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.     

Producing and Reducing Gender Inequality in A Worker‐Recovered Cooperative

Decades of feminist scholarship documents the persistence of gender inequality in work organizations. Yet few studies explicitly examine gender inequality in collectivist organizations like worker cooperatives. This article draws on the “theory of gendered organizations” to consider how gender operates in a worker‐recovered cooperative in contemporary Argentina. Based on ethnographic and archival research in Hotel B.A.U.E.N., this article finds that although gender remains a salient feature of the workplace, the cooperative has also adopted policies that take steps toward addressing gender inequality. It concludes by offering an updated theoretical framework for the future study of “gendered organizations.”     

When Working Hard Is Not Enough for Female and Racial/Ethnic Minority Apprentices in the Highway Trades

Drawing on employment records, qualitative interviews, and a survey, we explore the experiences of apprentices in the highway trades in Oregon. We demonstrate that female and racial/ethnic minority apprentices have lower rates of recruitment and retention and disproportionately face challenges with interpersonal interactions, hiring practices, and supervisory practices. Yet, we find a pervasive narrative that attributes apprentices' success to “hard work,” which contributes to the legitimacy of these inequalities. Consistent with the conceptualization of work organizations as inequality regimes, we argue that the apprenticeship system has policies, practices, and ideologies that are on the surface gender and race/ethnicity neutral, yet lead to the perpetuation of inequalities.     

Stability and Change in the Division of Labor among Cohabiting Couples

Because cohabitors express preferences for egalitarian relationships, it is generally presumed (by researchers and the popular press) that cohabiting couples engage in fairly equitable exchanges of domestic and paid work. This article explores how some cohabiting couples “do gender” through the division of labor—both paid and domestic work. Data are from in‐depth interviews with both partners from 30 cohabiting couples (N = 60) who have moderate levels of education. Few of these couples began their relationships sharing both paid work and domestic labor equally. Furthermore, the number of couples engaged in equal exchanges declined over time, while those relying on conventional exchanges grew. The devalued nature of domestic work, the persistence of gender privilege, and the “stalled” revolution are evident in how these working‐class cohabiting couples arrange their divisions of labor, reasons for changes, and why women are less able than men to opt out of housework.     

Manipulating diversity: How diversity regimes at US universities can reinforce whiteness

As US universities attempt to accommodate a growing multicultural society, the task of racially diversifying entering cohorts and retaining a racially diverse student demographic has taken on a leading role in recruitment, college admissions, and campus programming. But, we ask, what definitions of racial diversity are fueling these changes and how have existing racial diversity regimes impacted racial/ethnic hierarchies? We analyze two widespread applications of racial diversity—racial diversity as benefit for all and racial diversity as status marker—to illustrate how racial diversity regimes can be manipulated in ways that undermine the contributions of racially/ethnically minoritized groups and reinforce a racial order that privileges Whiteness—particularly when framed around interest convergence. We conclude by discussing the importance of articulating more concrete racial diversity objectives, addressing structural contributors to racial inequity, and measuring diversity outcomes.     

The godmother of gendered organizations: In celebration of the work of Joan Acker

Joan Acker can be considered the godmother of gendered organizations. In this paper, we reflect on the impact that Joan Acker's work has on our thinking and our careers as gender scholars in management and organization studies in Europe. First, we tell our personal stories of close encounters with Joan Acker. Second, we highlight what we consider to be two key contributions of Joan Acker. The first are the interrelated gendered processes regarding structure, culture, interaction and identity from her work in the early 1990s, the second the notion of inequality regimes from her later work on the intersections of gender, class and race. We then discuss how Acker's work has been influential in our research on gendered organizations, and in our teaching when we use it in our explanations of the functioning of gender in organizations to students, and in our work as advisors and consultants for organizations interested in equality, diversity and inclusion. Finally, we elaborate on new directions building on Acker's work, especially in current theorizing on gender and diversity in organizational change.     

Getting Serious About Inequality

Sociologists have spent a great deal of energy studying social inequality, but in this presentation I suggest that we need to refocus our efforts a bit. I examine four popular myths among the general public, and among some in sociology, regarding the drivers of extreme inequality: (1) that most inequality is generated by race and gender, (2) that most inequality is driven by educational inequality, (3) that most inequality is driven by differences in family structure, and (4) that most inequality results from face‐to‐face interactions. I provide preliminary evidence that our explanations need some work. That work involves recognizing that most inequality is generated within demographic groups and that this inequality is growing rapidly. It also involves recognizing that there are few ways to incorporate underrepresented groups into the mainstream of a social and economic system where extreme inequality is getting worse and substantial percentages of the population face economic stagnation and downward mobility. The conclusion represents a call to focus on the most important group gap—the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor—and the mechanisms through which most people gain access to economic goods, services, and social respect—jobs and money.     

The Division of Household Labor in Germany and Israel

We compare the patterns of household division of labor in Germany and Israel—two countries that share key elements of the corporatist welfare regime but differ in their gender regimes—and evaluate several hypotheses using data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program. Although time constraints and relative resources affect the division of household labor and women’s housework in both societies, we find that in Germany the gender order of household labor is more rigid, whereas in Israel the spouses’ linked labor market status exerts distinctive effects. We also find significant relationships between gender ideology and the division of household labor. We discuss the theoretical advantages of approaching the comparative study of gender inequality from the vantage point of family and gender regimes.     

The White City: Race and Urban Politics

Urban regime analysis and growth machine theory offer critical tools to study power and inequality in cities. However, the field of urban politics has moved away from critically addressing race. I discuss these theories' potential contributions before suggesting scholars “bring race back” to urban politics in several key areas: studying “White urban regimes” in addition to Black urban regimes; examining how Whiteness factors into growth (and anti‐growth) coalitions; exploring how racial discourse shapes urban regimes; and accounting for the relationship between suburbs and “fringe cities” and the city, including suburban regimes.     

Mapping the literature on child marriage: A critical engagement

U.S. “child marriage”—marriage including at least one person under the age of 18—is legal and practiced in 44 states. In this article, I map the existing literature on child marriage and offer insights on how child marriage can expand our sociological understandings of marriage, gender inequality, and youth sexualities. Social scientists have almost exclusively focused on child marriage in the Global South at the expense of understanding child marriage in the Global North, which I argue reinforces racist and xenophobic narratives that cast child marriage as a non-Western social problem. The research on U.S. child marriage that does exist focuses on the consequences, rather than the causes, of child marriage, which may shift focus away from a structural understanding of how intersecting inequalities shape girls' likelihood of getting married as minors. I position a sociology of U.S. child marriage at the intersection of sociological understandings of marriage and gender inequality and critical research on youth sexualities. I conclude by calling for intersectional research on U.S. child marriage that builds on these literatures, examining how girls' sexualities are racialized, gendered, and classed within the institution of marriage.     

Race,poverty, and markets: urban inequality after the neoliberal turn

Classic scholarship on the problem of urban inequality tends to highlight the absence of “the market” and the correspondingly problematic and inadequate role of the state in poor communities. This article explores how the relationship between markets and urban poverty has shifted in recent decades. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to the growing influence of market logics and privatization—core features of “neoliberal” change—in areas such as housing, education, federal policy, local politics, employment, and social services. I discuss how this recent work adds to our understanding of how markets shape urban disadvantage. I also argue that—given the rising influence of market logics in city governance—urban scholarship stands to benefit from a deeper engagement with insights from the field of economic sociology. Building bridges between the two subfields, I argue, will help to specify what markets mean in the lives of the urban poor, and also can bring issues of race and poverty to the attention of economic sociologists.     

Humanitarian Crisis as Everyday Life

Contemporary scholarship understates the resilience of everyday life in humanitarian crisis. Disaster may seem like a fleeting moment—colloquially, we say “the world stood still” or “everything changed in a blink”—but in the Buduburam Refugee Camp, a predominately Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, people experienced calamitous tragedy accumulated over years of daily activities. Though they remained politically and economically “out of place,” residents constructed buildings and other ordinary material objects to forge a new lived environment. As residents engaged with this new lived environment—from building homes to managing rainwater—they regularly participated in moral boundary work that helped establish how “good” people ought to act in inhumane circumstances. Moral boundary work did not obviate inequality or conflict, but it did help mediate between immediate bodily needs and the wider social order. More broadly, the study documents the crucial role that seemingly mundane material objects play in moral boundary work. Material objects like signs, garbage cans, and homes can operate like sociospatial props in the stories that people tell about their daily lives. These stories reinforce the moral boundaries that divide “good” and “bad” people and ultimately help make a shared moral order possible.     

Complex Worker: Self-Concept and Boundary-Work Among the Solo Self-Employed

Abstract

This article proposes to examine the self-concept of members of an occupational category referred to as the “solo self-employed”—women and men who work alone and do not employ other workers. Our findings reveal that although the solo self-employed themselves do not make clear phenomenological use of the solo-self-employed category, they do speak similarly about their occupational independence, albeit without group awareness. The self-concept of the solo self-employed is mainly based on boundary work in relation to two well-known cultural-occupational categories: “employed workers” and “businesspeople.” Solo-employed workers prefer to distance themselves from these two categories and define themselves through negative comparisons between themselves and the two preceding categories. The Discussion section proposes perceiving solo self-employment as a social category that constructs an alternative self in relation to the selves associated with popular cultural-occupational scenarios.     

Orchestrating Concepts: Kitchen Dynamics and Regime Change in Good Housekeeping and Ideal Home, 1922–2002

It has long been recognized that users and consumers actively appropriate new products and technologies and assimilate them into existing regimes and frames of reference. Much less has been written about how these frames evolve or about how processes of integration and appropriation are sustained and transformed. In this article we analyze “the kitchen” not as a place but as an “orchestrating concept.” We subject “orchestrating concept.” We subject representations of the kitchen, as depicted in Good Housekeeping and Ideal Home (two of the foremost home magazines in Britain) from 1922 to 2002, to two types of analysis. We begin by showing how materials, images, and forms of competence “hang together” at different points in time and how kitchen regimes are formed. We then explore ways of characterizing transitions between one kitchen regime and another. The result is an account not simply of the elements of which kitchens are made but of the changing relations between these constitutive ingredients. The article is at heart about the processes and dynamics of regime change. Although we focus on the kitchen throughout, we do so because we believe better understanding of how meta-level orchestrating concepts like “the kitchen” develop is important for conceptualizing the dynamics of ordinary consumption and everyday practice.     

Misery Has Company: The Shared Emotional Consequences of Everwork Among Women and Men

Everwork—defined as a combination of overwork, face time, constant availability, and unpredictability—is becoming an increasingly common form of work, especially among highly skilled service workers. While such an environment would seem to disadvantage mothers in particular, I find that employees of all genders and parental statuses suffer in such intensive work environments. Through 50 in‐depth interviews with management consultants, I examine how employees reconcile their personal lives with the realities of everwork. I characterize young childless men and women as “quit intenders,” mothers as “tightrope walkers,” and fathers as “reluctant sacrificers.” This article offers new insight into the tensions employees face between their parenthood ideals and everwork expectations, the strategies they engage in to manage those tensions, and the emotional impacts they experience as a result. Because employees use career–life strategies that accommodate rather than challenge the fundamental nature of everwork, everwork environments may persist despite the negative consequences.     

In the steps of Joan Acker: A journey in researching inequality regimes and intersectional inequalities

Inspired by two of Acker's interconnected concepts, inequality regimes and intersectionality, the authors revisit their intersectional research. By exploring their various studies on inequality regimes and intersectionality, the authors propose some novel insights that have emerged from an aggregate appraisal of some 17 empirically researched papers, all shaped by Joan Acker's sociology. While Acker's work on gender and organizations has provided crucial insights into much of this work, this article concentrates on the overarching concept of inequality regimes and then focuses in on less‐developed aspects of intersectionality in Acker's work. In doing so, it reconsiders the value of inequality regimes in pushing the boundaries of intersectional insights.     

Demands and Devotion: Cultural Meanings of Work and Overload Among Women Researchers and Professionals in Science and Technology Industries

How do cultural meanings influence how people experience work‐life demands? Much research, especially quantitative research, on the effects of structural work and family conditions does not account for employees’ cultural beliefs about the meaning of work in their lives. This article uses unique survey data to investigate the effects of employee embrace of elements of the “work devotion schema”—a cultural model that valorizes intense career commitment and organizational dedication—on their sense of “overload,” an experience that includes feeling exhausted and overloaded by all one's roles, net of actual hours on the paid job and family responsibilities. We argue that by cognitively, morally, and emotionally framing work as a valued end, the work devotion schema reduces feelings of overload. Using a case of senior women researchers and professional service providers in science and technology industries, we find that those who embrace work devotion feel less overloaded than those who reject it, net of work and family conditions. However, this effect is curtailed for mothers of young and school‐aged children. We end by discussing implications for flexibility stigma and gender inequality.     

When Bourgeois Utopias Meet Gentrification: Community and Diversity in a New Urbanist Neighborhood*

Abstract

Scholars have recently begun to explore how social and politically liberal gentrifiers make sense of the classed and racial inequalities linked to gentrification. In this article I ask how residents of one new urbanist “bourgeois utopia”—the Mueller Development in Austin, Texas—experience and give meaning to their neighborhood in a context of gentrification. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews I explain how new urbanism has reimagined and marketed “diversity” and “community” to middle-class and wealthy consumers and provides these to affluent people as neighborhood amenities. I show how residents draw on diversity ideology and multicultural capital to neutralize what they see as their neighborhood’s role in gentrification. In doing so this article adds to our theoretical understanding of how contemporary urban development exploits pursuits for the social good as rhetorical tools to assuage privileged guilt while promoting profitable enterprises.     

The Moral Economy of Neoliberalism: How Voters Use Neoliberal Ideology to (De)Legitimate Undocumented Worker Access to Labor Markets

Neoliberalism is prevalent in American life. While researchers have documented the use of neoliberal ideology in institutional and macrolevel policy contexts, they have yet to investigate how voters use neoliberal ideology to legitimate their position on economic policy. I use data from semi‐structured interviews with 85 Tucsonans about why they voted the way they did on Proposition 202 (2008): “Arizona Stop Illegal Hiring”—which sought to reregulate undocumented worker labor market access—to address this gap. I found evidence of two distinct neoliberal ideological legitimations: “fair market competition” and “individual responsibility.” Furthermore, I use these data to shed light on the debate over whether neoliberalism spans partisan affiliation or converges with American conservatism. I found that voters across party lines who supported the measure paired neoliberal legitimations with conservative legitimations. We can interpret this bipartisan use of neoliberal ideology as evidence of a neoliberal “moral economy”—or consensus about the moral principles in which market action is embedded. Evidence of this moral economy indicates that moral principles from neoliberal ideology are simultaneously bipartisan and converge with American conservatism. These findings suggest that there could be a broader moral consensus among voters concerning the legitimacy of anti‐immigration economic policies.