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Man enough to let my wife support me: How changing models of career and gender are reshaping the experience of unemployment
Author(s) -
LANE CARRIE M.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01203.x
Subject(s) - unemployment , wife , masculinity , ethnography , job loss , labour economics , sociology , gender studies , middle class , dual (grammatical number) , demographic economics , economics , economic growth , political science , law , art , literature , anthropology
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among unemployed U.S. high‐technology workers, I challenge the association of job loss and unemployment with a crisis of masculinity. I argue that, in the United States today, middle‐class workers conceptualize their careers as a string of contract positions, thus mitigating the personal and professional consequences of job loss and unemployment. Changing gender roles and the rise of dual‐earner marriages in the United States have also reshaped the experience of middle‐class unemployment, alleviating some of the emasculating effects of unemployment for men but prompting new crises for unemployed women.