Home‐based Telework,Gender, and the Synchronization of Work and Family: Perspectives of Teleworkers and their Co‐residents

This article explores the relationship between work–family roles and boundaries, and gender, among home‐based teleworkers and their families. Previous literature suggests two alternative models of the implications of home‐based work for gendered experiences of work and family: the new opportunities for flexibility model and the exploitation model. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of home‐based workers and their co‐residents, we argue that these models are not mutually exclusive. We explore the gendered processes whereby teleworking can simultaneously enhance work–life balance while perpetuating traditional work and family roles.     

Decomposing Gender Beliefs: Cross‐National Differences in Attitudes Toward Maternal Employment and Gender Equality at Home

Few cross‐national studies distinguish between different aspects of gender egalitarianism and compare them systematically. In this study, we examine cross‐national differences in attitudes toward mothers' participation in the labor market and toward gender equality within the household, using a multilevel analysis of individual data from 33 nations. The results indicate greater support for employed mothers, but a lower level of approval of gender equality at home, among residents of countries that offer women more educational and economic opportunities. We argue that macrolevel gender equality increases individuals', particularly women's, incentives to support female labor force participation. Because of a persistent belief in gender differentiation, however, macrolevel gender equality has the opposite relationship with attitudes toward altering gendered practices beyond enabling women's public sphere participation. The fewer explicit barriers to women's achievement in society, the more likely individuals will feel a need to defend gendered roles in the private sphere. That the potential harm of advocating gendered practices in the private sphere is smaller in societies with fewer impediments for women is also likely to account for the negative association between macrolevel gender equality and support for egalitarian gender roles at home.     

‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’: Management Rhetoric and Affirmative Action

In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming year and report on their progress in reducing employment‐related barriers for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender‐based discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity. Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the hospitality sector over a 14‐year period, we explore whether there is any evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations.     

Explaining Men's Entry into Female‐Concentrated Occupations: Issues of Masculinity and Social Class

This article seeks to add to an understanding of why some men enter female‐concentrated occupations (and why the majority do not). Drawing on the results of in‐depth interviews with 27 men in a range of occupations, I illustrate and interpret the complex and often contradictory ways in which men approach the notion of working in female‐concentrated occupations and examine the impact that this has on their occupational outcomes. The data suggest that different attitudes to female‐concentrated work cannot in themselves explain men's presence there. Consequently I explore, with particular reference to social class, the context in which attitudes around gender, work and occupational destinations, are framed. I conclude that men's entry to female‐concentrated occupations may best be approached, not as an issue of ‘masculinity’ but as one of social mobility operating within a gendered labour market.     

A middle‐class global mobility? The working lives of Indian men in a west London hotel

In this article we examine the working lives of young, single, middle‐class Indian men employed in the increasingly global hospitality sector in London, UK. Using a case study of a single hotel, we investigate a particular form of Indian middle‐class global mobility that differs from both the well‐documented ‘low status’, unskilled migrant as well as the highly‐skilled, science oriented migrants. We explore how their jobs both reinforce and challenge middle‐class Indian notions of masculinity, as well as how the recruitment process is both gendered and economically selective. We suggest that the transnational formation of Indian middle‐class identity is drawn from four main categories: a middle‐class lifestyle in India, class‐based motivations, the gendered and class based recruitment process of the UK hospitality industry, and the performance of class‐based gender identities.     

‘Why Do All the Women Disappear?’ Gendering Processes in a Political Science Department

The article provides an in‐depth analysis of the gendering processes among PhD candidates in a political science department. It uses Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations operating through four dimensions: the gendered division of labour, gendered interaction, gendered symbols and gendered interpretations of one's position in the organization. The article combines this approach with theories of hidden discrimination. The key theoretical aim is to contribute to gendered organizational theory by examining the ways in which hidden discrimination and the gendered organization work together. This generates detailed and differentiated knowledge about the mechanisms of hidden discrimination that produce gender inequalities in the department. The findings presented in this article point to the role of gendered division of labour and the lack of information about departmental practices. PhD supervision by men is a particularly strong structural barrier for women because of the gendered nature of interaction in supervision and the difficulties that female PhD students have in a male‐dominated environment. The article further contributes to debates on gendered organizations by focusing upon the gendered symbols of expertise in political science. These symbols reproduce the man as the political scientist norm and result in women interpreting their own position as marginal or as outsiders.     

Gender,Organizational Cultures and the Practices of Manager‐Academics in UK Universities

The article explores gendered management in UK universities in the context of moves to introduce new managerialism to higher education. Qualitative data are drawn from an Economic and Social Research Council funded project (R00023 7661) in which interviews were conducted with 137 male and female manager‐academics, from Heads of Department to Vice Chancellors, in 16 universities. The career trajectories of female and male manager‐academics are analysed to see if gender power relations, expectations and discrimination have affected their careers and organizational experiences. Also examined are whether and how gender relations and cultures are perceived to be relevant to management, the practices of women and men manager‐academics and the extent to which the differential value and status attached to teaching, research and management are gender‐related. It is suggested that women's participation in management roles, their perceptions of their practices and the expectations others hold of them are still marked by gender, even though some women have benefited, through promotion, from the greater emphasis on management now evident in UK universities.     

Rearranging Care,Reconfiguring Gender: Family and Household Business in Post-Đổi Mới Vietnam

This paper locates changes in care practices and gender roles within the broader context of marketisation. The context is a northern Vietnamese village that has experienced an immense expansion in its wholesale clothing market since the beginning of the 2000s. The paper discusses how the current situation encourages women and men to assume new tasks at home and in the trade business, and how this process of changing gender roles across generations is driven by and again reinforces shifting notions of femininity and masculinity. Furthermore, the paper inquires how gendered expectations of care play into national level struggles over development and reinforce social hierarchies. The findings are based on twelve months of anthropological fieldwork, including in-depth and life-story interviews, informal conversations and participant observation.     

Coming out of the Shed: Reflections on Men and Fathers

This paper is based upon a keynote address I delivered to the 2000 Australian Family Therapy Conference. The address invited conference participants to reflect on the functional or ‘provider’ roles so often assigned to men as partners and fathers. I link socio‐historical observations about the construction of gender‐based roles, with personal experiences of three generations of men from my own family of origin. I suggest that a continuing division of roles along gendered lines is not serving men well. Nor does it offer many benefits to men's female partners or their children. Practices within family law provide one illustration of persistent gender‐laden attitudes that, in the light of solid experimental evidence on men and fathering over the past twenty years, need to be challenged. Therapists, too, are challenged to reflect on how to engage men in ways that avoid the reinforcement of gender stereotypes.     

Occupational Sex Composition and Gendered Housework Performance: Compensation or Conventionality?

This article examines the association between occupational sex composition and housework, considering total housework time, time on male‐typed and female‐typed tasks, and the percent of total time spent on male and female tasks. Previous research examining male‐ and female‐typed chores independent of total housework suggests that couples compensate for gender‐atypical employment through gender‐typical housework performance, but this analysis of the National Survey of Families and Households (1992–1994) and the American Time Use Survey (2003–2013) demonstrates that assuming a quadratic association and failing to contextualize gendered housework performance within total housework performance obscures the true relationship between occupation and housework. In fact, women and men in gender‐atypical occupations perform a more gender‐atypical combination of chores. The influence of gender deviance neutralization in the housework literature may overshadow alternative explanations and model specifications. In particular, by assuming a quadratic association, researchers may impose, rather than test, gender deviance neutralization.     

Unsettling Universities' Incongruous,Gendered Bureaucratic Structures: A Case‐study Approach

Recent research shows that women faculty members in academia continue to face systemic barriers to opportunity and advancement and that these barriers are particularly strong in science and engineering, and in university administration. University administrators and faculty members, however, have been slow to recognize that systemically gendered barriers will have to be reduced or eliminated in order for women faculty to advance in their careers. One key problem is that many, if not most, leaders in powerful decision‐making roles in universities continue to embrace women‐centred explanations for gender disparities in advancement through the academic ranks. University leaders' lack of recognition of institutionalized gender barriers suggests the need for greater dissemination of research findings (and training) about how systemic barriers operate and why these barriers disproportionately disadvantage women. In this article I first theorize universities as incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures. I then outline an intervention strategy for enabling university faculty members and administrators to see incongruous, gendered bureaucratic structures and to then use this knowledge to develop strategies for addressing the problem of women's underrepresentation among science and engineering faculty. The strategy described is a case‐study approach recently implemented at a mid‐sized research‐intensive university in the US Midwest. The workshop was part of a broader university programme aimed at transforming the university's cultures, practices and structures in ways that help to enhance the recruitment, retention and promotion of women scientists. I conclude by discussing the benefits and limitations of the case‐study approach as a method for unsettling accepted knowledge about the gendered structures and normative practices of the university.     

Leadership,Gender and Sense‐making

This article examines the nature of sense‐making processes in teams and considers the extent to which leadership as a sense‐making process is impacted by gender. We conducted an in‐depth inquiry into the decision‐making behaviour of two single‐gender teams and a third, mixed gender team, as they worked together to produce gender‐specific leadership schema in an experimental setting. Our research question was, ‘To what extent is leadership as a sense‐making process impacted by gender?’ The article reports on the design, conduct and outcomes of this research project. We found that using a meeting as part of the research method created a specific instance of a gendered organizational context exerting a dominant and directive influence on individual and collective behaviour. The current trend toward team‐based leadership is likely to involve more meetings with increasing numbers of women in senior positions. This suggests to us that men and women need to be alert to the possibility that the gendered nature of meetings may be acting as a barrier to the expression of feminine forms of leadership.     

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.     

‘Heroes and Matriarchs’: Working‐Class Femininities,Violence and Door Supervision Work

Door supervision work is traditionally seen as a working‐class, male‐dominated trade. In addition, it is deemed to be one that is physically risky, where violence is seen as a ‘tool of the trade’ and where ‘bodily capital’ and ‘fighting ability’ are paramount to the competent performance of the job. This paper is a timely analysis on the manner in which the increasing numbers of women who work in door supervision negotiate their occupational identity and construct their work practices. The analysis focused on the way in which discursive constructions of both violence and workplace identities are variably taken up, reworked and resisted through the intersection of gender and class. This resulted in the identification of two main discourses; ‘playing the hero’ and the ‘hard matriarch’. These findings allow us to theorize that multiple, gendered and classed occupational identities exist beyond normative expectations and can be seen to be both emancipatory for working women, while simultaneously bolstering exploitation, workplace harassment and violent practices.     

Threats and Supports to Female Students’ Math Beliefs and Achievement

This study examines how student perceptions of teacher practices contribute to female high school students’ math beliefs and achievement. Guided by the expectancy–value framework, we hypothesized that students’ motivation beliefs and achievement outcomes in mathematics are fostered by teachers’ emphasis on the relevance of mathematics and constrained by gender‐based differential treatment. To examine these questions, structural equation modeling was applied to a longitudinal panel of 518 female students from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study. While controlling for prior achievement and race, gendered differential treatment was negatively associated with math beliefs and achievement, whereas relevant math instruction was positively associated with these outcomes. These findings suggest inroads that may foster positive math motivational beliefs and achievement among young women.     

Intertwining Gender Inequalities and Gender‐neutral Legitimacy in Job Evaluation and Performance‐related Pay

This article analyses the intertwining inequalities in wage determination and the gender‐neutral legitimacy that pay systems provide by masking these inequalities. Job evaluation and performance‐related pay were originally designed for purposes other than promoting equal pay, namely as managerial tools for determining wage levels. Typically, the main objective of a pay system is not to promote equal pay. Still, as a tool for assessing the value of work, job evaluation is regarded as a central method in promoting equal pay. The use of job evaluation is recommended by the European Commission and the International Labour Organization, and often features in gender‐equality policy and legislation. In contrast with the status of job evaluation, little research exists on performance‐related pay and gender pay equity. The findings show that the wages determined by pay systems reflect gendered cultural valuations of jobs and occupations. Pay systems provide gender‐neutral legitimacy for gender‐based wage disparities.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.     

‘To Do Or Not To Do (Gender)’ and Changing the Sex‐Typing of British Theatre

Concepts of doing, and undoing, gender have become increasingly prevalent within studies of sex‐typed work. However, these concepts, as currently figured and applied, contain a significant analytical lacuna: they tend not to register changes in the sex‐typing of work. In this study we engage this research gap by addressing the changing sex‐typing of British theatre — specifically, the shift from female‐dominated amateur to male‐dominated professional theatre work. We draw upon and develop concepts of doing and undoing gender to understand changes in the sex‐typing of work. In so doing, we explain how spatially and temporally differentiated ways of doing ‘male’ and ‘female’ become implicated in how people make sense of, and enact, the changing spaces and times of ‘amateur/female’ ‘professional/male’ work. Our analysis of theatre work suggests that, despite recent criticisms of their wider significance, concepts of un/doing gender are useful to understand broader changes in the sex‐typing of work. Thus, it also appears possible to (un)change such sex‐typings by undoing gender. However, our analysis suggests that such subversive acts remain ineffective, unless those involved in such gendered undoings engage with, rather than renounce, the gendered doings that help enact the changing sex‐typing of work.     

Work–family Management among Low‐wage Service Workers and Assistant Professors in the USA: A Comparative Intersectional Analysis

Noting an inattention to the specific ways in which class, race, and gender combine to affect work–family management, we conducted a qualitative exploration of the processes of intersectionality. Our analysis relies on two points on a continuum of class experiences provided by two groups of predominately white female workers: low‐wage service workers and assistant professors. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with each group, we examine the similarities and differences in their experiences of negotiating their work worlds as they tried to meet family demands. We focus on the ways in which class and gender interacted to shape these women's everyday lives in different ways. While we found that women privileged by class were privileged in their abilities to manage work and family demands, we also found that class shaped the gendered experiences of these women differently. Our data suggest that, in the realm of work–family management, class mutes gendered experiences for assistant professors while it exacerbates gendered experiences for women working in the low‐wage service sector. Our analysis not only highlights the importance of considering intersecting hierarchies when examining women's lived experiences in families and workplaces, but provides an empirical example of the workings of intersectionality.