October 2025

Gender discrimination at work is illegal in the United States–but occupational gender segregation persists nonetheless. Though social arrangements of gender have changed significantly over the years and are in persistent flux, gender norms remain pervasive in many aspects of modern society. But in a country that has outlawed outright discrimination in hiring, how do job recruitment advertisements perpetuate gendered segregation? 

In a recent paper published in Social Problems, I explore how online job platforms geared towards Chinese immigrants enforce occupational segregation for the restaurant and nail salon industries. Through a qualitative analysis of the 168worker platform, I find that employers maintain gender homogeneity in male-dominated restaurant kitchens and female-dominated nail salons through explicit discrimination, while also broadcasting gender norms that reproduce traditional enactments of masculinity and femininity on the job. 

Back in the 1990s, my paternal grandparents lived in a condominium in a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City. To get to them, you had to pass through Fortino, the portero—the building’s doorman. I remember him in the marbled lobby or just outside the entrance, always impeccably dressed, fiddling with a toothpick, and a rattling keychain. He greeted us warmly, remembering all our names, even in a building with over fifty apartments and hundreds of visitors. Fortino was more than a gatekeeper. He lived in a small service apartment and handled everything from parking cars and small repairs to carrying suitcases and passing along messages, long before cell phones were common. A legacy of the colonial estates, porteros like Fortino had no formal training, yet controlled access and maintained security through familiarity and trust. Across twentieth-century Latin America, porteros were a familiar figure in every major city, forming the backbone of a private security system based on patronage relations and even becoming cultural icons, immortalized by comedians like Cantinflas.

But over the past thirty years, porteros have been gradually replaced by private security firms, uniformed guards, and strict security protocols. Global security firms like Securitas and Allied Universal and domestic providers have created an entrepreneurial model of private security, combining risk assessment, protocols, and surveillance technologies with aesthetic standards that link authority to client prestige. Unlike the more lenient expectations of porteros, disciplined posture, polished uniforms, and performative attentiveness are now central to how security is produced, reassuring clients while deterring potential assailants.