In this paper, using Ambedkar’s pioneering vision for engaged Buddhism, we developed the notion of radical interdependence, which consists of four interrelated processes: dialogical recognition; negating invisibilities; dignity as an embodied praxis; ordinary cosmopolitanism. Our research primarily focused on women janitors’ lives in a Mumbai Mall using this conception. Our participants experienced four different kinds of dignity injuries. They used various strategies to preserve personal, intersubjective, and processual dignities. We also found horizontal and vertical ordinary cosmopolitanism strategies to bridge social (...) boundaries between colleagues and mall customers. We further discuss the implications of radical interdependence for organizational research. (shrink)

Implicit bias is one of the most successful cases in recent memory of an academic concept being translated into practice. Its use in the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program—which seeks to promote gender equality in STEM careers through institutional transformation—has raised fundamental questions about organizational change. How do advocates translate theories into practice? What makes some concepts more tractable than others? What happens to theories through this translation process? We explore these questions using the ADVANCE program as a case study. (...) Using an inductive, theory-building approach and combination of computational and qualitative methods, we investigate how the concept of implicit bias was translated into practice through the ADVANCE program and identify five key features that made implicit bias useful as a change framework in the academic STEM setting. We find that the concept of implicit bias works programmatically because it is demonstrable, relatable, versatile, actionable, and impartial. While enabling the concept’s diffusion, these characteristics also limit its scope. We reflect on implications for gender theories of organizational change and for practitioners. (shrink)

Globalization, technological advances, and changing employment structures have facilitated greater flexibility in how and where many Americans do their paid work. In response, a new work arrangement, coworking, has emerged in the United States. Coworking organizations bring together professionals from different companies to share a common workspace and build community. Despite the prevalence and potential benefits of coworking, little systematic research about coworking contexts exists, let alone research focused on gender inequality therein. Using 78 interviews and more than 700 hours (...) of observation across nine coworking spaces, we examine the organizational logics that shape gender dynamics, as well as intersecting racial and class dynamics, in coworking spaces. Building on Acker’s inequality regimes framework, we uncover organizational logic that either reduces or reproduces inequality for diverse groups of women in coworking contexts. We conclude by discussing important theoretical and empirical implications of these findings. (shrink)

This paper extends Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scholarship to focus on issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Despite a significant body of work on gender and CSR from a variety of feminist perspectives, long-standing evidence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in business, particularly in global value chains, and the rise of the #MeToo movement, there has been little scholarship focused specifically on these issues in the context of CSR. Our conceptual paper addresses this gap in the literature through (...) two key contributions. First, we extend the theoretical base of CSR scholarship by drawing upon and explicating radical feminist theory, a resource that has been underutilized in the field to date. This theoretical perspective is well placed to offer insights around the issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and to explain the centrality of these concerns to the gender equality agenda in business and in CSR. Second, building upon insights from radical feminism, and from research on CSR and human rights, we explicate a business and human rights approach to sexual harassment, sexual violence and CSR. We point to ways in which this approach might be more effective in addressing these issues than previously adopted strategies and suggest directions for future research arising from our analysis. (shrink)

A growing literature examines the organizational factors that promote women’s access to positions of organizational power. Fewer studies, however, explore the implications of women in leadership positions for the opportunities and experiences of subordinates. Do women leaders serve to undo the gendered organization? In other words, is women’s greater representation in leadership positions associated with less gender segregation at lower organizational levels? We explore this question by drawing on Cohen and Huffman’s conceptual framework of women leaders as either “change agents” (...) or “cogs in the machine” and analyze a unique multilevel data set of workplaces nested within Fortune 1000 firms. Our findings generally support the “agents of change” perspective. Women’s representation among corporate boards of directors, corporate executives, and workplace managers is associated with less workplace gender segregation. Hence, it appears that women’s access to organizational power helps to undo the gendered organization. (shrink)

On the basis of a case study of the integration of Haredi Jewish women into the Israeli high-tech industry, we explore how gender–religiosity intersectionality affects ultra-conservative women’s participation in the labor market and their ability to negotiate with employers for corporate work–family practices that address their idiosyncratic requirements. We highlight the importance of pious women’s affiliation to their highly organized religious communities while taking a process-centered approach to intersectionality and focusing on the matrix of domination formed by the Israeli state, (...) employers, and the organized ultra-orthodox community. We dub this set of actors “the unholy-trinity” and argue that it constructs a specific, religion-centric inequality regime that restrains women’s job and earning opportunities. At the same time, the “unholy trinity” also empowers women in their struggle to create a working environment that is receptive to their religiosity and what that commitment demands of them. (shrink)

This article explores the dynamics and impact of the gender mainstreaming reform conducted within the European Social Fund in Poland in 2007–2013. It is based on qualitative interviews carried out with gender mainstreaming practitioners, both feminists and state administrators. The article examines factors enabling and hindering successful implementation of gender mainstreaming and discusses its potential positive spin-off effects. The analysed case suggests that civil servants’ strong professional ethics do facilitate progressive changes, whereas bureaucratic norms and non gender-specific values of particular (...) public policies eventually hinder the effectiveness of the strategy. However, gender mainstreaming reforms, even if limited in time and undertaken in a technocratic manner, may serve for feminists as a unique entry point to state institutions, and further allow for changes to public organizations’ gender regimes. Gender mainstreaming may lead to an increase in the number of feminist allies within public administrations and give more legitimization to feminists’ demands on the state. Thus, the strategy may produce a destabilizing impact on public administration gender regimes. (shrink)

Much has been achieved in terms of human rights for women and people of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) community. However, human resources management (HRM) initiatives for gender equality in the workplace focus almost exclusively on white, heterosexual, cisgender women, leaving the problems of other gender and social minorities out of the analysis. This article develops an integrative model of gender equality in the workplace for HRM academics and practitioners. First, it analyzes relevant antecedents and consequences of (...) gender-based discrimination and harassment (GBDH) in the workplace. Second, it incorporates the feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives in the analysis. Third, it integrates literature findings about women and the LGBTQ at work, making the case for an inclusive HRM. The authors underscore the importance of industry-university collaboration and offer a starters’ toolkit that includes suggestions for diagnosis, intervention, and applied research on GBDH. Finally, avenues for future research are identified to explore gendered practices that hinder the career development of women and the LGBTQ in the workplace. (shrink)

Women are important actors in smallholder farmer milk production. Therefore, female input in the dairy cooperatives is essential to dairy development in emerging economies. Within dairy value chains, however, their contributions are often not formally acknowledged or rewarded. This article contributes to filling this gap by adopting a multileveled institutional perspective to explore the case of dairy development in the Pangalengan mixed-sex dairy cooperative on West Java, Indonesia. The objective is to add evidence from the dairy development practice in Indonesia (...) to the current agenda for gender and development as well as identify pathways for future research on dairy development that will help it do better in practice. Central to the exploration is a discussion of formal and informal institutions as part of the dynamics of the inequality regimes in dairy cooperatives. Evidence from dairy development practices in the Pangalengan cooperative shows, among others, distinct differences between the participation of male and female target groups in dairy development extension, as well as farm size- and resource-related trends in ‘masculinization’ and ‘feminization’ of the smallholder farmer household. The conclusions contribute to debates on more resilient, thus sustainable working relations in food chains, women’s empowerment, gender equality and social justice in agriculture as well as cooperative studies. (shrink)

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at (...) various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. (shrink)

With its recognition of the combined effects of the social categories of race, class and gender intersectionality has risen to the rank of feminism’s most important contribution to date. Though the first intersectional research (American and British) gave visibility to the social locus of women who self-identified as "black" or "of colour", current research goes beyond the confines of the English-speaking world and aims increasingly to develop an intersectional instrument to deal with discrimination. This project gives rise to two kinds (...) of debate: one related to producing intersectional information and to ways of carrying out research in this area, the other to do with the use of this information in the political struggle for equality. The current paper, which is confined to the first debate, attempts to bring out the main tension points in present theorizations of intersectionality. Its objective is twofold: to demonstrate certain limits to the explanatory power of intersectionality, and to suggest ways forward in the light of discussions already in train. In order to do so four points are tackled: intersectionality as a research paradigm, the issue of levels of analysis, the theoretical difference of opinion on the ontological status of categories of difference and the issue of widening the theoretical scope of intersectionality. (shrink)

This study explores women’s and men’s perceptions of the specific barriers that prevent women from participating fully in the cultural labour market. To this end, an online questionnaire was administered to 375 cultural professionals in Catalonia regarding their perceptions of the barriers faced by women in a range of areas. The results show similar views between genders regarding the difficulties associated with the work–life balance as the most important obstacle preventing women from entering specific cultural fields and from rising to (...) decision-making positions. However, perceptions of the barriers impacting the recognition of women’s career achievements differed greatly between men and women. While men place more emphasis on issues of work–life balance, women more frequently mention the existence of a glass ceiling and their exclusion from networks of influence. Regarding the visibility of women’s artistic creations, although intersectionality is mentioned by both genders as the main limiting factor, there are marked differences between women’s and men’s perception of the other barriers. Men thus more frequently refer to the barriers of work–life balance and the association of creativity with maleness as the main factors limiting the visibility of women’s artistic creations. In short, this study provides evidence to stakeholders of the different perceptions that men and women have in relation to the main barriers that prevent women from climbing the career ladder; gaining recognition and visibility for their work; and, in some creative sectors, even from entering the labour market. (shrink)

This paper investigates how social enterprises navigate through the ethical complexity of social change and extends the ethical quandaries faced by social enterprises beyond organisational boundaries. Building on the emerging literature on the ethics of SEs, I conceptualise ethics as an engagement with power relations. I develop theoretical arguments to understand the interaction between ethical predispositions of a SE and the normative structure of the social system in which it operates. I applied this conceptualisation in a hierarchical and heterogeneous rural (...) Indian context to provide insights into the moral ambiguity of ethical decision-making and suggest pathways for ethical actions. Taking a qualitative case study approach, I followed an exemplary SE’s implementation process in India. I observed ethical challenges in designing the implementation process, selecting the beneficiaries and sustaining the programme. I also identified three actions of the SE—the action of recognition, the action of reposition and the action of collaboration—and developed a transformative process model. I discuss the theoretical implications of this research for SEs and recommend a critical engagement with ethical theories to address systemic problems. (shrink)

Greater numbers of women are entering workplaces in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. Structural features of patriarchy are changing in Middle Eastern societies and workplaces, but women’s experiences of gendered segregation, under-representation and exclusion raise questions around the feminist politics and ethics mobilized to respond to them. Building on and extending emerging research on feminism, gender, resistance, feminist ethics and the Middle East, we use data from an interview study with 58 Saudi Arabian women to explore their attitudes (...) toward gender-segregated and mixed workplaces. We develop a novel conceptualization of how gender is experienced through patternings of resistance and conformity shaped by the ethicopolitical, religiopolitical and sociocultural webs of meaning in Saudi society that permeate workplaces. Saudi women’s attitudes and actions in the workplace are neither entirely individual and private nor entirely collective and public, but made up of nuanced commitments and resistances to context-relevant identity issues. We discuss implications of our findings for the feminist ethics and politics of gendered resistance and conformity to working practices and norms in Islamic and Middle Eastern settings. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is altering dynamics in academia, and people juggling remote work and domestic demands – including childcare – have felt impacts on their productivity. Female authors have faced a decrease in paper submission rates since the beginning of the pandemic period. The reasons for this decline in women’s productivity need to be further investigated. Here, we analyzed the influence of gender, parenthood and race on academic productivity during the pandemic period based on a survey answered by (...) 3,345 Brazilian academics from various knowledge areas and research institutions. Productivity was assessed by the ability to submit papers as planned and to meet deadlines during the initial period of social isolation in Brazil. The findings revealed that male academics – especially those without children – are the least affected group, whereas Black women and mothers are the most impacted groups. These impacts are likely a consequence of the well-known unequal division of domestic labor between men and women, which has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Additionally, our results highlight that racism strongly persists in academia, especially against Black women. The pandemic will have long-term effects on the career progression of the most affected groups. The results presented here are crucial for the development of actions and policies that aim to avoid further deepening the gender gap in academia. (shrink)

With this paper, from the perspective of ethics at the workplace, we problematize the taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the use of artistic freedom in creative processes. Drawing on the notion of inequality regimes (e.g. Acker, 2006) and using empirical material from a performing arts organization in Sweden, we explore how the assumptions of artistic freedom facilitate and legitimize the emergence of inequality regimes in invisible and subtle manners. Our findings indicate that non-reflexive interpretations of the concept of artistic freedom result (...) in ethical dilemmas that impact the organization's pursuits of equality work. The aesthetic ethics oriented around the notion of ‘art for the sake of art’ tends to camouflage the centralization of aesthetic authority in processes where formal hierarchical structures are missing. Consequently, asymmetrical power relations between the Directors, actors, and producers are legitimized. Ethics of quality of art and that of the social ideal of equality have been constructed as dichotomic notions indicating that aesthetic ethics of art can only be preserved at the expense of social objectives of equality. We argue that the current interpretative practices of ‘artistic freedom’ in some cultural organizations add little value of ethics to the freedom of expressing artistic opinions and in achieving the social ideal of equality but lead to the emergence of inequality regimes in the artistic work processes. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate about the role of affect in transformative change towards gender equality, by comparing the building of affect in two recently founded women’s networks in Italian and Dutch universities. By conceptualizing networking as a social and cultural practice that organizes a collective body through the building of affect between specific groups of organizational stakeholders, we reveal the emotional, dynamic and context-dependent character of transformative change. We found that similar women’s networks build affect with organizational stakeholders (...) in different ways, shaping boundaries of different collective bodies through emotions and adapting to the cultural meaning attributed to earlier actions. By bridging bottom-up and top-down approaches to gender equality and tailoring the building of affect to the local context they potentially contribute to transformational change towards gender equality. (shrink)

Using a multimethod approach, this article examines the link between class and masculinities by comparing the way two groups—professional men and working-class men —practice fatherhood. First, the authors show that these two groups practice different types of masculinity as they engage in different kinds of fatherhood. Physicians emphasize “public fatherhood,” which entails attendance at public events but little involvement in the daily care of their children. In contrast, EMTs are not only involved in their children's public events but also emphasize (...) “private fatherhood,” which entails involvement in their daily care. Second, the authors suggest that these differing types of involvement can be explained by the contrasting employment conditions of each group as well the gender order of their families, especially the divergent labor market positions of spouses and the division of parenting. The authors conclude by arguing that these working-class fathers are “undoing gender” while professional fathers reproduce the conventional gender order. (shrink)

Based on a multiyear study, this article analyzes the reproduction of adult gender segregation in two youth-sports organizations in which most men volunteers become coaches and most women volunteers become “team moms.” We use interviews and participant observation to explore how these gender divisions are created. While most participants say the divisions result from individual choices, our interviews show how gendered language, essentialist beliefs, and analogies with gendered divisions of labor in families and work-places naturalize this division of labor. Observation (...) reveals how patterned, informal interactions reproduce it as well. We show how nonreflexive informal interactions at the nexus of three gender regimes—youth sports, families, and workplaces—produce a gender formation with two interrelated characteristics: an ascendant professional class gender ideology that we call “soft essentialism” and a “gender category sorting system” that channels most men into coaching and most women into being “team moms.”. (shrink)

Based on an ethnography of a Latina/latino immigrant union, the author examines changes in gender inequality along five dimensions. Union renewal weakened the structural division of union labor, allowing women on staff to realize feminist values of leadership development in concrete goals. These changes made space for women members to engage in new leadership practices that undermined gender inequalities in interactions with men and empowered and politicized women at the individual level. Feminist values of caring for children, however, were not (...) realized in specific goals thus limiting the leadership practices and politicization of women with children. The ethnography shows the need to move from the study of women and unions to an analysis of how gendered transformations intersect with economic restructuring and immigration within social movement organizations. (shrink)

Intersectionality emphasizes that race, class, and gender distinctions are inextricably intertwined, but fully interrogating the co-constitution of these axes of stratification has proven difficult to implement in large-scale quantitative analyses. We address this gap by exploring gender differences in how social status shapes race in the United States. Building on previous research showing that changes in the racial classifications of others are influenced by social status, we use longitudinal data to examine how differences in social class position might affect racial (...) classification differently for women and men. In doing so, we provide further support for the claim that race, class, and gender are not independent axes of stratification; rather they intersect, creating dynamic feedback loops that maintain the complex structure of social inequality in the United States. (shrink)

Research shows people confront social marginalization through work, yet this scholarship largely ignores people working in illicit markets. We address this gap by investigating how and to what end men in street prostitution “borrow” privilege from their more structurally advantaged clients. Drawing from interviews with men of color in street sex work, we show how they “status maneuver” to offset stigmatized identities tied to prostitution and to construct a masculinity that offers a greater sense of social worth within constrained circumstances. (...) These men ironically rely on status differences between themselves and their white, wealthy men clients to undermine their own oppression and to create possibilities for momentary associations with hegemonic masculine privilege. This research shows how barriers between the powerful and powerless are permeable, and how social hierarchies serve as resources to cope with the inequitable conditions and stigma under which some people live and work. (shrink)

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses (...) of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure. (shrink)

Ample sociological evidence demonstrates that binary gender ideologies are an intractable part of formal organizations and that transgender issues tend to be marginalized by a wide range of social institutions. Yet, in the last 15 years, more than 200 colleges and universities have attempted to ameliorate such realities by adopting gender-inclusive facilities in which students of any gender can share residential and restroom spaces. What cultural logics motivate these transformations? How can their emergence be reconciled with the difficulty of altering (...) the gender order? Using an original sample of 2,036 campus newspaper articles, I find that support for inclusive facilities frames such spaces as a resource through which an institution can claim improved standing in the field of higher education. This process of engendering reputation allows traditional gender separation in residential arrangements to be overcome, but it also situates institutional responsiveness to transgender issues as a means of enhancing a college or university’s public prestige. This, in turn, produces novel status systems in the field of higher education—albeit ones that perpetuate familiar forms of institutional and cultural exclusion. (shrink)

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

This article identifies philosophical tensions and limitations within contemporary intersectionality theory which, it will be argued, have hindered its ability to explain how positioning in multiple social categories can affect life chances and influence the reproduction of inequality. We draw upon critical realism to propose an augmented conceptual framework and novel methodological approach that offers the potential to move beyond these debates, so as to better enable intersectionality to provide causal explanatory accounts of the ‘lived experiences’ of social privilege and (...) disadvantage. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of new public sector ‘reforms’ for the culture of higher education. It argues that a culture of carelessness, grounded in Cartesian rationalism, has been exacerbated by new managerialism. The article challenges a prevailing sociological assumption that the character of higher education culture is primarily determined by new managerial values and norms. Carelessness in education has a longer historical trajectory. First, it has its origins in the classical Cartesian view of education, namely that scholarly work is (...) separate from emotional thought and feeling, and that the focus of education is on educating an autonomous, rational person, homo sapiens, whose relationality is not regarded as central to her or his being. Second, it is grounded in the separation between fact and value that is endemic to contemporary positivist norms that govern not only scientific and social scientific thought but the organization of higher education . What is new about new managerialism in higher education is the moral status it accords to carelessness. Given the moral imperative on women to do care work and on men to be care-less, the carelessness of higher education has highly gendered outcomes.1. (shrink)

The corporate social responsibility literature has increasingly explored relationships between civil society and social movements, including non-governmental organizations, and corporations, as well as the role of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes. This paper addresses the challenge of including a plurality of civil society voices and perspectives in business–NGO relations, and in CSR as a process of governance. The paper contributes to CSR scholarship by bringing insights from feminist literature to bear on CSR as a process of governance, and engaging with (...) leaders of women’s NGOs, a group of actors rarely included in CSR research. The issues raised inform contributions to the CSR literature relating to the role of women’s NGOs with regard to the gender equality practices and impacts of corporations, and with respect to defining the meaning and practice of CSR. The paper frames marginalized NGOs as important actors which can contribute to pluralism, inclusion and legitimacy in CSR as a process of governance. It identifies several key barriers to the participation of women’s NGOs in CSR, and concludes by making suggestions for future research, as well as practice. (shrink)

Work on farms and in restaurants is characterized by highly gendered and racialized divisions of labor, low wages, and persistent inequalities. Gender, race, and ethnicity often determine the spaces where people work in the food system. Although some research focuses on gendered divisions of labor in restaurants and on farms, few efforts look more broadly at intersectional inequalities in food work. Our study examines how inequality is perpetuated through restaurant and farm work in the United States and, specifically, how gender (...) and race/ethnicity influence where people work, their tasks and responsibilities, and their work experiences. In describing restaurant work, people in the restaurant industry typically refer to the front and back of the house to distinguish between different working spaces, jobs, and workers. We use this spatial metaphor of front and back of the house to analyze intersectional inequalities of food work in restaurants and on farms. The data derive from conversations with 63 restaurant and farm owners, managers, and workers in California and Pennsylvania. Our findings suggest that gendered and racialized bodies often define who works in the front and back of the “house,” and that owners and workers often naturalize gender and racial divisions of labor in food work. Despite these patterns, we found evidence of attempts to reduce these inequalities on farms and in restaurants. (shrink)

In this article, we frame men’s club football as an “extremely gendered” organization to explain the underrepresentation of women leaders within the industry. By analyzing women’s leadership work over a 30-year period, we find that women’s inclusion has been confined to a limited number of occupational areas. These areas are removed, in terms of influence and proximity, from the male players and the playing of football. These findings reveal a gendered substructure within club football that maintains masculine dominance in core (...) football leadership roles and relegates women to a position of peripheral inclusion in leadership roles. Through a discourse analysis of gender pay gap reports, we show that men’s football clubs legitimize women’s peripheral inclusion by naturalizing male dominance at the organizational core. These findings are significant because they demonstrate that men’s football clubs, as masculinity-conferring organizations, have excluded women from core roles to maintain their masculine character while superficially accepting women into roles that do not challenge the association of football with hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, organizational change may be possible only if women are granted greater access to core organizational roles. Here, we offer a new theoretical framework for “extremely gendered” organizations that can be applied to other sporting and male-dominated contexts to analyze women’s access to core leadership roles. (shrink)

Focusing on the U.S. military as a gendered and raced institution and using 33 in-depth interviews with U.S. servicewomen, this study identifies tactics and consequences of workplace harassment that occur through administrative channels, a phenomenon I label bureaucratic harassment. I identify bureaucratic harassment as a force by which some servicemen harass, intimidate, and control individual, as well as groups of, servicewomen through bureaucratic channels. Examples include issuing minor infractions with the intention of delaying or stopping promotions, threatening to withhold military (...) benefits for reporting sexual abuse/harassment, and revoking servicewomen’s qualifications in order to remove them from positions or units. The manipulation of administrative rules and regulations is made possible by the interplay between a gendered and raced organizational climate and bureaucratic features such as discretion, hierarchy, and the blending of work and personal life. I show that bureaucratic harassment has both raced and gendered implications. Ultimately, harassment that is enacted through bureaucratic means is often overlooked but carries distinct consequences for the professional careers and workplace experiences of the victims. (shrink)

The accumulation and advancement of gender scholarship over past decades has led us to the point where gender scholars today can leverage our deep understanding of the reproduction of gender inequality to develop and test models of change. In this lecture, I present one such model designed to reduce the negative effects of stereotypic biases on women’s workplace outcomes. After synthesizing the literature on stereotyping and bias and showing the limits of past change efforts, I develop a “small wins” model (...) of change. Key to this model is that researchers work with teams of managers to produce concrete, implementable actions that produce visible results. I argue that small wins motivate further action and are the building blocks to larger organizational transformation. Preliminary results from several case studies show that this approach can produce important changes in the short run, such as reducing gender biases in workplace evaluations, and that these small wins can inspire longer run change, such as increases in the rate of hiring women. (shrink)

Uptalk is the use of a rising, questioning intonation when making a statement, which has become quite prevalent in contemporary American speech. Women tend to use uptalk more frequently than men do, though the reasons behind this difference are contested. I use the popular game show Jeopardy! to study variation in the use of uptalk among the contestants’ responses, and argue that uptalk is a key way in which gender is constructed through interaction. While overall, Jeopardy! contestants use uptalk 37 (...) percent of the time, there is much variation in the use of uptalk. The typical purveyor of uptalk is white, young, and female. Men use uptalk more when surrounded by women contestants, and when correcting a woman contestant after she makes an incorrect response. Success on the show produces different results for men and women. The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use uptalk; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk. (shrink)

Research on the effects of particularistic human resource practices (i.e., favoritism and nepotism) on organizational outcomes has concentrated on direct negative attitudinal and behavioral responses. By integrating legitimacy and social exchange theories, this paper proposes and tests the idea that legitimacy of particularistic practices might moderate their negative effects on employee attitudes at work. Through a survey of 415 employees across multiple organizational types, we show that the legitimacy of particularism mitigates its negative effects on affective commitment and perceived distributive (...) and procedural justice in non-family-owned businesses only. We discuss implications for theory and practice. (shrink)

While the vital contribution of feminist scholarship is acknowledged, it has been criticized for overly relying on the influence of society upon women’s lives. In this paper, I demonstrate the usefulness of also considering the influence of agency upon women’s lives, specifically agential reflexivity. Using the work and life histories of a group of Sri Lankan women, I use Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to show how investigating reflexivity can provide greater insights into the subtleties associated with women’s agency in relation (...) to how they consciously organize their life journeys and react to oppression, demonstrate resistance and effect emancipation. My research reveals latent aspects of women’s agency within a postcolonial Third World social context, where an enduring patriarchal social system intersects with modernity and subjects women to complex social and occupational circumstances. This paper contributes to the field of women’s studies by showing how the morphogenetic approach can address the problem of conflationary theorizing within feminist scholarship. (shrink)

Invisible work is neither defined nor recognized as labor and is not compensated as such. Studies show that manifestations of invisible work at home flow into the marketplace. What is lacking is systematic conceptualization and measurement of invisible work in the labor market built upon women’s and men’s knowledge and experiences. In this study, I address this lacuna using mixed-method sequential analysis. Twelve group interviews of employed women and men of varied socioeconomic locations in Israel yielded diverse expressions of invisible (...) practices in the workplace and their gendered meanings. Based on that knowledge, a typology of invisible work types was deduced, and an instrument was developed and distributed through a survey to a representative sample of the Israeli labor force. Regression analyses revealed that women and other disadvantaged groups do more invisible work at work than men and more advantaged groups do, regardless of occupation and managerial position. Beyond that, there are varied relations between labor market position and performing invisible work, across different types of practices. The study develops a typology of invisible work as a heuristic device contributing to office housework theory. I argue that invisible work should be conceived as an integral part of the labor market that needs to be considered when studying gender inequality. (shrink)

Drawing on 121 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation women and men physicians of Indian origin in the U.S. Southwest, I examine the incidence and nature of gender-based discrimination in American medicine. I focus on two aspects: gender discrimination by employers and colleagues against women physicians of Indian origin and the interaction of gender discrimination with race in the professional lives of first- and second-generation physicians. U.S. healthcare has become increasingly dependent on immigrants, in particular women physicians, from the developing (...) world. I document the significant impact gender and race can have in molding the professional trajectories of Indian women physicians. The experiences of these physicians help clarify the interaction of skilled migrant workers with racial/ethnic and gender relations in U.S. workplaces. (shrink)

How do technically-skilled women negotiate the male-dominated environments of technology firms? This article draws upon interviews with female programmers, technical writers, and engineers of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual orientations employed in the San Francisco tech industry. Using intersectional analysis, this study finds that racially dominant women, who identified as LGBTQ and presented as gender-fluid, reported a greater sense of belonging in their workplace. They are perceived as more competent by male colleagues and avoided microaggressions that were routine among conventionally (...) feminine, heterosexual women. We argue that a spectrum of belonging operates in these occupational spaces dominated by men. Although white and Asian women successfully navigated workplace hostilities by distancing themselves from conventional heterosexual femininity, this strategy reinforces inequality regimes that privilege male workers. These findings provide significant theoretical insights about how race, sexuality, and gender interact to reproduce structural inequalities in the new economy. (shrink)

Although corporate social responsibility practice increasingly addresses gender issues, and gender and CSR scholarship is expanding, feminist theory is rarely explicitly referenced or discussed in the CSR literature. We contend that this omission is a key limitation of the field. We argue that CSR theorization and research on gender can be improved through more explicit and systematic reference to feminist theories, and particularly those from feminist organization studies. Addressing this gap, we review developments in feminist organization theory, mapping their relevance (...) to CSR. With reference to six major theoretical perspectives in CSR scholarship, we note feminist research relating to each. Drawing upon FOS theory and CSR theory, we then develop an integrated theoretical framework for the analysis of gender issues in CSR. Our framework enables us to identify research strengths in the gender and CSR literature, as well as gaps therein, to open new conversations and to posit future research directions for this emerging area of scholarship. Our paper illustrates how a better grounding of CSR in feminist theory can contribute to CSR research more broadly. (shrink)

Economic migration is a significant and growing development around the world but has produced unequal outcomes and experiences for marginalized groups. To theoretically explain such inequalities, we argue that integration experiences of immigrants in the host country differ based on the privilege that their demographic category bestows on them (or not). We elucidate our arguments by unpacking the concept of ‘privilege’ to theorize two key sources of privilege—_locational_ and _historical_—and explain them using the global economic divide (Global North vs. Global (...) South) and local social divides (race and caste). We propose that locational and historical privilege manifest as various types of capital that immigrants carry into their host countries. We juxtapose these two sources of privilege and its levels (low vs. high) to develop a typology of immigrants—_Marginalized, Peripheral, Assimilated,_ and _Wanted—_that captures differences in migrants’ integration experiences. By shining a light on the systematic differences between immigrants based on privilege, our research brings additional nuance to the scholarship on immigrant workers and inclusive organizations; and broadens avenues to make human resource practices more ethical by taking these differences into account. (shrink)

We adopt and extend the concept of ‘noncooperative space’ to analyze how (aspirant) black women intellectual activists attempt to sustain their efforts within settings that publicly endorse racial equality, while, in practice, the contexts remain deeply racist. Noncooperative spaces reflect institutional, organizational, and social environments portrayed by powerful white agents as conducive to anti-racism work and promoting racial equality but, indeed, constrain individuals who challenge racism. Our work, which is grounded in intersectionality, draws on an autoethnographic account of racially motivated (...) domestic violence suffered by our lead author. Our analysis suggests that (aspirant) black women intellectual activists must develop courage to sustain their ‘voice’ within noncooperative spaces. However, the three interlinked dimensions of noncooperative spaces—namely, deceiving design, hegemonic actors’ indifference to racism, and (some assimilated gatekeepers’) false equivalence—may gradually erode a black female scholar’s courage. This forces her ‘voice’ to vanish temporarily, or even permanently. Courage is thus fragile and depletable. Yet, courage can be regenerated, resulting in regaining voice. Consequently, we propose courageous collective action by white allies and black and brown individuals who voluntarily and officially cooperate within and across various spaces to achieve racial equality. (shrink)

Human resource management (HRM) is underpinned by, and contributes to, the business ethics of the organization. Opportunities available to men and women as managers, and the role of managers more broadly, are critical in shaping business ethics in contemporary organizations. Research on women in management therefore provides an important lens through which to understand the institutional and cultural context of HR ethics as part of the business ethics of a country. To date, women in management in China remains an under-charted (...) topic of research in the HRM field. Extant research and recommendations on the improvement of the position of women in management in China focus primarily on women themselves from a traditional, gender norm angle, instead of challenging the political and patriarchal system or any institutionalized discriminatory practice. This is, in part, due to the absence in China of a critical feminism approach or feminist movement, as found in Western societies, and the continuing strong influence of the state and media in portraying women’s (stereotypical) image. There is significant room for research capacity building in scholarship on women in management research, for example, and through cross-fertilization of different disciplines and more rigorous research design and execution. This paper provides a critical analysis of extant literature on women in management and the ideologies underpinning it, and offers some suggestions for future research and conceptualization. (shrink)

Faculty workload inequities have important consequences for faculty diversity and inclusion. On average, women faculty spend more time engaging in service, teaching, and mentoring, while men, on average, spend more time on research, with women of color facing particularly high workload burdens. We explore how faculty members perceive workload in their departments, identifying mechanisms that can help shape their perceptions of greater equity and fairness. White women perceive that their departments have less equitable workloads and are less committed to workload (...) equity than white men. Women of color perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental rewards systems than white men. Workload transparency and clarity, and consistent approaches to assigning classes, advising, and service, can reduce women’s perceptions of inequitable and unfair workloads. Our research suggests that departments can identify and put in place a number of key practices around workload that will improve gendered and racialized perceptions of workload. (shrink)