CMS 498

Gender at Work Chapter 9

Susan Chase Communicating Gender Diversity; A Critical Approach

Victoria Pruin DeFrancisco – Catherine Helen Palczewski

Sage Publications, Inc 2007

Thousand Oaks, California

Gender at Work

“Women and men are never only women

and men, each person possesses and

intersectional identity.” Kimberlle’ Crenshaw

Discrimination laws were failing black women

Crenshaw explores how Title VII of the 1964

U.S. Civil rights act is failing black women.

If a black woman sought redress employers would demonstrate

how

They treated black men fairly and were not

sexist because they treated white women

fairly.

Crenshaw(1989) concludes that “the intersectional experience is

greater than the sum of racism and sexism” and thus attention to intersectionality is essential to

explain,

“the particular man in which Black women

are subordinated” (p.59)

Discriminatory gender constructions based on sex & race

Are most manifested at work

Chapter 9 looks at the exploration of the intersecting ways in which

People participate in the “saying and doing” of gender in the workplace.

(Marin, 2003,p.342)

We must look at communication about work and

not just communication in the workplaces to

understand the complex relationship between

work and gender.

The act of women leaving the

workforce to take care of their

children is called off- ramping

Communication problem in U.S. & Britain

reporting that many women are off-ramping

Claim that many women are leaving is incorrect – no economic data to support

may make employers think twice about hiring a young woman over a man

There are other factors influencing women leaving the work force

Recession

Work structure unfriendly to family forcing mothers to choose

Family structure – partners unable or unwilling to off-ramp

Difficulty on-ramping

Off-ramp is not viable for all women

More Black women are single parents.

They earn more than their husbands.

• Need help supporting

extended family.

• View work as elevating

• Their status as women

• & elevating their family,

• Extended family & race.

Choice?

• “Whether women choose to on-or off-ramp, their

choices are constrained and defined by institutional

structures.

This chapter discusses

• Communicative practices through which work

constructs gender

• Communication about gender that constructs work

What is work? Who works? How do you

work? Where does work take place?

• The western bias is that you get paid for work, it

occurs outside the home and taking care of your

children is not work.

Who stays home with the kids?

• Hetero male same sex female same sex

• 22% one partner

Stays home

• .3% dads 26% 1 partner stays home

• 25% mom (Bellafante, 2004)

Work expectations- not consistent among sexes

• “Work organizations are ‘masculinized’”(Britton

1999,p.469)

• Work is not a gender or sex neutral institution

• The description of work as an institution has

masculine characteristics.

Work is social institution in that it is what makes Americans American!

A man is not a real man unless he is employed

• (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005)

• The job a man does is a major basis of his identity

and what it means to be a man (messerschmidt,

1996,p33)

Every male in the U.S. is

expected to work • Women with small children are exempt from this

expectation

UNLESS

• They are on welfare

• Work –good Welfare -bad

“An amazingly persistent pattern is

repeatedly reproduced with

gender/sex i.d. of jobs” (Acker, 1990, p. 145)

Male dominated vs. Female dominated

occupations • Male Female

• Prestige less of all

• Authority

• Autonomy

• $

How organizations maintain gendering

• Communicative practices of

Organizational structure

Ideology

Interaction among workers

Construction and maintenance of

individual identities

(Britton 1999, p.456)

Power at work

• Power permeates work in complex ways (mumby 2001)

Boss to worker

Between workers as a result of sex or race privilege

Conflicting institutions Family/Work

• Mothers criticized for putting kids in daycare

• Mothers on welfare staying home criticized for not

working

• Mink, 1995, pp.180-181

Work values seen as opposite of Family values • Work and family as opposite social institutions each

with different demands, values and goals as a result

tension causing people to feel they must choose

one over the other.

• The choices are gendered, raced and classed.

Work family balance found in Nordic countries • Work and home structured to support each other

• Work pay continues during parental leave

• Benefits encourage both parents to take time off

from work

• Other countries offer many work from home

scenarios

As of 2000 51% of U.S. mothers with children

under the age of 1 were employed

Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and Family

leave act of 1993

• Allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for

pregnancy, personal or family reasons

• Objective to make sure people affected by

pregnancy and caregiving are not penalize and

able to return to work after leave.

Legal change is not enough

Communication must change also!

• “The process of convincing requires not only that a

given policy be accepted but also that a given

vocabulary(or set of understandings) be integrated

into public repertoire”

Celeste Condite (1990 p. 6)

Vocabulary needed to change

• Discussion of work and childbearing

changes needed

Maternity leave = benefit (a bonus or

business choice and not a guaranteed

right)

Pregnancy = disability ( a condition

belonging to one person, which also

renders the other parent absent)

This limited vocabulary means that even

with laws and policies in place, work’s

male-centered structure continues to

present challenges to women who are

about to be parents. Albrecht (1999)

Work and Education • Studies show African American women and

subordination at work their experiences start in

school where they are steered away from particular

work aspirations(Parker, 2003).

• How African American women are talked to and

about influences the types of work they and others

consider suitable.

Emotions - Its not about sex difference

• Men and women are emotional at work, but for men it is not coded as emotional.

• What others count as an emotional expression depends on the expresser’s sex/gender (Parkin, 1993)

• Emotions considered appropriate when expressed by a man are perceived inappropriate when expressed by a woman (Hearn 1993)

Assumption of Progress • A sex gap in earnings exists across almost all

employment categories( Chen et al, 2005)

• 2003 women’s earnings declined in relation to mens

• High in 2002 of 76.6% of mens salaries

• 2003 down to 75.5%

• Job and prestige held constant

Organizations are not gender neutral

(Acker, 1990,p.139)

• Top corporate levels women earn 8% to 25% lower

• Lag behind in bo the advancement and pay was worse in 2002 than they were in 1995

• Only 5 out of 10 industries studied did women hold a number of management jobs proportionate to their representation in the workforce

• (Blau & Kahn, 2000, p.1)

5 reasons for attention to gender and organizations

1. Sex Segregation of work paid and unpaid

2. Income and status inequality between men and women and how this is created through organizational structure

3. How organizations invent and reproduce cultural images of sex and gender

4. The way in which gender, particularly masculinity, is the product of organizations processes

5. The need to make organizations more democratic and more supportive of humane goals.

These are intersecting processes that make issues of power, control and dominance gendered.

Acker

The way men and women socially construct each

other at work affects their work experiences

• This tends to impair women worker’s identities and confidence (Martin 2003 p. 343)

Women are primary in Care work

“Interlocking systems of gender and racial oppression act to

concentrate women and people of color in those

occupations that are lower paying and lower status”

• Duffy 2005 p. 72

Sexual Harassment Not just about something a man does to a woman but

it is “a tool or instrument of gender

regulation….undertaken in the service of hetero-

patriarchal norms. These norms, regulatory,

constitutive, and punitive in nature, produce

gendered subjects: feminine women as sex object

and masculine men as sex subjects.

Sexual Harassment

• Not something men do to women because they

are women, but something that people do to other

people to maintain strict gender / sex binary norms

and inequalities. Which allows for us to recognize

the harassment of masculine men and feminine

men by women and men. (Frake 1997)

Why do men base their bonding on the sexual

objectification of women?

• Culture of hegemonic masculinity, men become men by performing their virility in front of other men. (Quinn 2002)

Conclusion • Every person engages in work, paid or unpaid

• Work as an institution both genders and is gendered

• My learnings from this chapter are;

It is important to see not only how we as people gender our co-workers but how work as an institution genders an organization and how communication within society and organizations effect how we feel about and act toward each other at work.