Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 21:03:43 -0400
From: Thomas F Brown <tombrown@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
Subject: Re: tracking
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
Message-id: <97Jun22.210355edt.614-6@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

>Just as Laura Miller was tracked into gender, I was tracked away from
>gender.  I'm a white male well over forty and I returned to graduate
>school rather later than most of you.  My stated areas of interest
>included gender as part of my general interest in family and culture.  The
>comments of my faculty advisors were unanimous.  White males over 40
>weren't going to compete against young women, especially women of color,
>in the arena of gender studies within the entry level job market.  The
>second point was that the school had no specialist in gender, thus making
>my committee selection process and subsequent advise with respect to my
>dissertation difficult.  

This is the closest to being a tracking example of any offered so far, but 
I'm not sure it makes the grade. You did experience constraint, in that
you were advised to avoid a particular specialty on account of your sex. 
However, that advice related to the lack of demand--a pull factor, not a 
push factor. If the same advisor told you not to do a thesis in Hitler
Studies because there is no demand, I wouldn't consider that tracking.
Just sound advice about your job prospects.

You could not specialize in gender because there was no professor willing
to supervise you. Here's the crucial question that would get at whether this 
is an example of tracking or not: Do female grad students at your school
write dissertations in similar topics, or are they also constrained by the
same lack of gender specialists in this department?

If women experience the same constraint, then there is no tracking
by gender. The school simply doesn't support that particular specialty, 
a case that doesn't speak to the issue at hand. If women are allowed to 
do gender theses while men are not, then it would constitute an example 
of tracking by sex.