Supplementary Notes: Women and Paid Employment

Insights from Lotte Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World (New York: Free Press, 1993). Emphasis on structural and organizational patterns of inequity that constrain individual choice: “The classic distinction between people who work to live and those who live to work is anchored in a notion of individual choice. But we now know that such choice is heavily constrained by relatively unquestioned organizational procedures. Both social and economic change have transformed this ‘choice’ into a dilemma that confronts employees at all points on the occupational scale and at various periods in their lives” (32).

The above table, adapted from p. 72, indicates areas that Bailyn claims have been traditionally considered separate spheres but which must be increasingly merged if true gender equity is to be achieved:

Two cultural divides—between the economic and domestic spheres and between male and female—define people’s position within the work-family system. . . . An equitable resolution of the present problems depends on a blurring of the distinctions in both of these divides, which should be possible since the divisions are cultural, not biological. Such a change would reduce gender distinctions by seeing them as individual differences, and it would weaken the association of influence and power with the occupational realm. In an ideal form, the work required in the two spheres would be seen as equally legitimate and equally valued, and as contributing equally to both the society and the individual’s sense of identity. But to say that change along these lines is possible is not to say that it is easy; it would require fundamental alterations in social and organizational practice. (122-23)

The following table illustrates Bailyn’s assessment of what kind of progress has been made in the United Stated, Great Britain, and Sweden in terms of merging these previously separate spheres (colors indicate where the blurring of distinctions is occurring):

The following table, adapted from p. 125, depicts Bailyn’s contention that new assumptions in the workplace will facilitate the process of moving toward gender equity:

Insights from Gender Power, Leadership, and Governance, ed. Georgia Duerst-Lahti and Rita Mae Kelly (Ann Arbor 1995) 1-37 and 67-92.

Leadership Traits and Styles in the Workplace

• “masculinity” may be still be first level of evaluation for executive leadership
• a leader may not be able to show “feminine” traits until his/her “masculinity” has been proven; this is harder for women, since men start with the assumption that they are “masculine”
• women may be more faulted for “femininity” than men are, but they are also likely to be perceived as “bitchy” or castrating if they act in typically “masculine” ways
• This complex gender-balancing act (women proving their “masculinity” and managing their “femininity” at work) may make it harder for women than men executives to follow traditional life patterns such as marriage and children
• Double Bind: if women succeed as executives by conforming to masculinized norms there is little incentive to change these norms; if they employ artificially heightened “feminine” leadership styles, they reinforce gender differentiation and still leave intact the idea that “normal” leadership is masculine.

Systemic Barriers in the Organization of Work and Careers That Contribute to the Glass Ceiling (both organizational structures and decision-making processes)

• Access discrimination in hiring: depends on gender orientation of interviewer, difficulty of job, nature of qualifications required, gendered nature of job, etc.
• Treatment discrimination and upward mobility on the job: differential tracking into less challenging tasks or sectors of organization; differential access to specialized training; “similar to me” phenomenon in mentoring and promotion; differential attitudes toward career and family obligations

Communication Barriers:

See Reardon, 159-160:

The language habits of the generation of men currently leading major organizations were developed back when women were more clearly an out-group. There is a human tendency to treat members of out-groups as if they are all the same. . . . A second tendency is to derogate outsiders. . . . In most major organizations, women still constitute an out-group. Since women have not reached senior levels in large numbers, they have been unable to break down the tendency for men to treat them as an out-group and communicate with them in ways different from the ways they communicate with in-group males. While some men may purposely try to minimize the value of women with derogatory comments, sexual innuendo, and harassment, many slip into ways of communicating with women that are unsupportive merely because women are seen as an undifferentiated mass of out-group members. Thus male disparagement of women is considered more a function of out-group perceptions and language habits than of purposeful efforts to bring harm or insult.