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American Sociological Association: Patricia Yancey Martin Award Statement
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Patricia Yancey Martin Award Statement
Patricia Yancey Martin, Professor of Sociology and Department Chair, at Florida State University, is the 2007 recipient of ASA’s Jessie Bernard Career Award.
Pat
Martin has a terrific and well-deserved reputation as an activist,
mentor, and scholar, whose work is at the forefront of studies of
gender. Her career has been path-breaking in helping us to understand
gender as an institution, rather than as simply a form of
stratification. Martin’s research on masculinity in her studies of
fraternal gang rape and her writings on gender and complex
organizations stand as classics in the field.She has
tirelessly nurtured several generations of future scholars, has
established a reputation as a particularly active mentor of women
scholars even of her own generation, has fought for pay equity for
women in her own university, and has promoted gender equity through her
service to a wide range of regional and national professional
organizations. Martin has also been an active contributor
to public sociology through consulting with numerous agencies focused
on sexual violence, and her research illustrates that it is possible to
combine the advancement of basic knowledge with a commitment to social
justice.
In the 1970s, she led the way in studies of what were then called sex role attitudes; in the 1980s she broke ground in studying the conditions that foster violence against women; in the 1990s, she became a leader in studying organizational process, gender relations and identity. Her work on gender has also long been noted for the inclusion of studying men as being at least as important as studying women. Her current research on masculinity as used in corporate settings for a variety of collective goals is a continuation of this interest. Looking at how men in groups do not “see” women in the way that women perceive and accommodate to men and their interests gives rise to a variety of interesting new questions about gender perceptions and organizational processes.
Her newest book, Rape Work is an outgrowth of her decades of study of rape processing in organizations, assessing the factors that contribute to making local communities more responsive to the victims in rape cases. Pat Martin shows how the organization of hospitals, police stations and courts has unanticipated consequences. Those few hospitals who use nurse-practitioners to administer the rape kit are therefore more responsive to rape victims’ needs, not because of the gender of the care-giver (women doctors are often least responsive), but because the organizational factors allow prompter responses and more time with the victim.
Martin
has been recognized nationally for her gender work. In 2006 she
received the Feminist Activism Award, from Sociologists for Women in
Society (SWS), and in 2001 she was awarded the Distinguished Feminist
Lecturer Award, also from SWS.She has an accomplished
service record in the American Sociological Association, has served as
President of the Southern Sociological Society in 2002-2003, and is a
prominent and well-regarded member of SWS, the Society for the Study of
Social Problems, and the International Sociological Association.She also has an admirable record of service at the university, community and state level.
Pat
Martin’s teaching contributions to gender scholarship have been
tremendous. She has helped to prepare a new generation of feminist
scholars, not only at her own institution but by mentoring and
supporting young scholars around the country. At Florida State, for
example, Martin has chaired 20 dissertation committees and served on
over 50 others; she has also chaired 9 thesis committees, and served on
over 20 additional ones. With four university-wide teaching awards
under her belt, she clearly knows how to teach, but note also that this
acclaimed teaching comes in both research methods and gender courses
and at both the graduate and undergraduate level. She frequently
publishes with her students and continues to support them as junior
faculty in other schools. Junior faculty members report that Martin
congratulates them whenever she sees progress they have made, and has
always been willing to assist them, despite her own busy research,
teaching, and administrative life.