Catégorie : Donna Faber Reflections on a socio-photographic project

Female jobs. Male jobs. The job market is gendered, but how far is it still sexist?

Sexism has become more and more imperceptible, elusive and difficult to demonstrate. One perceives it but it cannot be seized; one experiments but often it cannot be reported. The marginalisation of women is certainly less brazen (insolente) and widespread (répandue) than just forty years ago, but perhaps it is just for this reason, more dangerous and insidious. So, sexism permeates even the contemporary world of work, camouflaging itself silently within markets defined by boundaries that remain invisible to our gaze, at least until someone – male or female – challenges the rules (deliberately, by chance or out of necessity) and oversteps them.

So, what happens to the women who challenge the symbolic order by overstepping these boundaries that are as much invisible as persistent?

What does it mean to be a woman in jobs that society persists in thinking of and representing as “male”. “Jobs for men”?

We tried to answer to these and other questions trough a visual sociological project using qualitative interviews and photos. The focus of the speech will be on how sociological research and photography continuously intertwined (entrelacées), learning over time to get to know each other and create synergies and contaminations that were reciprocally stimulating.