Throughout the course, the concept map was developing together with the research itself. The first concept map was done without any previous research and included only ideas for the future research. From the beginning, the research topic was the racial discrimination in the workplace. As can be seen from the concept map I, the research was focusing on the income gap between different races. However, it is unclear what are the races, so the second concept map is being more specific due to declaring that races are white and African Americans. Also, it adds that the emphasis is on women, instead of people in general. Thus, one gets the intersection of two minority groups, which struggle with inequality. The research question has also evolved from the “income gap” to the discrimination in the area of employment because the income gap is not the whole focus, but also the proportion and access to high-paying jobs of white and black women. The next point is the geographical coverage. Concept map I was drawing attention to the entire world in order to compare and contrast the employment discrimination in different counties, but it was hard to choose what countries to include and what to exclude. That is why, concept map II concentrate its attention on the US only, while concept map III deeper explains the reasons in the category of background information. Speaking about the broadness of the first concept map, it stresses the occupations in general, while the second one has three specific occupations, which are managerial, sales and services. Finally, the third concept map is using the found data to compare these three occupations to make conclusions at the end of the research process. The reason for selecting specific jobs is to narrow down the topic and compare the access to high-paying works that include managerial and sales positions and low-paying, which are services. Above all, the reasons for discrimination in the employment area have completely changed. Concept map I hypothetically assumes the reasons, Concept map II does not include this feature at all due to the relevance to the research question, but with the change of the research question, Concept map III adds back the point because now it is becoming the main goal to determine if the inequality is truly due to difference in race and not due to other human capital variables. Even though, as stated in the final concept map, the research on 2007 women found discrimination in the workplace, it is arguably because it is a comparably small investigation and other researches bring other factors. Therefore, this paper will determine if inequality in the employment is actually due to the discrimination of African American women by comparing the ratio in certain occupations and wages with white females of the same human capital variables.
Literature review
Is the employment inequality between white and black women in the USA associated with the racial and gender discrimination in the workplace?
It is a known fact that, in average, white men are more privileged than black in the areas like access to education, employment, and housing. Women’s situation comparing to men is also widely known because most people are familiar with terms like glass escalator or glass ceiling that prevent females, as well as other minority groups, from accessing the high-achieving careers. The focus of this paper, however, is the intersection of two minority groups, which are African Americans and women, that have been fighting for equal rights throughout the history of the United States. By exploring data from the articles that already did a research on this topic, this paper will compare white and black women in the employment area.
The USA has a long history of engaging black people in the employment. At first, they migrated as slaves, but in 1964 they gained equality in the access to a workplace with the Civil Rights Act and then with the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1972. This helped to reduce the wage gap between white and black women until the certain point in time. Indeed, another two articles confirm this and show the fluctuation of the inequality. As the article by Anderson and Shapiro states, “between 1940 and 1980, black women experienced considerable improvement in their economic status.” However, since the 1980s, the racial gap between African American and white females started to grow increasingly.
The previous point leads to the wage analysis, found in the previous two kinds of research, that shows the comparative disadvantage of black women. However, the income numbers are different for the two studies. The first one, true for 1988, demonstrates the hourly wage means, which are $9.64 for white and $8.19 for black women. For the same year, the second study represents $12.40 for white and $11.00 for African American females. The main explanation for different numbers is the different databases, from which numbers are taken from. Nevertheless, both sets of numbers are from longitudinal surveys of women in the USA with the same amount of human capital variables, which are education, experience, skills, and job tenure.
Now, let’s look closely at three types of occupations, which are managerial, sales and service, and the ratio of white and African American females. Managerial and sales works are categorized as high-paying and services as low-paying jobs. Both previous studies found that white women are overrepresented in managerial and sales occupations, while black in services. The research of 1988 demonstrates that 14.2% of white and 5.6% of African American women work in managerial occupations, 4.9% and 2.1% in sales, respectively, while only 8.6% white and 17.7% of black females in services. The second study, conducted in 1992, gives larger numbers, which are 27% of white and 16% of black women in managerial, 31.5% and 22% in sales, together with 12.2% and 23% in services, respectively. The years of the studies are not identical, as well as the numbers that shown above. Though, it is an interesting fact that the percentage difference in service occupations has not changed and remained about 10% among black and white females, while managerial and sales’ percentage of difference have changed.
The data above highlights that there are more white women in high-paying occupations, and black females struggle to achieve this, that is why they hold low-paying jobs. Many scholars attribute this to the hypothesis of skills mismatch. While the first research gives the reason, stating that “skilled jobs are for whites and unskilled jobs are for blacks,” the second one provides the explanation for this reason. The researcher assumes that skills mismatch is due to the growing importance of the college and the fall of high-school diplomas between the 1980s and the middle of the 90s. Two more articles, one by Anderson and Shapiro, the second by Pettit and Ewert, extend this point by stating that the rate of return to schooling grew in the 80s. The second article even adds that the proportion of young females was much greater, as well as the rate came to be even larger in 2005.
Despite all four articles agree on the fact that educational difference plays a crucial role in the increase of the wage gap among women, they all state it is not the major reason. While Raine Dozier, in his study, states that “human capital and job characteristics” is the main factor, other researchers disagree by saying different. Pettit and Ewert found an unexplained difference between black and white women in the workforce, which may reflect the “overall labor market conditions that disadvantage blacks (e.g., discrimination) rather than returns to cognitive skills.” Even though the other two studies were conducted in different years, in 2005 and 1988, they both provide the same number. While one attributes from 12 to 15 percent of the black-white gap to discrimination, the other one also shows 15 percent. Thus, this not only highlights the correctness of the studies but also suggests that there was no improvement done in almost twenty years.
In conclusion, out of four chosen articles, one does not show any discrimination in the employment area, one suggests it but does not give any statistics, while the other two strongly indicate the racial discrimination of women. However, the research on these four articles ends in 2005 because there is no much data to be found on the topic of discrimination of African-American women in the USA area of the workforce. Therefore, more researchers, especially in the sociological department, show pay a close attention to this issue and conduct more studies to verify if the discrimination exists in nowadays. If there is still discrimination of women, especially black, in the employment, people should search for solutions that will create equality in the world because people of all races and genders deserve to have equal rights.