An intersectional perspective on Muslim women's issues and experiences in employment

Drawing on a qualitative study of second‐generation Pakistani heritage Muslim women in employment in the UK, this article uses and develops an intersectional perspective to explain the interconnected and overlapping factors, such as gender, ethnicity and religion that affect these women at work. It also considers individual strategies and resources these women use to address any obstacles in the way of their employment and careers. The article uses the notions of inequality regimes and intersectionality to explain inequality in the workplace and the complex challenges facing Muslim female employees. The results show that these women continue to face a myriad of challenges in the UK workplace, and that a unilateral focus on gender does not sufficiently explain the work‐related experiences of second‐generation Muslim women in the UK. Therefore, it is important to take into account gender's intersection with ethnicity and religion.     

Negotiating Gender Relations: Muslim Women and Formal Employment in Pakistan's Rural Development Sector

Drawing on evidence from qualitative field research, this article explores how Pakistani female development practitioners experience their work situations as they are shaped both by local sociocultural norms and globalized development agendas. In this context, policies at global and national levels demand that more female development practitioners work in remote rural places in Pakistan, thus creating new employment opportunities for some Pakistani women. This article argues that, in this work environment, these women are exposed to different expectations about their gender behaviour and that they therefore develop physical strategies on the one hand and discursive strategies on the other in order to negotiate gender relations in a way that allows them to engage in formal employment. This article adds to under‐researched debates on gender and work in Muslim countries as well as to debates in critical development and gender studies.     

Policy is not enough – the influence of the gendered workplace on fathers’ use of parental leave in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Paid parental leave for fathers is a promising social policy tool for degendering the division of labor for childcare. Swedish fathers have had the right to paid parental leave since 1974, but they take only one-fourth of leave days parents take. There are strong cultural norms supporting involved fatherhood, so couples typically want to share leave more than they do. This article explores how workplaces can constrain Swedish fathers’ use of state leave policy, in ways that fathers can take for granted, a topic that has received less attention than individual or family-related obstacles. Based on interviews with 56 employees in five large private companies, we found that masculine workplace norms can make it difficult for fathers to choose to take much leave, while aspects of traditional workplace structure building on these norms can negatively affect fathers’ capabilities of taking much leave. Workplace culture and structure seemed to be based on assumptions that the ideal worker should prioritize work and has limited caregiving responsibilities, setting limits to fathers’ ability to share leave with mothers. Gender theorists suggest such assumptions persist because of male dominance at the workplace and the endurance of gendered assumptions about the roles of men and women.     

Broadening the Intersectional Path: Revealing Organizational Practices through ‘Working Mothers’ Narratives about Time

This article is concerned with the complex inequality experienced by mothers in employment, and applies ‘strong intersectionality’ to women's narratives about time to reveal the intersecting inequalities women experience and gendered organizational practices. Drawing on empirical research with 30 Irish ‘working mothers’, this article explores the way time is ordered and managed to create gendered inequalities for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work. By conceptualizing gender, maternity and class as simultaneous processes of identity practice, institutional practice and social practice, following Holvino, women's narratives reveal that organizations manage and order time to fit with notions of ‘ideal workers’, which perpetrate older hierarchies and gendered inequalities, and which create regimes of inequality for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work.     

One step forward? Advances and setbacks on the path toward gender equality in families and work

Men and women increasingly express egalitarian preferences for organizing family life, but workplace norms and practices are still based on relatively traditional assumptions about the gender division of labor in families. In this article, we unpack this discordant feature of the cultural landscape with recent sociological research on gender, work, and family. We begin by discussing the growing body of evidence on preferences for gender–egalitarian relationships and specify how these egalitarian desires are incongruous with workplace norms and practices. Such a mismatch between desires and reality tends to produce negative personal and career outcomes, including work–family conflict, stress, and job and marital dissatisfaction. Then, we offer a critical review of the recent actions taken by some employers and policymakers to address this issue. We observe some progressive changes in both the public and private sector in regard to family leave policies, flexible work arrangements, childcare support, and fertility benefits, but these policy initiatives still fall short of supporting gender–egalitarian arrangements for working families. We conclude with a discussion of how researchers could better evaluate and increase the effectiveness of workplace initiatives.     

Cisgendered Organizations: Trans Women and Inequality in the Workplace

This article responds to calls to better understand how intersecting “inequality regimes” operate in organizations. Through in‐depth interviews with 25 white trans women about their workplace experiences, my analyses highlight how trans women navigate relational practices that are simultaneously gendered and cisgendered—that is, practices that maintain cultural connections between sex and gender and maintain gender as immutable. Findings demarcate three distinct mechanisms by which cisgenderism, a system that devalues women and trans people, operates and strengthens hierarchical privileges at work: (1) double‐bind constraints; (2) fluid biases of cissexism and sexism; and (3) group practices of privilege and subordination. In the first regard, analyses reveal unique double binds that trans women face—binds that dictate contradictory feminine and masculine ideal worker expectations but also expectations of gender authenticity. Second, I find that trans women often hover between two subordinate statuses (i.e., gender and transgender status) in a given workday, a fact that prods a more fluid conception of cisgenderism. Finally, this study highlights how cis men collectively mobilize through group practices to repair cisgender system breaches. All three dimensions are critical for understanding the production of workplace inequality between not only trans women and cis men, but all feminine‐identified workers.     

The production of racial inequality within and among organizations

This article examines the production of racial inequality. Although most research concerned with racial inequality focuses exclusively on individuals, we argue that higher level actors, namely, organizations, contend with racial inequality in much the same way that people do. Using prior research on race and organizations, this paper illustrates that understanding how organizations produce and experience racial inequality is necessary. We argue that racial inequality regimes have the capacity to operate on people, but also among organizations.     

Solo-living and childless professional women: Navigating the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over the fertile years

One in five women are childless at midlife, and for an estimated 90 percent of these women, childlessness is not actively chosen. In this article, we explore how solo-living and childless professional women navigate the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over their fertile years and what this means for organizations and organization studies. Drawing on biographical narrative interview data from solo-living professional women in the UK, we argue that identifications with the balanced mother ideal change over the life course as a result of futurity, ambivalence, and suppression of negative emotions—part of the logic of both postfeminism and neoliberal feminism—and the ‘disenfranchized grief’ of contingent childlessness. At the point of late fertility, the absence of alternative social narratives to the balanced mother ideal appears to create a crisis point for childless women, including in the workplace. We conclude our article with recommendations for how organizations can better cater to the needs of this significant, yet largely silenced, demographic group.     

‘Working fathers' in Japan: Leading a change in gender relations?

Does the emergent phenomenon of ‘working fathers' herald a process of change in gender relations in Japan? Against the background of the current discourse in Japan about new modes of fathers' participation in the family, the article focuses on the small group of working fathers — men who explicitly organize their working lives around family responsibilities — to examine the potentiality of change. This supposed change in the roles of men (and women), at home and in the workplace, is considered in terms of latency, as a ‘slow‐dripping' process. The qualitative research focuses on Fathering Japan, Japan's leading fathering movement, its ideology, its members and their families. The article offers a critical perspective, juxtaposing gender ideology with practice. Exploring the real‐life experiences of working fathers caught between family and work, especially against Japan's gendered corporate culture, the article also addresses the persistence of gender inequality in Japan.     

Migration,Diaspora and Citizenship: A Qualitative Study of the Perceptions of Pakistani Nationals towards the Political Rights of Pakistani Dual Citizens

The dual citizenship has been the subject of intense political debate in Pakistan barring the elected representatives, in parliament, the provincial assemblies and the presidency, from holding dual nationality. The perceptions that holding a foreign citizenship challenges the undiluted loyalty to country further engender question mark over their political participation in country’s affairs. A qualitative study has been carried out in the city of Rawalpindi to explore the stance of Pakistani nationals on such exclusion of Pakistani dual citizens from mainstream politics of Pakistan asking should the individual’s association to the state be an exclusive one? In this paper, in‐depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 40 male and female respondents (22 Pakistani citizens, 18 Pakistani dual citizens) and 6 constitutional experts. The results indicate distrust among Pakistani citizens when considering dual citizens’ right of representation in general elections of Pakistan, stemming from a mistrust of their “split loyalties”.     

Cultural Sexism is Ordinary: Writing and Re‐Writing Women in Academia

When we ‘write women’ in academia, the focus in much of the literature to date has been to write about women. The focus of this article is the writing of women themselves; to give voice to women's experiences as constructors of knowledge. Through so doing this article uses writing as praxis; as a mechanism to disrupt, challenge and open a space for renegotiation of cultural norms within academic institutions. Based on qualitative data collection over a six‐year period, this article writes women's experiences and unpacks the way in which cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women's academic lives. It also considers ways in which the underlying cultural interpretations of hegemonic masculinized structures may be re‐written.     

Transnational regimes of labor and statelessness: Intersections of citizenship regimes and local norms in East and Southeast Asia

This article offers a review of the literature on transnational labor regimes and statelessness to pursue further theorization from East and Southeast Asian contexts. The main focus is on how local norms (local sense of belonging, local moral code, and local hierarchies) are entangled with national‐level citizenship regimes to legitimate the discrimination of certain people to be statelessness and secure low‐wage migrant workers for the new global labor regime. First, traditional literature on citizenship and statelessness was reviewed; binary theoretical frameworks (including citizens/excluding non‐citizens) based on political recognition were indicated as the main limitations. Second, recent theories arguing for an intersection between national citizenship regimes and a new global labor regime were reviewed. Third, recent theories that illuminate the importance of local contexts in determining citizens' rights were reviewed based on formal exclusion and informal inclusion as well as formal inclusion and informal exclusion. Finally, it was concluded that further theorization is needed on how citizenship regimes and local norms intersect to produce statelessness, securing low‐wage migrant workers for the global labor regime through the global assemblages approach. Through the paper, East and Southeast Asia were illuminated as potentially fruitful research sites for further theorization on the topic.     

The curious under‐representation of women impact case leaders: Can we disengender inequality regimes?

Universities are increasingly expected to demonstrate the wider societal impacts of academic research. Yet women management scholars were disproportionately under‐represented in leading impact cases in the UK's REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2014. An analysis of 395 REF impact cases for business and management studies with an identifiable lead author revealed that only 25 per cent were led by women, of which 54 per cent were sole authored. Based on 12 in‐depth interviews with women impact case writers, we use Acker's inequality regimes framework to understand invisible and socially constructed gendering of the UK's policy that is designed to evaluate research impact. In a knowledge‐intensive workplace dominated by men, the shape and degree of gendered bases of inequality, systemic practices, processes and controls result in sub‐optimal talent management and gendered knowledge. We call for university leaders to be proactive in addressing barriers that fail to support or recognize women's leadership of research impact.     

Sponsored Social Change in a Public Housing Project

Federal and local pressures have given rise to a hybrid organization that brings together disparate groups from the public and non-profit sectors to address complex social problems. This article examines one such organizational emergence of state-affiliated sponsorship. Based on data from a multi-method case study, we find that not only do members of the sponsoring organization use legitimate authority structures, existing laws, and social norms to reproduce their power, they do so with a state mandate that privileges their expertise and processes.Parts of this paper were prepared while the third author, Beth A. Rubin, was on leave to serve as Director, Sociology Program, National Science Foundation. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. P. Denise Cobb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. This research reflects one part of Cobb's dissertation research that addresses how organizational actors from unequal social positions define a collective agenda and whose interests prevail when there is a lack of consensus. Her current research further examines the emergence of the university-community partnership form. She has published related work in Administration & Society and previously in Qualitative Sociology. Jon Shefner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Studies Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is co-editor, with Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, of Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (2006: Pennsylvania State Press). He is currently working on a book examining the impact of globalization and democratization on the mobilization and well being of Mexico's urban poor. Beth A. Rubin is Professor of Management and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Rubin publishes on economic and workplace transformation, labor unions, homelessness and social policy and social theory in leading academic journals. Her current research is on organizational commitment in the context of the new economy, inequality and industrial restructuring, organizational and workplace restructuring and time in organizations, the latter of which is represented in the forthcoming book, Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, that Rubin is editing.     

Performance and Performativity: Undoing Fictions of Women Business Owners

This article explores the representation of women small business owners in three contemporary novels; Chocolat, The Shipping News and Back When We Were Grownups. The primary contribution is to demonstrate how fiction can both challenge and collude in dominant constructions of entrepreneurship, which is more generally gendered as male and masculine. Judith Butler's thinking on performativity with regard to gender and sexual desire is applied to women's identities and extended to include their behaviour as entrepreneurs. The article demonstrates that these novels both ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender and business ownership. They portray women who are successful in business while displaying culturally accepted norms of femininity but who are set apart from other female characters. However, their partial and conflictual identification with norms of gender and entrepreneurship could lead a reader to question those norms and through the undoing of the protagonists, the novels offer alternative performances and performativities of doing gender and of doing business.     

Long Working Hours and the Corporate Gender Divide in Japan

While the workplace custom of working long hours has been known to exacerbate gender inequality, few have investigated the organizational mechanisms by which long working hours translate into and reinforce the power and status differences between men and women in the workplace. Drawing on 64 in‐depth interviews with workers at financial and cosmetics companies in Japan, this article examines three circumstances in which a culture of long working hours is disadvantageous for women workers, and the consequences of those circumstances: (a) managers in Japanese firms, reinforcing gender stereotypes, prioritize work over personal and family lives; (b) non–career‐track women experience depressed aspirations in relation to long working hours and young women express a wish to opt out due to the incompatibility of work with family life; and (c) workers who are mothers deal with extra unpaid family work, stress such as guilt from leaving work early, salary reduction and concerns over their limited chances for promotion. The article argues that the norm of working long hours not only exacerbates the structural inequality of gender but also shapes employed women's career paths into the dichotomized patterns of either emulating workplace masculinity or opting out.     

“It’s More Appropriate for Men”: Management and Worker Perceptions of the Gendered Ideal Worker

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative interviews at a Mexican-owned multinational manufacturing corporation, this article analyzes how perceptions of the ideal worker shift during workplace transformation to impact women and men differently. Prior to transformation, women and men perform distinct forms of labor on the shop floor. When the company moves from labor-intensive to technology-driven production, the ideal factory worker changes. Management (re)assesses and (re)values skills, responsibility, and commitment. These seemingly gender-neutral attributes create different outcomes. Automation and teamwork are recast as men’s work; women are sent home. I argue that women’s exit is not about the nature of the work. Rather, gendered stereotypes embodied in perceptions of the ideal worker justify and normalize women’s elimination from the factory. These findings reveal how presumed gender traits play a pivotal role in the company’s adjustment to global economic processes, privileging masculinity and devaluing femininity.     

Perceived Equity in the Gendered Division of Household Labor

Despite huge imbalances in the division of housework between women and men, previous studies have found perceptions of equity on the part of women to be much more frequent than feelings of injustice. Taking a comparative perspective on the basis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2002 data (N = 8,556), we find that, on the individual level, the explanatory frameworks that have been found to influence the actual inequality of household division of labor (time availability, resource dependence, and gender ideology) contribute to the explanation of perceptions of equity, in that they interact with the inequality of the household division of labor. On the country level, the gender‐wage ratio and the average level of inequality are important predictors.     

Networking towards (in)equality: Women entrepreneurs in technology

Deploying a multidimensional framework focusing on individual, organizational and societal factors, we investigate gendering practices through which women entrepreneurs become disadvantaged in the technology sector. Through qualitative fieldwork, we focus on women entrepreneurs' experiences networking to access valuable entrepreneurial resources and examine the role of technology incubators and accelerators in facilitating this access. These organizations have the potential to mitigate gender inequities by adopting gender‐aware practices such as increasing access to networks and resources that might otherwise be unreachable for women technology entrepreneurs. Focusing simultaneously on the complex intersections of networking, organizational practices at incubators and accelerators, and institutionalized gender norms in society, we outline how different gendering practices work separately and in tandem to marginalize women technology entrepreneurs. We observe that these organizations engage in ‘gender neutral’ recruitment practices and promote transactional networking which result in the replication rather than eradication of gender inequality. Moreover, organizational attempts to address ‘gender issues’ as they relate to technology entrepreneurs re‐inscribe rather than disrupt societal gender norms. Our research offers new insights for understanding the interrelated individual, organizational and societal factors contributing to gender inequality in technology entrepreneurship and provokes discussion on the possibilities for social change.     

Deliberative democracy in the real world,the contribution of the capability approach

ABSTRACT

Drawing on Amartya Sen’s writings, this article presents the capability approach to democracy and shows its relevance for the sociological reflection and research on democratic processes conceived as ways to convert individual preferences into collective norms or decisions. Two moments are key in this respect: the formation of individual preferences and their translation into collective norms in the course of public debates. The initial sections present Sen’s conception of democracy, particularly emphasizing its articulation with the notions of ‘positional objectivity’ and ‘conversion’. Then, this conception is compared with two other mechanisms that may be used to coordinate individual decisions or preferences, namely the market and idealistic views on deliberative democracy. The article emphasizes how the capability approach departs from these two conceptions with regard to the two key concepts of capacity to aspire and capability for voice. The final section shows how Sen’s notion of democracy may open up a new field for research, namely the sociological investigation of the informational (or knowledge) basis of democracy.