In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work.jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational (...) thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical (...) reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. (shrink)

The dictate in feminist intersectional theory to not “count oppressions” is difficult to reconcile with the experience of many lesbians of color that “not all differences are created equal” inside social movement organizations. Meso-level factors, such as organizational structure and sociopolitical environment, may result in the perception of individuals or groups that one form of structural inequality is more oppressive than others. The author focuses on the experiences of lesbian staff and clients at Bienestar, a large Latino health organization in (...) Los Angeles focusing primarily on HIV/aids prevention and education. This study demonstrates that oppression can be experienced as additive and that counting and ranking oppressions may remain a common practice and important political strategy in the context of some social movement organizations. This article also responds to the need for more research that builds on the gendered organizations approach by examining some of the factors that contribute to change in organizational gender ideology and practices. (shrink)

This ethnographic study of service interactions in Korean immigrant women–owned nailsalons in New York City introduces the concept “body labor” to designate a type of gendered work that involves the management of emotions in body-related service provision. The author explores variation in the performance of body labor caused by the intersection of the gendered processes of beauty service work with the racialized and class-specific service expectations of diverse customers. The study examines three distinct patterns of service provision that are shaped (...) by racial and class inequalities between women: high-service body labor, expressive body labor, and routinized body labor. These patterns demonstrate that a caring, attentive style of emotional display is dominant in workplaces governed by white, middle-class “feeling rules” but that different racial and class locations call forth other forms of gendered emotionalmanagement that focus on displaying respect, reciprocity, fairness, competence, and efficiency. (shrink)

Organizations are not only gendered; they are also classed—that is, they articulate ideas and presentations of gender that are mediated by class position. This article pursues the idea of organizations as gendered and classed by means of a comparative ethnographic analysis of the performance of sexuality in four exotic dance clubs in the Southwestern United States. Strip clubs construct sexuality to be consistent with client class norms and assumptions and with how the clubs and dancers think working-class or middle-class sexuality (...) should be expressed. Class differences are represented as sexual differences in very concrete ways: the appearance of dancers and other staff, dancing and performance styles, and interactions that take place between dancers and customers. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations. Unfortunately, the gendered-organizations approach remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped, as there have as yet been few clear answers to the question central to the perspective: What does it really mean to say that an organization itself, or a policy, practice, or slot in the hierarchy, is “gendered”? Reviewing literature in the gendered-organizations tradition, the author discusses three of the most common ways the perspective has been applied and (...) argues that all of these definitions pose potential problems for the project of meaningful social and organizational change. The article concludes with some suggestions about how a more useful conception of the gendered organization might be built. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Susan Bordo untangles the myths, ideologies, and pathologies of the modern female body. Bordo explores our tortured fascination with food, hunger, desire, and control, and its effects on women's lives.