the need for an alternative to the voluntary approach to promoting work-family policies.

Despite increased spending on child support enforcement in the United States over the past 30 years, child support collections remain around 40 percent. Child support is a gendered phenomenon, typically involving a transfer of funds from noncustodial fathers to custodial mothers in most cases. We argue that new norms of separated fatherhood and motherhood may contribute to low rates of child support compliance. An analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with members of separated families about the meaning of child support payments reveals two controlling images of gendered parenting—the child support queen and the disappointing dad—that hold single mothers responsible for children’s economic as well as emotional well-being and evaluate separated fathers mostly on their emotional involvement with children. Because these gendered expectations downplay the importance of noncustodial fathers’ financial contributions and question custodial mothers’ entitlement to receive child support, they reinforce gender inequality in separated families and may contribute to low rates of child support collection.

This chapter is organized around a critique of current sexual harassment research. Its ultimate goal is to encourage researchers to develop a broader research definition of sexual harassment that can address both individual and organizational forms of sexual harassment. Many social science researchers have found the legal definition of sexual harassment vague and difficult to operationalize in part because it focuses on the subjective experience of hostility and offensiveness, and not objective behaviors. Instead, those who do not disclose any information about their sexual orientation are typically assumed to be heterosexual. Jane Gallop decries this research and policy focus as heterosexist, because it conflates sexual behavior with heterosexual behavior, and because it assumes that all male-female interactions are potentially sexual. Sexual harassment is not only perpetrated by individuals, but it is also institutionalized in organizations and in workplace culture. Co-workers are not the only source of sexual harassment; clients and customers can and often do sexually harass employees.

Over the past 30 years, the US labor market has undergone fundamental structural changes. In the past, loyal and hardworking employees could expect to spend their entire careers working for a single employer. But starting in the 1980s, globalization, deregulation, and the decline of unions transformed this standard employment contract between workers and employers. Today, employment has become more precarious, unstable, and insecure. This essay reviews the limited research on how the rise of precarious employment in the United States has impacted men and women. We also analyze the gender implications of policies designed to address precariousness, and set an agenda for future research on gender inequality and precarious work. Keywords: gender inequality; precarious work; new economy

This commentary discusses three themes that are addressed by this collection of articles on men in female-dominated occupations: (1) the characteristics of men who cross over into female-dominated occupations; (2) how men fare in university programs where they are in the minority; and (3) the on-the-job advantages and disadvantages that accrue to men who do women’s work. Suggestions are made for additional research, and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches is emphasized.

Professional careers have become more precarious in recent decades. Corporations today engage in downsizing even during profitable times, a practice that impacts workers throughout the labor force, including those with advanced degrees. Using a case study of women geoscientists in the oil and gas industry, I investigate how the increasing precariousness of professional careers reinforces gender inequality. The compressed cycle of booms and busts in the oil and gas industry permits an investigation into how women fare in precarious professional jobs. Extending gendered organization theory, I argue that three mechanisms are built into professional careers today that enhance women’s vulnerability to layoffs: teamwork, career maps, and networking. I illustrate how these mechanisms disadvantage women with in-depth portraits of three geoscientists who lost their jobs during the recent downturn in oil prices. Their personal narratives, collected over a 3-year period of boom and bust, reveal how a particular multinational corporation is structured in ways that favor the white men who dominate their industry. The rhetoric of diversity obscures the workings of gendered organizations during good times, but when times get tough, management’s decisions about whom to lay off belies the routine practices the reproduce men’s advantages within the industry.

Gender scholars have developed a significant body of scholarship on the reproduction of gender inequality in work organizations. However, the vast majority of that research has been conducted in non-profit organizations or in employer-owned businesses. In this article, we review the existing literature on gender in worker-owned businesses. We begin by defining three distinctly different types of worker-owned businesses: companies with employee stock ownership plans, worker cooperatives, and communes. Next we review the limited research on gender inequality in each of these organizational forms. The current literature finds that women benefit from working in these alternative organizations, but gender disparities nevertheless persist due to occupational segregation and the devaluation of domestic work. Exceptions are those organizations with strong ties to feminism and those with formal power-sharing policies. Granted the scarcity of research on this topic, however, these conclusions are tentative. We conclude with a discussion of areas for further research.

Since the 1980s, major U.S. corporations have embraced diversity as a management strategy to increase the number of women in top jobs. Diversity management programs include targeted recruitment, hiring, and promotions policies; mentoring programs; affinity groups; and diversity training. Few of these programs have proven effective in achieving gender diversity in the corporate world, despite their widespread popularity. To explore the reasons for this, the authors investigate the experiences of women scientists in the oil and gas industry who are targeted by these programs. In-depth interviews reveal possible reasons why these programs fail to achieve their intended goals. The authors find that these programs can paradoxically reinforce gender inequality and male dominance in the industry. The authors discuss alternative approaches for addressing gender inequality in work organizations and conclude with implications of their findings for corporate approaches to promoting diversity and for future research.

Sheryl Sandberg was not a feminist when she was attending college in the 1980s. She and her friends thought that feminists were angry, man-hating, humorless, and irrelevant. She has since come to the realization that men run the world, and she has launched a new feminist movement called ‘‘Lean In’’ to change that. Women lead only 17 of the 195 independent countries and 21 of the Fortune 500 companies; getting more women into these top offices is her goal. From her current position as COO of Facebook, Sandberg is urging women to work hard, dream big, and ‘‘break things.’’ Lean In is a multi-media phenomenon. The book Lean In, which has spent months on The New York Times best seller list, is an elaboration of her now famous TED Talk (with nearly 2.5 million views). Proceeds from the book support a nonprofit organization called Lean In Foundation. Lean In websites encourage readers to form informal discussion groups called Lean In Circles, and post their testimonials on the Lean In blog. Corporate sponsors are implementing Lean In seminars as part of their diversity training programs. So far, 61 Fortune 500 companies have partnered with the Lean In movement, including Chevron, Coca-Cola, DuPont, and Wal-Mart. The basic message of Lean In is that women are disadvantaged in career development due to internalized sexism. Our culture teaches us that women are less aggressive, less ambitious, and less deserving than men. Consequently, women hold themselves back, expressing reluctance to seize opportunities and volunteer for risky stretch assignments. Overwhelmed by the desire to be popular, women give up competing for success and settle for stable jobs. Motherhood also stymies career development. According to Sandberg, women start pulling back on their career ambitions before they have children—even before they find a mate—in anticipation of the demands that motherhood will place on them. A large percentage of highly educated professional women ‘‘opt out’’ of the workforce to care for their children, with disastrous longterm economic consequences. The only way to counter this impulse and break the glass ceiling is to stay determinedly focused at work, and, well, lean in. Sandberg does not deny that workplaces and political organizations are sexist. She writes that barriers to women in power are both institutional and internal, but her focus is on changing internal barriers because they are more malleable than external ones (‘‘We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today’’ [p. 9]). Her advice to women boils down to three points: she encourages women to seek out and pursue all opportunities for career development (‘‘sit at the table’’), to demand that their husbands take equal responsibility for housework and childcare (‘‘make your partner a real partner’’), and to minimize any disruption of their careers posed by maternity and motherhood (‘‘don’t leave before you leave’’). Lean In easily could be dismissed as the latest twist on the classic American genre of upbeat self-improvement manuals. Indeed, after examining the book, the editor of Contemporary Sociology was unsure that it merited any serious attention. Certainly the book is hopelessly class-biased; Sandberg is talking to the one percent (a point she readily concedes). The book is filled with cloying gratitude toward the men (husbands, mentors, bosses) who facilitated her career, and self-deprecating personal anecdotes that often directly contradict the advice she gives Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. 228pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780385 349949. 58 Review Essays

When women work in male-dominated professions, they encounter a “glass ceiling” that prevents their ascension into the top jobs. Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of the “glass escalator,” my term for the advantages that men receive in the so-called women’s professions (nursing, teaching, librarianship, and social work), including the assumption that they are better suited than women for leadership positions. In this article, I revisit my original analysis and identify two major limitations of the concept: (1) it fails to adequately address intersectionality; in particular, it fails to theorize race, sexuality, and class; and (2) it was based on the assumptions of traditional work organizations, which are undergoing rapid transformation in our neoliberal era. The glass escalator assumes stable employment, career ladders, and widespread support for public institutions (e.g., schools and libraries)—which no longer characterize the job market today. Drawing on my studies of the oil and gas industry and the retail industry, I argue that new concepts are needed to understand workplace gender inequality in the 21st century.

There is no minimum fiber requirement for on-pack whole-grain claims, yet consumers perceive products made with whole grains to provide at least a good source of fiber. To understand how this misperception may be fueling Americans’ fiber intake shortfall, this study investigated the impact on fiber intakes of ready-to-eat (RTE) cereal products with whole-grain claims. A 14-day eating frequency diary was collected from US free-living households over 3 years in the NPD Group’s National Eating Trends (NET) panel (n=10,708). Average daily fiber intake and sources were calculated from the types and frequency of food and beverages consumed at meals. T-tests were conducted on mean fiber intake at breakfast and daily to identify significant differences between all adults, adults consuming whole-grain RTE cereals with

Can consumers be socially responsible? Can the interests of consumers, corporations, and the overall society be reconciled? Traditionally, sociologists have conceptualized consumerism as enhancing individual wellbeing at the expense of moral citizenship. Yet throughout US history, popular discourse has linked consumption to the social good. Business schools currently expound this belief in their ‘principles of marketing’ courses. Popular textbooks promote ‘relationship management marketing’ which teaches students to target their most profitable customers, develop life-long relationships with them, and promote the societal concerns that they care about. The textbooks maintain that corporations are well-equipped to address the societal concerns of profitable customers through the use of cause marketing, granted minimal government interference. We describe this worldview as ‘neoliberal consumer citizenship’ and discuss its implications for social theory and a democratic society.

Organization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the ‘sexuality in organizations’ perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers’ sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to investigate a new organizational form: the gay-friendly workplace. We review legal and policy changes in US workplaces that have made them more accepting of gay and lesbian employees. Then we examine ethnographic studies of gay-friendly organizations. Although they are certainly an advance over previous homophobic workplaces, the literature suggests that they may reproduce inequalities of race, class, and gender. Few studies have investigated ‘queer organizations’, which we identify as a rich area for future scholarship.

Perspectives on Gender and Carework, guest-edited by Mary Zimmerman and Jacqueline Litt, did come to fruition during my editorial term. I also began an inter-journal exchange with the Asian Journal of Women's Studies', and abroad, I co-organized a panel of Latin American and Caribbean and U.S. based scholarly journal editors on "Promoting Collaborations Among Feminist Journals" as part of a conference on "Globalization and Gender" that was held at the University of Costa Rica in April 2003.1 also worked to revi talize our International Advisory Board. I believe my efforts worked to sensitize gender scholars to the differ ences and similarities in gender research around the globe. At least I can report that as of early 2003, Gender & Society was named a "Journal of the Century" in a book of the same name compiled by specialist librarians from many disciplines and published by Haworth Information Press. Our journal, listed under the Sociology category, was the youngest title to make the list.

Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor practices we identify contribute to the re-entrenchment of job segregation, race and gender discrimination, and fetishism of consumption. The conclusion argues against rewarding aesthetic labor and suggests other rationales for upgrading low-wage retail employment.

Dietary Guidelines have emerged over the past 30 years recommending that Americans limit their consumption of total fat and saturated fat as one way to reduce the risk of a range of chronic diseases. However, a low-fat diet is not a no-fat diet. Dietary fat clearly serves a number of essential functions. For example, maternal energy deficiency, possible exacerbated by very low-fat intakes (< 15% of energy), is one key determinant in the etiology of low birth weight. The debate continues over recommendations for limiting total fat and saturated fatty acid intake in children. Recent evidence indicates that diets with adequate energy providing less than 30% of energy from fat are sufficient to promote normal growth and normal sexual maturation. More attention needs to be devoted to the effect of dietary fat reduction on the nutrient density of children's diets. The association between dietary fat and CHD has been extensively studied. Diets high in saturated fatty acids and trans fatty acids increase LDL cholesterol levels, and in turn, the risk of heart disease. The relationship between high-carbohydrate/low-fat diets and CHD is more ambiguous because high-carbohydrate diets induce dyslipidemia in certain individuals. Obesity among adults and children is now of epidemic proportions in the United States. High-fat diets leading to excessive energy intakes are strongly linked to the increasing obesity in the United States. However, the prevalence of obesity has increased during the same time period that dietary fat intake (both in absolute terms and as a percentage of total dietary energy) has decreased. These trends suggest that a concomitant decrease in total dietary energy and modifications of other lifestyle factors, such as physical activity, also need to be emphasized. Obesity is also an independent risk factor for the development of diabetes. The current availability of fat-modified foods offers the potential for dietary fat reduction and treatment of the comorbidities associated with diabetes. However, to date, few studies have documented the effectiveness of fat-modified foods as part of a weight loss regimen or in reduction in CHD risks among individuals with diabetes mellitus. The association between total dietary fat and cancer is still under debate. While there is some evidence demonstrating associations between dietary fat intake and cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon, there are serious methodologic issues, including the difficulty in differentiating the effects of dietary fat independent of total energy intake. Reported total fat and saturated fatty acid intakes as a percentage of total energy have been declining over the past 30 years in the United States. Despite this encouraging trend, the majority of individuals--regardless of age--do not report consuming a diet that meets the levels of fat and saturated fatty acids recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. On a relative basis, saturated fat intake has gone down less than has total fat intake. Individuals of all ages who report consuming a diet with < or = 30% of energy from fat consistently have lower energy intakes. Given the increasing rates of obesity in the United States at an earlier and earlier age, dietary fat reduction may be an effective part of an overall strategy to balance energy consumption with energy needs. In each of the age/gender groups reporting consumption of < or = 30% of energy from fat and less than 10% of energy from saturated fatty acids, fat-modified foods play a more important role in their diets than for people who are consuming higher levels of fat and saturated fat. The data are clear than fat-modified foods make a more significant contribution to diets of consumers with low-fat intakes. While one cannot argue cause and effect from the results presented, the patterns of fat-modified foods/low-fat intakes are consistent. The focus on overall diet quality is often lost in the national obsession with lowering fat inta

In recent decades, U.S. popular opinion has become more accepting of homosexuality, a shift apparent in the workplace, where gay-friendly policies increasingly are in effect. These changes in attitudes and organizational practices have led some scholars to question the relevance of the closet for describing the contemporary lives of lesbians and gay men. The authors investigated this claim by analyzing in-depth interviews with lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals who were out at work and who described their workplaces as gay friendly. Despite the clear benefits they associated with these organizations, some respondents faced a paradox: They either were compelled to downplay their homosexuality at work or were constrained by stereotypes about how LGB people were expected to look, act, and work. Thus, just as in the era of the closet, the workplace—even contexts that LGB employees define as gay friendly—may involve forced choices between acceptance and visibility.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors can be identified in children and tracked over time. We studied 519 children (mean age, 3.9 years) and reevaluated CVD risk factors 4 years later. Baseline and follow-up (FU) measures included height, weight, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure level, blood lipid values, and 24-hour dietary intake. Nutritional predictors of CVD risk factors (lipid levels and BMI) were identified using regression analysis at follow-up. Energy intake at baseline and FU, as well as increasing BMI over time, were directly associated with total cholesterol levels. Dietary intake of monounsaturated fat and dietary fiber were significant predictors of total cholesterol level at follow-up (inverse associations). Increasing BMI, waist circumference at FU, and intake of sucrose at FU were inversely associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels at FU. Waist circumference and BMI at FU were associated with higher triglyceride levels, while percent energy from monounsaturated fat was associated with lower values. This study provides further evidence that dietary intake influences CVD risk factors in childhood.

Sociological studies suggest that there is social change occurring in the acceptance of lesbians and gay men in the workplace. Compared to prior decades, there are more businesses that welcome, value, and even privilege nonheterosexual sexual identities and relationships. Few studies have analyzed workers' experiences in these types of work contexts. In this article, we explore the experiences of “out” LGB women and men who work for organizations that they consider “gay-friendly.” In-depth interviews demonstrated that, although gay and lesbian workers feel that they are accepted in “gay-friendly” organizations, they nevertheless described differential treatment because of their sexual identity. We discuss evidence of stereotyping, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in their work experiences. Although the movement toward greater acceptance of gays and lesbians in the workplace has made significant progress, the transformation is so far incomplete. We conclude with a discussion of the implications...

In response to the incompatible demands of work and motherhood, many mothers seek out part-time work schedules. Although many mothers consider this option "the best of both worlds," scholars are divided about whether part-time work is in women's best interest because it is linked to the gender division of labor in the home, and hence, to gender inequality. In this paper, we investigate the mostly unintended consequences of part- time work on the gender division of labor within the household. Drawing on 54 in-depth interviews with mothers who voluntarily work part-time, we explore how mothers experience household work and child care arrangements when they work part-time. Three factors emerged as most important in understanding how part-time work can shape mothers' experiences of the gender division of labor: pathway to part-time work, work location, and work schedule. Depending on these factors, part-time work may be experienced as either enhancing or undermining of the gender division of labor, and thus, as promoting or undermining gender equality in their families.

Dietary fiber (DF) has important health benefits in childhood, especially in promoting normal laxation. Studies also suggest that DF in childhood may be useful in preventing and treating obesity and also in lowering blood cholesterol levels, both of which may help reduce the risk of future cardiovascular disease. In adults, a high-fiber, low-fat diet has been linked to reduced rates of colon and other human cancers, and although it seems highly likely that this benefit would be even greater if this regimen had been started in childhood, epidemiologic and experimental confirmation is currently lacking. Children's typical DF consumption may not be adequate to maintain good health and prevent disease. Therefore, it would be prudent to recommend that children and adolescents increase DF intake by increasing consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, cereals, and other grain products. Several guidelines recommend quantitative ranges of DF intake for children. These include recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) food label guide, and the "Age+5" guideline. The goal is to achieve a DF intake that is safe even for children and adolescents with marginal intake of vitamins and minerals, provides sufficient DF for normal laxation, and reduces the risk of future chronic diseases, such as coronary artery disease. Current estimates of DF intake are much lower than recommended levels for a large proportion of the US pediatric population. This article reviews these data.

Vol. 53, Issue 4, pp. 454–458, ISSN 0037-7791, electronic ISSN 1533-8533. © 2006 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www. ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. Still Missing? Comments on the Twentieth Anniversary of “The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology”

Presented as the Distinguished Lecture at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in San Francisco, California, on August 15, 2004, this article discusses the relevance of symbolic interactionism for understanding labor processes. Based upon the author’s clerking experiences in two toy stores, she proposes that interactions between clerks and customers reproduce social inequalities based on race, gender, and class. Erving Goffman (1967, 1977) claimed that face-to-face public encounters with strangers typically rely on ritualized scripts to make them go smoothly. In service work, this insight has been transformed into a maxim. Visit McDonald’s and you are likely to encounter the “six steps of counter service” (Leidner 1993), beginning with the question, “May I take your order please?” and until recently ending with “Do you want to supersize that?” Usually, this scripted server-customer interaction comes off without a hitch. When it does not, the result is often conflict. If customers linger too long over their food order or request some special item not on the menu, they will likely face disapproval, mostly from the customers behind them. Workers who refuse to say their lines will likely be fired. This approach to understanding service work has been enormously popular and fruitful, especially in the gender literature where the “doing gender” approach (West and Zimmerman 1987), which was influenced by Goffman’s theory, has become practically hegemonic. I would argue, however, that Goffman’s perspective is limited for reasons that Herbert Blumer (1969) identified years ago. The meanings of these rituals are not self-evident. It is only through a process of symbolic interaction among active, creative, knowledgeable participants that the meanings and consequences of these rituals emerge. This article focuses on the rituals of toy shopping. But it also examines the ongoing innovations, negotiations, and reinterpretations of shopping from the perspective of salesclerks. I was employed for three months, a total of more than 300 hours, in two large stores that were parts of national chains. One of these stores, which I call Toy Ware