Abstract
This paper explores the use of gendered social distance mechanisms by higher status male coworkers and employers as they participate with waitresses in ongoing restaurant activities. Formal and informal gendered interactional techniques, such as degrading uniforms and terms of address, skewed ideas about skill differences, and sexual harassment, are used by men as they attempt to gain or sustain power thereby reinforcing the sexual division of labor. Sometimes they are successful, other times they are not, as when women resist or fight back.
The analysis is derived from participant observation in two New Jersey restaurants. Formal and informal interviews were also conducted with fifty servers employed in a wide variety of restaurants.
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LaPointe, E. Relationships with waitresses: Gendered social distance in restaurant hierarchies. Qual Sociol 15, 377–393 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989847
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989847