Professional women are more likely than working class women to feel that affirmative action is an important political issue. Professional women often experience two levels of discrimination: in higher education and in employment. In higher education, women have only recently begun to be represented in equal numbers as men in academic fields such as law, medicine, and science. Professional women have fought hard for those gains, and are now reaping the benefits. In employment, professional women must regularly contend with the "glass ceiling" that hinders their rise up the corporate ladder. Also, professional women tend to be more politically involved than their working class counterparts, and therefore more aware of the impact of gender discrimination.
As Rubin puts it, "In the professional middle class, a white woman is more likely than a black, Latino, or Asian man to be a serious competitor for a job" (213). The context of this quote involves issues of gender and race. Where women are seen as a threat, white males denounce affirmative action on the basis of gender. Where minority men are viewed as a threat, white males criticize affirmative action on the basis of race.
Affirmative action is being aggressively pursued in the world of academics, thus professional women are often exposed to negative reactions on this issue. Among senior university faculty, for instance, much animosity exists regarding efforts to diversity the workforce: "When senior faculty who are male, white, and over fifty years old become belligerent . . . about how affirmative action is 'lowering the standards' of their institutions, it is difficult to suppress questions about their own disappointments and career mishaps" (Clayton and Crosby 24). Although diversity has been achieved in many of the undergraduate and graduate fields of study, most university professors are still male.
The corporate world has found that affirmative action ac...