Since I’ve had Dr. Bezio before, I am familiar with the steps involved in close reading. In applying these steps to works of pop culture, it is quite fascinating to see how many messages are being conveyed to us, members of the intended audience. What’s more, our brains automatically process the information and arguments works of pop culture contain. So, I can see why parental figures, educators, and even our peers caution us to not accept things at face value because if we do, we risk accepting things that might actually be contrary to what we believe in. From our discussion on systems and how one might deconstruct them, I feel that the steps of close reading can help society determine the best way to eliminate harmful systems and replace them with systems that do more harm than good.
One thing that I found intriguing from the podcast was the discussion of women in the 19th century. The occupations these women could earn were mainly in the domestic sphere of life, such as working at a textile factory and making sure that the household’s needs were taken care of. Of course, this was the opposite of men’s jobs that dealt more with manual labor and, given their status as men, allowed them to be the “breadwinners” of their family. As a result, I feel that this “starting point” for women has impacted why, in the 21st century, women typically choose lower-wage and/or domestic jobs than higher-wage jobs. Besides the argument that lower-wage jobs generally provide women with more flexibility to perform their household duties than higher-wage occupations, I wonder that if women in the 18th century had more opportunities to be the “breadwinners” of their families, would modern-day society still grapple with the gender pay gap or the reality that most women do not enter fields they are qualified for because of their sex and status in society in relation to males?
It is not necessarily the case that women chose to work in domestic labor or have lower-wage jobs, but that higher-wage jobs were not open to them, and if they were able to work the same job as men, they were paid less. Hiring women and children as lower-cost workers was a practice that continued long into the industrial revolution, and I would argue that this structural practice has more impact on the current wage gap than what individual women chose to do for a living. There are many examples of industries that were high paying until women were the primary workers in the field, and that occupation became low status and low pay (ex. computer programmers, tailors to seamstresses to textile works (although the industry also changed with the breakdown of the cottage industry)).
i think the second paragraph you wrote is especially important. it reminds me of what we just finished discussing in our Justice and civil society class. issues like these presented in both the podcast and the reading have much deeper roots than we realize, and this also makes it so much harder to fix and combat.