Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Locate themselves within social contexts to reflect on processes that shape self and society and to address continuity and change.
2. Identify power disparities in policies and practices in trades most culpable for inequities.
3. Identify key legislative acts that sought gender and racial equity in trades and other industries or sectors of society.
4. Articulate the function and role of trades unions and open shops in perpetuating and ameliorating racial and gender inequities.
5. Identify and negotiate moments of inequity, discrimination, and/or harassment encountered on the job, in training, or elsewhere.
6. Act as leaders in recognizing barriers to equity and implementing various strategies (interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and systemic) for equity.

• Provide information and education in trades that contributes significantly to greater equity in trades in the State of Oregon.
• Contribute significantly to greater workforce diversity in trades in the State of Oregon.
• Effect social change.

• Lecture
• Discussion
• Group work
• Guest presentations
• Independent reading and research
• Case studies and role plays
• Essays (Please note: There is no writing prerequisite for this course; and while students will be encouraged to articulate their ideas in writing and be introduced to principles of composition, they will not be evaluated for a grade based on their competence with conventions of standard English and academic communication)

• Quizzes
• Exams
• Oral presentations
• Individual and group projects

I. Introduction -- Social identity

• Sociology and the sociological perspective/framework
• Sociological imagination
• Social categories and identities: race, gender, class, sexuality

II. Systemic Oppression

• Key concepts: power, privilege, oppression, social identities, classism, sexism, racism
• Elements of: institutional, internalized, imposed, historical, motivational (driving force)
• Intersectionality
• Identities in Inequality: students identify historical structures of social inequality and ways they're complicit in and how they can interrupt

III. Disparities in Trades: Historical Context

• Capitalism and industrialization
• Occupational segregation
• Intersectionality
  • Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, Age: Data from Building a More Diverse Skilled Workforce in Highway Trades: Are Oregon's Current Efforts Working?
  • King's Poor People's Campaign, a "new phase" of civil rights movement (economic justice for poor people)
• The Journey Card
  • Apprentices v. journeyman
  • Journeying out
  • Barriers to a journey card: Class, race, gender, sexuality, coercion, quid pro quo
  • Unique challenges faced by women and people of color in journeying out

IV. Legislative, Policy, and organizational strategies for equity:

• Unions: Why unions?
  • Purpose/role of wokers v. employers v unions (Marx)
  • Films: Matewan; Chicano! A History of Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
• Legislation for equity: Community Benefits Agreements, State Law etc.

V. Equity Leadership

• Networking with advocates and advocacy organizations. What advocacy organizations in the trades are there in Oregon? What other pertinent organizations? Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., Constructing Hope, Youth Builders, MAWE, CAWS, Voz etc.
• Facilitation: facilitating a large group conversation around difficult and potentially inflammatory and polarizing topics
• Towards a sustainable advocacy -- Strategies for preserving your commitment to equity despite challenges, threats, fears, anxieties
• Talking effectively with those in power about equity