SOCI 3300 Reading Reflection 1: Jobs for the Girls?

Harris illuminates how dominant discourse of can-do girls constructs young women’s success and failure in the new economy as though they were determined by individual ability, effort, and choices. She argues that it is social and economic structures––rather than personal attributes and choices––that shapes young women’s career opportunities and outcomes. Harris supports her arguments by examining where and how young women of different races and classes are located in the new economy. She shows that only a class elite are structurally well-positioned to acquire excellent qualifications and actualize their high career aspirations, although all young women are invited into the same discourse about professional success.

One of the key sociological concepts Harris draws upon is subjectification. She discusses how the discourses of flexibility, limitless choice, and career success have been internalized by young women. These narratives together construct a subjectivity required by the modern economy as they shape the ways young women think about themselves – about what they can do and what they can be. Tied to this idea of ‘can-do’ or ‘can-be’ is the dilemma of ‘structure’ versus ‘agency’. The idea that all young women can transform their lives by pursuing education allows them to see themselves, and be seen, as subjects with agency. However, as Harris demonstrates, individual agency is limited by structural constraints. The problem is, when ‘public issues’ (such as structural barriers and public policies) take disguise of ‘personal troubles’ (individual agency), social inequality and structural malfunction are obscured and remain uncontested.

References:

Harris, A. (2004). Chapter 2: Jobs for the girls? Education and employment in the new economy. In A. Harris (Eds.), Future girl: Young women in the twenty-first century (pp. 37-62). New York: Routledge

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