Research

Joan Acker's research career has stretched more than thirty years and includes interests such as gender, class, and organizations. More specifically, she focuses on the way gender functions within organizations and has also studied gender in the welfare state extensively. Often times, her research has taken a comparative approach. This is partially due to her visiting professorships at the Swedish Center for Working Life in Stockholm. In addition to her own personal research, she is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon. This is a major feminist center on scholarship on gender and women. Most notably, CSWS provides direct funding to support University of Oregon graduate students and faculty members.



More recently, Acker's research has expanded to include the application of her study of gender and class to the growing field of scholarship on globalization. This led to her 2004 publication of the article "Gender, Capitalism, and Globalization". This article, published in Critical Sociology, served two main purposes. Dr. Acker explores how gender is implicated within the globalization process, asking if and how gender enters that process and what the gendered effects of the process are. Next, since both are contested in the literature, she also provides an exploration of the terms "globalization" and "gender".

Dr. Acker starts out with the exploration of these terms. Initially, she seems somewhat skeptical of the concept of globalization. She claims that capitalism has always been global. However, she eventually concedes that some changes have taken place. In the end, she ends up defining globalization as the "increasing pace and penetration of capital, production, and people across boundaries of many kind and on a global basis" (2). While using this somewhat traditional definition, she also emphasizes that globalization includes political and cultural changes in addition to economic ones.

One of Acker's main points about globalization is that gender and race are often invisible within these processes. These processes are often presented as gender neutral. For example, women's unpaid work (as subsistence farmers in developing countries, or housework), are almost never part of the analysis of economists studying globalization. The effect is that this unpaid work is taken for granted, and women are seen as a source of unpaid labor.

Dr. Acker proposes that we "gender" discourses on globalization to expose the differences between the realities of individuals lives and the scholarly reports on globalization. She defines gender as an attribute of social life, and not something that is essential to an individual. She claims that although this is not an essential characteristic, in general women tend to be more disadvantaged in terms of status.

She contextualizes her argument with a history of masculinities within capitalism. This culminates in an exploration of the ways in which globalized, transnational corporations take advantage and worsen existing gender gaps within society. For example, in countries where women are subsistence farmers, countries exploit the desperation of this lifestyle to lull women into low-wage factory positions. She emphasizes the non-responsibility attitude of these corporations, implicating these corporations as part of the cause of the barely-surviving lifestyle suffered by women in countries such as Bangladesh. To make her argument, she cites multiple sociological studies from around the world.

Dr. Acker's critique is searing, but it is refreshing in that it does not paint globalization as a black and white picture in one direction in another like many other theorists and scholars. In fact, in her conclusion she makes the claim that globalization underscores the complexity within labor relations. Her analysis of gender is also very nuanced, and she avoids the pitfalls of applying these concepts across the board by explaining the differences in gendered situations around the globe. Apparent throughout is the fact that Acker is an overall critic of capitalism, and her background in class studies comes through throughout the piece. Overall, this piece provided an interesting, critical, complex look at often overlooked issues within the globalization debate.

Other Selected Works:

Restructuring Welfare: Myths and Lived Realities, with Sandra Morgen and Jill Weigt. Cornell University Press. Forthcoming 2009.

"Glass Ceilings and Inequality Regimes. " Sociologie du travail. 2009, forthcoming .
"Diverting Dependency: The Effects of Diversion on Short Term Outcomes of TANF Applicants." With Ken Hudson and Lisa Gonzales. 2007. Journal of Poverty, 11, 1: 83-105. Class Questions: Feminist Answers. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 2006.

"Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class and Race in Organizations." 2006 Gender & Society, 20, 4: 441-464.

"The Gender Regime in Swedish Banks". Scandinavian Journal of Management. 2006. 10, 2:117-130.


"The Gender Regime in Swedish Banks". Scandinavian Journal of Management. 1993. 10,2:117-130.

Doing Comparable Worth: Gender, Class and Pay Equity. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1989.

"Differential Recruitment and Control: The Sex Structuring of Organizations", with Donald Van Houten, Administrative Science Quarterly , 19 (June, 1974): 152-63.

"Women and Social Stratification: A Case of Intellectual Sexism", American Journal of Sociology, 78, #4, (January, 1973): 174-83.