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.     

Male and Female Civility: Toward Gender Justice

This article examines the concept of civility in American society taking into consideration the influence of gender and gender roles, especially that of women in 20th–century America. This was a century in which social roles, especially those of women, changed or expanded dramatically, influencing not only individual rights and relationships but also the structure of almost every organization from the family to the classroom, from corporations to statehouses. As women have transformed themselves and their presence in our culture, men have also been forced to examine their relationships with women and, more subtly, the role of men in our society. A study of male and female civility must take into consideration the history of relationships between the genders at the both the micro level (i.e., interpersonal relationships) as well as the macro level (organizational behavior). As we move forward into the 21st century, we must not only reflect on the progress made during the last several decades but also continue to explore strategies that will continue to advance a climate where gender civility becomes more entrenched in our cultural values. Some of the issues and possible solutions that must continue to be explored in terms of creating a more civil society for gender relations are discussed.     

When does part-time work relate to less work-life conflict for parents? Moderating influences of workplace support and gender in the Netherlands,Sweden and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Working part-time can potentially be a great means of reducing work-life conflict for parents of young children. However, research has not univocally found this attenuating relation, suggesting it may not be universal, but rather contingent on other factors. This study investigates whether the relation between part-time work and work-life conflict is contingent on workplace support and gender. Results show that short part-time work (<25?h) relates to lower levels of work-life conflict for both women and men. We find some evidence that workplace support affects this relation: short part-time working women in an organization with a family supportive organizational culture had lower levels of work-life conflict than short part-time working women in organizations with an unsupportive organizational culture. For men working short part-time we find tendencies in the same direction, although this falls short of conventional statistical significance. In addition, long part-time work (25–35?h) is not significantly related to (lower) work-life conflict for either women or men. In line with previous research, managerial support is found to be linked to lower levels of work-life conflict, irrespective of whether one works full-time or part-time. Notably, the relation between working part-time and work-life conflict does not differ for mothers and fathers, suggesting that this work-family policy could help both men and women reduce work-life conflict.     

An Analysis of the Relationships Among Structure,Influence, and Gender: Helping to Build a Feminist Theory of Public Relations

Feminist public relations scholars have suggested that the organizational context may be to blame for the powerlessness of some female public relations practitioners. This study assessed this claim by using feminist theory and a structural framework. This study tested whether the perceived organizational influence of men and women in corporate public relations was related to formal structural power, relationship power, or gender. Women had less formal structural power than men, but there were no gender differences in relationship power or influence. Consistent with feminist hypothesizing as well as the structural framework, practitioners' influence was related to both their formal structural power and relationship power-but not gender.     

Gender relations,development practice and "culture"

Most development practitioners have the following preconceived notions about gender and culture: 1) that gender relations are equated with the most intimate aspects of society; 2) that culture and tradition are immutable; 3) that there is no independent resistance to subordination within the culture; and 4) that religion is culture. These notions interfere with work on developing equitable gender relations and complicate efforts to allocate resources in ways that redress the imbalance of power between men and women. The validity of these notions can be tested by analyzing an experience the author had in 1984 when she published a book on women and development in India. On a publicity tour in Liverpool, England, she addressed an audience composed largely of men from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This audience attacked her book and defended an idealized version of the position of women in the culture of South Asia. They accused the author of being a traitor to her own culture and of being Westernized. A Pakistani woman member of the audience, however, thanked the author for her presentation and reported that she was working with Asian women facing domestic violence. The men understood the cultural identity of South Asia as being composed of identical families dedicated to mutual interest, love, and cooperation. However, this family unit requires the subsuming of women's interests. This myth of the family ignores real life experiences of women who suffer abuse and ignores the fact that the notion of "family" is constantly undergoing change. Development practitioners should use culture as a way of opening up intractable areas of gender relations rather than regarding it as a dead-end which prevents work towards equitable gender relations. A new definition of "cultural sensitivity" would be to acknowledge that contests surround the significance attached by a society to different aspects of social constraints and that these contests often represent challenges to hierarchical social relations.     

The gentle exercise of male power in rural Argentina

Why do women choose their own subordination, and how are their choices linked to structural characteristics of society and to conceptions and ideologies of gender? These are the central questions in this paper based on fieldwork in Santa Cecilia, a farm community in the northern part of Santa Fe province in Argentina. It portrays how power is exercised in face‐to‐face interaction between men and women, on the basis of the existing sexual division of labour in the household and in society at large, and on men's privileged access to crucial resources (material as well as organizational and ideological). It is significant that men's control over resources and women is not associated with conflict and grievances, but is based on shared values. It is argued that masculinity is hegemonic, and the paper aims at revealing the processes whereby hegemonic masculinity “naturalizes” gender inequality.     

Intermarriages Between Western Women and Palestinian Men: Multidirectional Adaptation Processes

This article addresses cultural adaptation of Western‐Palestinian intermarried couples. Using in‐depth interviews, information was gathered from 16 participants, 7 Western women and 9 Palestinian men, living in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Adaptation strategies are typified by the extent to which each spouse embraces the partner's culture. The data suggest that intermarriage engenders a multidirectional adaptation process. Patriarchy and East‐West power relations affect mainly the women, having to face marginalization on the basis of their gender and their foreignness. The men undergo a double process of cultural adaptation: to the Western culture and to their native culture after their return. Both the husbands’ extended family and the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict were found to affect both partners’ adaptation.     

How organizational characteristics shape gender difference and inequality at work

Why should students and scholars who are interested in gender difference and inequality study organizations? In recent years, as research on organizations has migrated to business schools and become less connected to other subfields of the discipline, the value of organizational sociology has become less evident to many. Yet characteristics of organizations contribute in important ways to producing different experiences and outcomes for women and men, by constraining certain individual actions and enabling or bringing about others. In this essay, we trace the consequences of four categories of organizational characteristics—the formal structure of work, employment practices, informal structure and culture, and organizational networks and fields—for gender inequality in three areas: workplace experiences, work–family conflict, and career outcomes. We close with some brief reflections on future directions for research linking organizations and gender.     

Organizational Commitment over the Gendered Life Course at a Mexican Company

Mexican workplaces have changed significantly in response to the global marketplace by restructuring, downsizing, and implementing new production and administrative processes. This case study analyzes organizational commitment at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation within the context of workplace transformation. Based on in‐depth interviews with 83 women and men, I identify two sources of commitment—family‐friendly and career‐friendly employment practices. Using the framework of the gendered life course, I show commitment fluctuated given the employees' stage in the life course. This study builds on the gender and work research by exploring how individual attributes of gender and parental status contribute to organizational commitment, but are underscored by the complexity of workplace context.     

Work and Employment in Small Businesses: Perpetuating and Challenging Gender Traditions

More and more women and men are becoming dependent on some form of small business activity for all or part of their livelihoods but there is little research offering insight into gender and working practices in small businesses. In this article we assess some theoretical approaches and discuss these against an empirical investigation of micro-firms run by women, men and mixed sex partnerships. In the ‘entrepreneurship’ literature, with its emphasis on the individual business owner, we find little guidance. We argue that in the ‘modern’ micro-business, family and work are brought into proximity as in the ‘in between’ organizational form described by Weber. The celebrated ‘flexibility’ of small firms often involves the reproduction within modernity of seemingly pre-modern practices in household organization and gender divisions of labour. This is true in the Britain of the 1990s in a growing business sector normally associated neither with tradition nor with the family. Tradition, however, is never automatic or uncontested in a ‘post-traditional society’. A minority of women and men in micro-enterprises actively resist traditional solutions and even traditional imagery of male and female behaviour. For this small group alone new economic conditions seem to bring new freedom.     

Men Discussing Women and Women Discussing Men: Reflexivity,Transformation and Gendered Practice in the Context of Nursing Care

This article explores gender reflexivity through the accounts of men discussing women and of women discussing men as professional nurses. Drawing on data from an Australian‐based study, and with an orientation to gender as practice, it investigates the skills and aptitudes that each is seen to bring to the job, how men and women view the other's performance as caregivers and the experiences and challenges of working with the other group. Previous work has suggested there is a link between reflexivity and transformation as individuals self‐consciously shape identities and as they reflect critically on their social conditions. The results from this study question the nature and extent of these transformative powers and suggest different levels of reflexivity based on the extent to which individuals challenge gender norms. These levels are linked to experiences of dissonance as men and women work with each other in a ‘feminized’ context of nursing care.     

Family‐Supportive Organizational Culture and Fathers' Experiences of Work–family Conflict in Sweden

This study explores fathers' experiences with work–family conflict and their perceptions of how supportive the organizational culture at work is regarding fathers' work–family needs, and whether a family‐supportive organizational culture is associated with less work–family conflict. A total of 377 fathers working in private Swedish companies were surveyed. While a modest proportion of fathers experienced high levels of work‐to‐family conflict, less family‐to‐work conflict was reported. Further, fathers perceived little work–family support from top managers, supervisors, and co‐workers. Our results indicate that the cultures in the examined companies have norms that separate work and family from each other. Fathers seem likely to experience work–family conflict as long as the family‐supportive organizational culture, especially at the work group level, is not well‐developed. When fathers experience their work organizations as family‐supportive, they are likely to be better able to combine work and family and thus to help Swedes achieve a more gender‐equal society.     

Balancing Work–family Life in Academia: The Power of Time

In the article we analyse the structuring of time among academic employees in Iceland, how they organize and reconcile their work and family life and whether gender is a defining factor in this context. Our analysis shows clear gender differences in time use. Although flexible working hours help academic parents to organize their working day and fulfil the ever‐changing needs of family members, the women, rather than men interviewed, seem to be stuck with the responsibility of domestic and caring issues because of this very same flexibility. It seems to remove, for more women than for men, the possibility of going home early or not being on call. The flexibility and the gendered time use seem thus to reproduce traditional power relations between women and men and the gender segregated division in the homes.     

Managing organisational change: the "gendered" organisation of space and time

Although the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) maintains a strong commitment to gender equity in its anti-poverty programs, a conservative external environment often impedes efforts to make its organizational structure consistent with this commitment. For example, BRAC's approach to organizing its field operations has been to abolish the distinction between home and office. BRAC's female employees live with male colleagues in their rural offices, travel long distances on bicycles and motorcycles, and reject the sari--practices that are antithetical to the prevailing culture and place tremendous pressure on these field workers. The high work intensity, need to work beyond normal business hours, and lack of on-site child care subjects married female employees to hostility from their husbands and relatives. Single female employees are often regarded as unmarriagable because of their divergent life-styles. Although BRAC makes provisions for employees to take leave for family responsibilities, staff who access this benefit are viewed as more committed to family than their work. The sexual activities of female--but not male--employees are scrutinized. Despite these contradictions, BRAC's innovative arrangements model a new form of gender relations in rural areas. BRAC is enabling its young women employees to postpone marriage and demonstrate a nontraditional role. The extent to which BRAC should take responsibility for compensating for the constraints imposed on women by patriarchy remains problematic. Working conditions could be improved, however, by allowing women to be near their families, domesticating the work environment, and respecting women's personal lives.     

Gendered Organizational Cultures: Narratives of Women Travellers in a Male World

The paper will present various self-identity narratives of women pioneers in male occupations who ‘take their place’ in a male gendered organizational culture. These narratives belong to a single discourse of what may be called ‘travellers in a male world’. This discourse presumes the existence of a territory marked out as male which is trespassed upon by females who are formally members of the same occupational community, but who, in actual practice, must stake out their positions in the field. Social structures coerce discourse positions and set up a series of expectations and social obligations, although several subject positions can be taken up for oneself, and for the ‘other’. This process has been labelled ‘positioning gender relations within an organizational culture’ and has been described as liminal work, performed discursively and in transitional spaces. Gender relations can therefore be viewed as cultural performances learned and enacted on appropriate occasions both by men and women.     

Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

This article explores a surprising and seemingly mundane organizational practice: passing notes during professional meetings. Based on 34 in‐depth interviews with women in a hyper‐masculine organization — the Israeli military — this study focuses on what I term gendered practices of public ambiguity. It demonstrates how these practices shed light on three interrelated paths to power at work: (i) practices of public intimacy between men; (ii) practices of women's degradation by men; and (iii) practices of recognition claims by women. The tension between the publicity inherent in the routine passing of notes and the ambiguity of their contents calls for a more nuanced theorization of gendered power practices, which transcends the accepted dichotomy of doing and undoing gender, reproducing or challenging the symbolic gender order. The findings show that gendered micro‐practices can become polysemic symbolic spaces in which women redirect the flow of power, if only temporarily and locally, and turn it into a multidirectional and multi‐agentic resource. The conceptual contribution of these findings is discussed in terms of the positioning of women in hyper‐masculine environments as pragmatic subjects who (re‐)construct mechanisms of power out of the restricted repertoire available to them.     

The Influence of Organizational Culture in Women Participation and Inclusion in Voluntary Organizations in Italy

The aim of this study is to analyze the rules whereby women are selected for leadership and management roles and to describe the cultural values that can foster their inclusion and participation in Italian Voluntary Organizations. Two hypotheses: the organizational culture that governs these organizations is necessarily oriented toward acceptance, involvement and participation, and the rules and setting must be flexible and inclusive of all members in order to enable each organization to survive. Methodology was based on 91 semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that Italian Voluntary Organizations must necessarily embrace an organizational culture whose rules and norms are oriented toward attracting men and women to join and encouraging them to participate. Implications for for-profit organizations are also discussed.     

Performance Evaluations as Gender Barriers in Professional Organizations: A Study of Auditing Firms

Gendering processes often take the form of organizational subtexts, that is, seemingly gender‐neutral practices that have gender implications. The purpose of this article is to study performance evaluations, which, based on management by objectives systems, may appear neutral, but tend to be based on male norms of what is regarded as good performance. We analysed the careers and performance evaluations of 391 newly licenced Swedish auditors, using an open‐ended question survey. In this industry 50 per cent of new employees and 92 per cent of partners are men. Even in the early stages of their careers, there are notable differences between women and men. The women achieved less and show lower career ambitions and expectations as well as greater intentions to leave the auditing industry. Performance evaluations are also perceived differently, men focusing on what is evaluated (reflecting the perceptions of those at higher hierarchical levels) and women focusing on who does the evaluating and how.     

‘Strategic (dis)obedience’: Female entrepreneurs reflecting on and acting upon patriarchal practices

It has been suggested that entrepreneurship is a form of emancipation and social change for women. We adopt a more comprehensive view by considering micro‐emancipation at the level of both agency and identity of women entrepreneurs in patriarchal and Islamic societies. We borrow from organization studies literature to draw on the notions of the dynamic and ongoing process between dominators (i.e., men of the patriarchal family) and the dominated (i.e., women entrepreneurs). In this process micro‐emancipation and active obedience are intertwined. For this purpose, we contextualize the study in the United Arab Emirates, where men of the family regulate women's agency and identity. The men of the family are not only the gatekeepers of societal culture, but also the potential supporters for women to navigate the societal arrangements. By adopting an interpretive approach, we analyse the narratives of Emirati female entrepreneurs in their early stages of becoming an entrepreneur who engage in strategic (dis)obedience. The article contributes to the literature on micro‐emancipation in the context of gender and entrepreneurship.     

“Grandma,Tell Me Another Story”: Family Narratives and Their Impact on Young Adult Development

The transmission of family stories provides insight into the personal and emotional lives of individuals, and sharing stories allows older generations to impart wisdom and family values to developing young adults. The current research explored how gender variation in content and perception of family stories differentially affected identity development in young adults. Young adults from a large northeastern private university shared a written family story about a grandparent and described how that story had impacted their values, behaviors, and identity. Three hundred twenty-five stories, from 238 women and 87 men, were qualitatively analyzed. The stories had much greater impact on young adults' values and attitudes than either their identity development or behaviors. Women shared more relationship stories, whereas men most frequently relayed humorous anecdotes. In addition, women indicated stories most often taught them to be appreciative, loving, or courageous, whereas more men shared stories that emphasized having a strong work ethic or being appreciative of and respectful to others. Although family narratives have been shown to help shape the younger generation's individual identity and character, it is important to differentiate between which stories might impact different genders as they seek to discover their own sense of self.