Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Colorblind Discourses of Diversity, Professionalism, and Morality in U.S. Legal Cannabis

• In Event: 4284 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 09. Gender, Law, and the State

Abstract

This study examines the experiences of women who work in the legal cannabis industry in the United States to understand how what it means to use or distribute cannabis is changing during the transition from prohibition to legalization. Considering how race, class, and gender constitute definitions of deviance and normality is important when answering the question of how an illicit labor market is reconfigured during legalization. This study also adds to the literature on work and organizations by investigating how an industry that has historically been associated with black and brown masculinity comes to be associated with white femininity. Drawing on 17 in-depth interviews, this study finds that women’s claims that they are engaged in professional and moral labor constitute a moral enterprise that contests definitions of their work as deviant and criminal. Additionally, some women drew on mainstream feminist progress narratives to assert that they are promoting diversity in cannabis. While these claims are ostensibly color-blind, I suggest that they actually confer racialized meanings on cannabis that shore up the hegemony of white supremacy in the industry.

Author

• Katie Rogers, University of Texas-Austin