Semiprofessionals

Women's Status and the Semiprofessions

Conceptualized in the 1960s as types of occupations that fell somewhere between blue-collar and white-collar work, the term semiprofessional refers to work that requires some specialized knowledge, has little personal responsibility, and is supervised. In his 1969 book The Semi-Professions and Their Organization, Amitai Etzioni looks at teaching, nursing, and social work as new professions whose members cannot claim the status of “full-fledged” professionals. Unlike physicians and lawyers, he says, these workers do not have the knowledge necessary to claim authority and prestige. Though recognized as having more status than secretaries and “sales girls,” Etzioni says that these semiprofessionals strive unsuccessfully to claim legitimate professional status.

Despite Etzioni's claim that the term semipro-fessions is less derogatory than “subprofessions” or “pseudo-professions,” it has come under scrutiny from feminist scholars who problematize its application to mainly female-dominated occupations. This term has been largely criticized for its association with occupations usually held by women that have less status, value, and legitimacy than those that are held by men.

This scholarship states that the work women do has often been given little value, and that the ranking of such work by scholars as less legitimate than male-dominated occupations is a reflection of this larger social bias.

As research proliferates on gender and the professions, scholars have challenged the idea that different occupations inherently hold status and prestige. Rather, through a study of women in predominantly male occupations and men in predominantly female occupations, we see that jobs are gendered not only in who fills them but also in the skills and value attributed to the job. In her study Gender Differences at Work, Christine Williams reveals that women are systematically tracked into lower-valued positions, and men who enter these same positions often ride a “glass escalator” up to management and administrative positions. Further, research shows that women's entry into an occupation once associated with professional status results in the loss of legitimacy. For example, Rosemary Pringle's work on secretaries shows that men once dominated this field and were paid well and seen as managers-in-training, but as women entered this line of work, the upward mobility and professional status associated with being a secretary diminished.

Current research is also interested in how and under what circumstances women have moved into traditionally male-dominated occupations over the last 30 years. As Sharon Bolton and Daniel Muzio show, women who move into what Etzioni would consider a “legitimate” profession may still face barriers to status.

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