UC Irvine

I combine ethnographic, archival and national survey data to interrogate the social contingencies of professionalization. With a focus on nursing, this study illuminates how gender, race and class intervene and structure professional closure, the process of professionalization and professional status and interactions. The gender dynamics in professions both mirror and reinforce inequality regimes in both the United States, broadly, and within organizations. This work adds insight and nuance into theories of work and occupations that are significantly under-socialized and fail to reckon with the importance and centrality of gender and race in institutional and interactional relationships. I take a multi-method approach which explores professionalization at the macro, meso and micro levels to triangulate my analysis around a complex and dynamic process.